Reflective entry about the last coaching session - Patrick St-Pierre

There was the last session of coaching and I started it with some good expectations. Indeed, it was the fifth coaching session and the others before went very well, so I was confident this session should go well too. In general, it was a good coaching session. But there is one thing that didn’t really exceed my expectations. Let starts from the beginning. Like the last, the listening process went very well. I’m really starting to be better to just listen the other person in a conversation and to wait the good moment to talk. But in this coaching session, I also discovered that the action of listen is not all in the listening process. Indeed, listening the conversation is important, but you also need to keep in minds the most important things that the person said and to do a mental work about it. So, this process also demand an important effort of memorisation and an important effort of analysing. Indeed, in a conversation, you need to “process” the information that you received and using it later to go deeper in the conversation. Also, I realized that the listening process is really the “base” of the coaching process. If this process not go well, all the other process cannot really reach a higher level.

After, I found that I did a great job with the mirroring process. Indeed, I really felt that, with my suggestions, I helped Leninka to have a better view about her situation and herself. I also notice that this part of the coaching is simpler when you used your own experience in the subject of the coaching session to improve the view of the coachee. Indeed, with you own experience, it’s easier to have a better understanding of the situation and to bring another point of view.

To continue, I think it’s the first time I went deeper in the summarizing process and I didn’t expect that this process could be difficult. Indeed, a lot of information was given in the listening process and I had more difficulties to select the points that they are more important. Also, I noticed that to ask really pertinent questions in the next process, you need to have done a good job in the summarizing process. Indeed, relevant questions need to be related to what is really important in the communication. To finish, as a coach, I think I did a good job with the catalyzing process. At the end, I could feel that the communication with my coachee was different from the beginning, in the way we can notice that this coaching session made a difference for her.

As a coachee, from session to session, I could also notice that Leninka was more confident in her coach role. Indeed, I really feel that I can express myself without judgements and interruptions. Also, with her questions, she succeeded to improve my view on the situation and to make me see different perspectives of it. Brief, I can see how a coaching session could really help me in a situation.