COACHING
COACHING
HOW TO CHOOSE AN EXECUTIVE COACH
By Thrity Engineer-Mbuthia
By now you will be familiar with this column offering insights on coaching and what impact it can have on your life . 2017 is a new year , and you probably have aspirations and goals set already . A coach can help you work on the transformation that will eventually lead you to discover your potential , learn about yourself in ways you never imagined and work towards those life changing and fulfilling moments .
In today ’ s world , information is everywhere . In 1964 , Professor Bertram Gross , a Professor of Political Science at Hunter College introduced a term – information overload . In its most basic definition , information overload simply means exposing a user to so much information and data , that it leaves the user confused and unable to make a decision .
Take yourself as an example . You are bombarded several times a day with information from social media via tweets , images , articles on Facebook , LinkedIn . You can use search engines to look up any information almost instantly . You can use internet comparison websites also known as shopbots to give you price comparisons or product specifications . TripAdvisor is one very popular such site . So is Jumia . Everything is available to you at the click of a button and in real time . With all this information , it is easy to get completely overwhelmed and you can go into a state of paralysis . And this assumes you are a single consumer . What if you are a business looking for a product or service ? It gets even more complicated .
I really love using the google search engine because it brings up relevant material for me pretty fast . So I decided to type in my search : “ How to choose a coach ”.
‘‘ What if a coach has 10 years of being a coach but hasn ’ t actually been coaching regularly ? The number of years spent coaching is usually not a good parameter for measuring experience . Instead a better option would be number of clients or number of coaching hours , giving you an opportunity to understand the popularity and acceptance of the coach by paying clients .’’
In 0.7 seconds , I got a response of 96.5 million results . Yes that ’ s 96,500,000 results . Well I don ’ t know when I will ever read past page 2 or even if I will read all the results on page 1 . Would you ?
Perhaps I could watch a video . That brought up 526,000 results . Perhaps I should get more specific with my search . “ How to choose an executive coach ”. That brought up 804,000 results .
Here ’ s another option . Spend a few
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