The benefits of coaching is certainly a cause of excitement! For those who consider coaching their forte, being with ProductHired is certainly a great excuse to discover varieties of experiences and launch the first step to go further on ProductHired or even in the domain of coaching altogether.
Coaching others in any career field has demonstrated benefits and learning, Let’s list a few to focus on for now.
- Empowerment. Coaching empowers to perform
- New Insights. Leaders gain new perspectives from their coach
- Free Thinking. Coaching brings a change in thinking
- Enhanced Performance. Coaching helps understand effective ways to perform
- Improved Communication. Coaching makes you adapt a new voice when needed
No wonder coaching has condensed space and content to make learning happen faster and more efficiently. Evidently, there are so many ways a professional can truly benefit others while maintaining their current role. In this article, we’ll go deeper into how to set your first engagements as a coach hoping to help individual clients with their expectations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Understand your objectives
- Plan your session
- Source your content
Your Objectives
Your objective is to teach content that works! The first step is always problem identification of the client to address any low hanging pain points that can be addressed before going deep in foundational aspects.
Understanding the client prior to the session or during your research is the right way forward. You’ll be able to uncover their past track record and how they manoeuvred their career to get to the point where they pick up with you. This will give you leverage to use your expertise and fill in the gaps to help them understand their next call to action. As a coach, you must be ready for the following:
- Understand a client’s needs
- Create the right plan and structure sessions
- Make adjustments in plan as you progress
Where a coach has to suggest changes in behaviours and outcomes, results and observations are vital to deliver the required context.
In the field of Product Management, a sample objective from a client can include being more data-driven. If this is the case, creating a plan to help address the client’s pitfalls in data or how to deliver a data oriented mindset, is vital for their success.
Plan your session
Coaching can’t be successful unless beneficial for you and your client. As discussed, researching candidates is the first way to plan the sessions. For that you must know why you need to ask questions, how to ask and what to ask as well as to understand position, background, opportunities and commitments. You can divide the research based on preferences, needs, importance, focus, roles and future needs.
While planning the session coaches should keep some considerations in mind for Product mentoring like:
- Product strategy
- Analyzing Product opportunities
- Designing business/technical model
- Product Development
- Product Marketing
- Managing evolution and growth
Source the right content and be ready to adjust
Coaching builds relationships with clients and for that “Quality” really matters. Joe Pulizzi, author of the book “Get Content, Get Customers” says, “The one who has the more engaging content wins, because frequent and regular contact builds a relationship.” With ProductHired your content should focus on applications and hands-on-experience working with and around these concepts. For sure, your real world consulting experience creates content required for coaching. We at ProductHired accurately promote you to reach your target audience and also on other networks. Some key questions to answer as a coach:
- What applied learning opportunity am I providing in the sessions?
- How can sessions become more valuable for professional practice?
- How can I add value to my sessions through my background knowledge and use knowledge of my clients to benefit others?
Remember to have room for adjustment as you move along to provide realistic outcomes for your clients. There’s no harm in having a collaborative session and focusing on content from a variety of sources to help people from various industries and backgrounds.
Summing Up
The art and science of understanding clients and delivering outcomes based on realistic needs aligns coaching content with acceptable strategies. Outcomes of coaching are based on finding unknown problems. Product strategic expectations must be fully understood and critical features and highlights should be outlined for success. This guidance syncs business and product needs in a shared profitable relationship. Product teams need an inspiring articulation of future stakes and endure democratization of technology and needs.
These powerful agents or strategies paint the right picture for the client. As a coach, you accelerate changing the way people think and behave and this puts a coach as the navigator to what matters to Product and product strategy.
Personalize your coaching profile by completing your summary and perfecting your Bio. Connecting your social profiles will make it easy for clients to connect and find out more about you.
Ambreen Salman is a freelance writer, specialised in writing clear marketing copy to promote products/services. She has been preparing well-structured content using various Content Management Systems. Her marketing research has focused on various industries including recruitment, coaching, marketing and IT as a Content Manager / Copywriter.