🏆🤳How to be a coach? 8 Necessary skills for coaching

One of the most abused and misused words in the world is the term "coach" and "coaching". Fashion and frivolity means that anyone can declare a coach of any subject without having a training or the minimum requirements that are needed to guide others in the search and achievement of personal or group goals.

Coaches need to have a training and not be improvised, so I decided to create this brief article where I expose at least eight skills that a person should have before wanting to be called a "coach" or personal trainer. These skills are:

1. Have experience and expert knowledge in a subject

Experience and knowledge are two basic pillars for someone who wants to train others, not only with a type of academic-theoretical knowledge but with the need to be able to amalgamate that kind of understanding that traditional training gives us through courses, careers Undergraduate or graduate with knowledge based on trial and error and that comes from personal experience in the field where you will give coaching.
Being an expert in a subject is not a guarantee of being a good coach, because in addition to being able to train others and help others you need skills that will orbit around personal development, intra and interpersonal communication skills and raw material about which we will always be returning that is our own subjectivity.

2. Ability to listen empathetically and actively

This is one of the most necessary skills because if someone can not actively listen and read between the lines what a person says and contrast it with what he does and determine the critical moments in the process of achieving goals, then we can not guide it.
Active listening has to do with being able to pay attention to what someone says, what they do, what they want, what they do not say, how they say it, the omissions, the expression and tone of anguish, frustration and our own reactions to their modes in relation to the place where we want to be experientially, as a coach and as trained.
Guiding another is only possible while respecting the other's times. Empathy is the element that shapes the respect for that time and being able to put ourselves in the way of seeing the world and processing it is what will give meaning to our interventions and guides as a coach.
I think that there will be no possibility of being a good coach if someone does not have patience, does not respect the time of the other and is not willing to immerse himself in the ways of thinking and feeling that are alien to him.

3. Ability to foster critical thinking

The ability to make the other think in a different way to the way he usually sees the world is what is known as propitiating critical thinking. The best way to do it is to learn to ask better questions. But to ask better questions we need to acquire more and more knowledge and experiences that go beyond our own field of expertise, that is, begin to incorporate learning structures based on themes, situations, books, courses, skills, experiences, attitudes and feelings that we have not explored until now.
A coach should be able to think critically considering the above points and see himself as a person who, in principle, should take himself to the best possible version of his current self.
One can only think critically if we problematize the everyday, if we become accustomed to denaturalizing what is given as closed and as final. If we are not able to rethink what is presented in its final mode, without questioning it in any way possible, then we will not be able to think critically about anything new.

4. Self-knowledge

Delphi was the place where outsiders read the phrase "know yourself" in the welcoming portico. A great way to remind them that they will not find anything different in any place so far away from themselves.
The coach must have the RESPONSIBILITY to know his blind spots, to take psychological therapy to self-explore and to know his own skills, structures and thought patterns and the way he learns because all this shapes prejudices, biases and ways of seeing the reality that they end up affecting aspects of life without moderation.
When we talk about giving coaching to other people it is essential to be able to realize that things are specific to our personality and what things belong to the other person, in order to separate it, study it and keep it out of the process that the trained person is doing, without these elements they hinder the growth or the objectives of the other.
If someone does not know himself, or at least he does not notice himself, he can not help or guide others, even if he has expert knowledge in a field of knowledge.
As this is a very demanding point you can not ask anyone to achieve this in an ontological coach or coaches course in a year, it's not about that, it's about knowing that this element plays in favor or against ourselves and those trained to the extent that is kept in the dark or in the light of decisions and actions taken in the coaching process.
Spoiler Alert: Knowing ourselves will take us a lifetime, however, being a coach will accelerate that process and is probably the measure with which good personal trainers are measured.

5. Ability to learn to learn

To continue learning, they need techniques, strategies and mental movements in favor of improving the resources we have to acquire new objects of knowledge and apply them to new situations, people or decisions.
There are many ways in which people can improve the way we learn, but the first and fundamental thing is to recognize that we can always learn better, that to do it you need to develop new skills, improve productivity strategies, replace bad habits, demystify old ways, redefining creativity and procrastination with the personal aroma and maintaining an attitude as proactive as curious about the way we currently do things.

6. Ability to recognize intelligences and enhance them

According to Howard Gardner there are at least seven intelligences and each one with particular characteristics. I leave here an additional video about that:

Understanding this is as fundamental as all the previous points because if you want to be a good coach or neurocoach you need to understand that NOT ALL PEOPLE LEARN IN THE SAME WAY, and that is what will make the difference between tolerating trial and error your trained and yours too.
Daniel Goleman, another great researcher and educator, adds an equally important type of intelligence that is emotional intelligence, on this point I recommend this video:
Knowing the classifications and characteristics of the different types of intelligences will allow you to get to know yourself better and to promote better ways of fostering critical thinking in those trained, and in yourself. Also, keep in mind that identifying this is also helping to empower it because there you have one more input with which to guide the people or groups that require it.

7. Ability to work with heterogeneous groups

All the groups are heterogeneous but what I want to highlight with this point is that each person has belief structures, personal experiences, cognitive structures and worldviews that are unique, unique. What to do with that? First, respect it, as understood, third, improve if necessary.
Sometimes the way we think is not enough or does not go in the sense of what we say we want to achieve, in groups you have to learn to reconcile that from sound criticism and the role that each person plays in relation to a group of knowledge.
Having experience in group management, assertiveness skills, effective communication and negotiation skills are equally necessary skills to be a good coach, do not you think?

8. Humility and eternal position of dialectical apprentice

Humility is flying low, but with the assurance that anyone at any time will teach us something new. Being available for that flight is what will make our wings of knowledge reach new heights.
To be a dialectic apprentice is to be a constant learner and a feeling person rather than pure rational. As humans all we pass through the sieve of emotions, it is crucial that we learn to listen to the other first from the warmth of a man-to-man talk, from woman to woman, but also from what it implies to be that person in this moment of his life, from the value that he gives himself and from the way in which he creates and conceives his personal reality. That is a feeling attitude that will make you a better learner and that you need to cultivate if you want to be a good coach, or at least I think so.

Now I would like to know what other skills, abilities or resources do you think a person needs to be a coach?