Why should coaching training be practice-oriented?

The process of learning coaching tools must go beyond ideas.

Coaching is an area of development that is as interesting as it is broad in terms of the issues and needs that can be addressed by coaching. This is one of the reasons why it is of interest to many different professional profiles: it provides versatile and varied resources of analysis and intervention for problems in business, education, sports performance, management of personal relationships and emotions in private life, etc.

However, it is precisely this quality of encompassing a great diversity of situations and challenges to be solved that makes one run the risk of being initiated in coaching enough to obtain a degree, but without having had the opportunity to put strategies and techniques into practice with the assistance of psychology professionals, who work with people every day and know which strategies and techniques have a scientifically validated effectiveness and which are harmful.

Moving from the world of ideas to specific actions is not something that comes from simply having a degree. Therefore, there are key differences between coaching courses whose main incentive is that they offer certifications, and training programs that train people to use the coaching technique..

Beyond the desire to fill out a resume: the real usefulness of coaching

There are people who consider training in coaching simply out of a desire to come into contact with people who have interesting or innovative ideas that challenge preconceived beliefs deeply rooted in the world of management. There are also those who propose it simply to create contacts; after all, in many Masters and postgraduate programs that focus on coaching, professionals from important brands, senior and middle management attend as students, etc.

These are perfectly legitimate reasons, have to do not so much with the desire to learn techniques to a level of detail that allows them to be applied in real contexts. However, because they exist and because they are there, many training centers take note of them and design their courses to meet these needs, which have more to do with the sociological dynamics of the corporate world than with the real theoretical and practical learning of coaching.

For example, it is absolutely true that in a conference given by the Human Resources Director of a multinational company many revealing ideas and inspiring examples can emerge, but it is more complicated that by the simple fact of listening to someone who has not necessarily been trained in the behavioral sciences we are learning ways to solve our own or our clients' problems..

After all, one of the characteristics of scientific knowledge is its capacity to go beyond concrete data or the description of what works and does not work in a very specific context (for example, in the company where the teacher works). Science is about inferring, extracting new information from what has been observed, testing it, and making corrections in a systematic way. And this goes beyond the simple internalization of abstract ideas.

A balance between the theoretical and the subjective.

It is therefore important to know that beyond the training courses that offer unofficial certified training, there are courses that help the psychologist, the trainer or the person in charge of team and department management to to be trained in coaching through a training advised by experts in the field.Those who have university and professional training based on Psychology or Behavioral Sciences in general.

It should not be forgotten that coaching, at its core, rests on the ability to recognize and manage mental processes and patterns of individual or social behavior, and it is impossible to learn about this area if all we internalize are ideas based on theory, on the one hand, or based on what a business manager thinks he knows about organizations based solely on his personal experience in three corporations.

Between a very high level of abstraction that remains only in ideas too abstract to be put into practice, on the one hand, and the fanciful extrapolations based on "it worked for me", there are all those contents researched and worked on by Psychology. The solution to the need to learn to use coaching to address problems and needs is neither idealism nor extreme reductionism. is neither idealism nor the extreme reductionism of subjectivity..

Want to develop skills through coaching?

If you are interested in training through coaching to have more emotional management skills, knowledge about team leadership, motivation and self-motivation strategies and many other useful resources in personal and professional life, we invite you to contact us or get information about our services of psychological assistance and courses. From UPAD Psychology and Coaching we have been assisting individuals, professionals and companies for years.

Among these training programs to learn how to work from coaching, it is worth mentioning our online course in sports coaching, which is conducted by psychologists with extensive experience in sports psychology and coaching and consists of three months of duration.

It is a course based on ontological coaching oriented to the development of High Performance Sports, and is divided into four parts: a first stage of Introduction, and three modules in General Guidelines for the knowledge of Sports Coaching, Functional and Dysfunctional Beliefs, and Sports Coaching Techniques. Moreover, you can start it whenever you want.