Jaap Ozinga (en)

COACHING, PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLING, INTERVENTION AND TRAINING

Coaching Psychological counselling is supportive in personal and professional development when stagnation occurs. It can be regarded as an individual learning. Areas of coaching counselling:

Personality, Performance and Practice.

Personality Personality (character) is a combination of talent and typical features developed through experience of life. The way you have learnt to deal with things in life.

Performance What your environment will perceive. The effects of your personality and behaviour on your employees. your employer, your colleagues and your clients. How can you learn from your environment, from the people around you?

Practice The effects of coaching counselling are not limited to your own experience but will also be implemented into practice. Your other approach will be visible for your environment .

These 3 Ps will always be combined in coaching psychological counselling. A better performance needs to be anchored in your personality. It is beyond training and instrumental learning. Your actions and behaviour are in line with your character and you are able to internalize what you learnt in coaching counselling.

Development goals Coaching Psychological counselling focuses on a clear picture of the problem, the tracing of personal pitfalls and is aimed at improving the performance, personally and professionaly.  From employee to manager, from manager to leader, from professional to senior professional, from advisor to consultant, Development from suffering from stress to dealing with stress, from being out of control to being in control. The necessity to develop could result from stagnation in work or life, or from the desire to grow from A to B.The goals of coaching psychological counselling can be dictated by your environment, your manager, your HR-advisor or your occupational health specialist. But you are the one and only person to feel motivated for coaching counselling. Involvement of your professional environment can be useful in order to have agreement about the goals of coaching counselling and the desired results. The coaching psychological counselling itself will always be confidential.

Approach and methods

The first step is made by you and will lead to an intake in witch the problems, questions and direction of psychological counselling will be determined.

The approach will always be in alignment with you, your personality, and your personal and professional situation. Methods are only to be supportive.

Psychological counselling will help you to hold a mirror for yourself; it will be focused on your circle of influence and will call on your problem-solving capacity. The counsellor will use his professional expertise and experience to help you find the right direction. The consultations will usually start with a biography of your personal and professional history.

Helpful methods and structures are (amongst many others):

Core Quadrants of Daniel Ofman  A Core Quadrant is based on Core Quality, Pitfall, Challenge and Allergy. The Core Quality is a specific strength that characterises you.  It is a strong and positive personal quality. It makes you what you are. It is one of the first things people say about you when they are asked to describe you.  Each person has at least one core quality.  Too much of this quality leads to your Pitfall.  Your pitfall goes hand-in-hand with your core quality. It is the distortion of your core quality when you show too much of it. It is the reversed side of the medal, your quality becomes a weakness. Your Challenge is the positive opposite of your pitfall. It is a positive quality that you should show more often.  It is a quality you often recognise and admire in others. This quality is needed to keep your core quality well-balanced. However: too much of your challenge will end up in your Allergy.  Your allergy is also the negative opposite of your core quality. Most people are allergic to their own challenge recognised in other persons. You can get into conflict with people who are in your allergy zone, especially when a person is the personification of the kind of behaviour you detest

For example:

RET (Rational Emotive Training) has originally been developed by Albert Ellis.  RET investigates your assumptions in your life. Your assumptions may be helpful (when I am relaxed, I am more open to my environment) but they may also be disruptive (when I make a mistake, I fail as a person).  The idea that our beliefs upset us was first articulated by Epictetus around 2,000 years ago: "Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them."

Are you at the mercy of circumstances or are you in control?  Going through the process with RET, you will stop blaming the outside world and being in dependency and you will take the lead of your own decisions.

Questionnaires  RET-questionnaire  MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)  LDF (Leadership Development Framework, Harthill UK), Stress Risk Questionnaire  and many others to be deployed if necessary.

Duration  Standard: 3 – 5 consultations in a time frame of 6 – 10 weeks.  Extensive: version: maximum 10 sessions in total.  Follow up: after 3 – 6 months.  Evaluation: by the coachee client himself/herself and the coach counsellor, preferably if possible in consultation with the referrer and /or the manager involved. Confidentiality is guaranteed.

Intervention: Conflict management and conflict resolution  I prefer the word intervention rather than mediation, because it indicates a more active and leading role of the coach.

Unresolved conflicts often lead to deterioration in the working atmosphere and to unnecessary absence from work. Conflicts are not always expressed and manifest. When unspoken, they may become a threat to the organization.

The management style is decisive in dealing with conflicts.  A very strong result driven management with a 100% top-down approach can lead to neglect of contact with individual employees. But too much of an apparent equality and of a horizontal approach can also lead to unspoken conflicts when it raises false hopes.

What are the main reasons for conflicts in work situations?  Not feeling understood, not taken seriously, not being part of the success.  Conflicts often continue to exist because they hang on content level.  While most are underlying feelings about the relation, often based on a longer existing history. Previous experience determine the outcome. In stead of denying or neglecting, it should be recognized. One of the ways to resolve a conflict is the to switch between content and process.  This is an important management skill that can be learned and is useful in handling in various conflicting situations. This method goes hand in hand with the Core Quadrant of Ofman. To be learned in individual management coaching or in training sessions for management teams. These are also valuable tools in mediation .

Communication always takes place at four levels:

The sequence of steps in conflictual situations is as follows:

• Recognize (unspoken) conflicts
• Naming what is happening; naming the observation
• To talk about this and verify the observation
• Determine the direction of solution
• Clarify the roles of stakeholders
• Ensure acceptance by all concerned
• Make clear agreements that should prevent future conflicts

Conflicts can help to clarify issues that might otherwise lead to stagnation in the organization. An important quality of the coach is to be hard on the content and supportive in the relationship (hard in the diagnosis; mild in treatment).