Learning Tools

Have you ever really questioned how we could improve our educational system of today? Essentially, today's education focuses on giving us information, knowledge and skills that will enable people to successfully make their way in life - in their work lives. While this is valuable, what happens when the student steps out of the classroom environment and doesn't find himself in a similarly closed environment in his/her career?

As human beings we need and deserve a much broader and deeper approach to learning. We need a more hands-on, interactive approach in order to retain what we learn. We all learn best by having experiences, such that the results are impressed upon us. We can tell our children "Don't touch. It's hot.", but inevitably they will not stop putting themselves at risk of touching that hot stove, pot, etc. until such time as they have touched it and learned first-hand that it's hot. In this example the information given to them isn't enough; they must acquire the knowledge from within. The memory of the result reminds them "Oh, yeah, if I touch that it will hurt because it's hot."

"Coaching permits us to create goals defined by us and gives us the means to realize them. We learn to take responsibility for ourselves, and calmly accept the consequences without fear. We also learn to be the masters of our own lives, replacing our habits from conditioning, with new life-long beneficial habits. Perhaps most importantly, we need a coach for some time because our coach is an outsider posing really good questions. Our coach patiently awaits our responses and really listens to us. Our coach’s goal is to teach us a technique that we can use by and for ourselves once we’ve really learned it. Therefore, take the time required to come to know yourself. Each of us evolves at our own pace … as little by little the bird builds her nest". F.O. Belgium

Our different modes of learning need to be investigated to be sure that everyone can learn … not only those who learn in the same fashion as the teacher. Our teachers need to provide teaching methods which encompass the fullness, variety, depth and wholeness of human experience and to aspire to generate wisdom, well-being and a capacity to live harmoniously with our fellow beings.

Coaching can be interpreted as an intuitive response to the crisis we are having in our ways of learning and knowing.

Coaching, by asking fundamental questions and providing people with a safe environment in which to find their own answers, helps people to reconnect, in a more intuitive and logical fashion, where actions previously unthought-of or considered impossible are now part of their routine. This shift lasts beyond the coaching relationship. Coaching empowers people by providing them with a framework and approach that shifts how they show up and perform in their daily lives.

Coaching goes beyond skill development. While coaching isn't about giving information or skills, it transforms traditional practices of teaching and training. By integrating coaching into your training system, you create an on-going learning and sustained behavioural change that increases the results of your initiatives exponentially. Clients experience increases in their emotional intelligence and their understanding of how both emotions and systems pre-dispose us to act in certain ways and not in others permits the clients to learn and design new environments to allow for new actions.

Over time, the people in an organization view this organization and its relationship with the world in a particular way. Based on this view, those involved, including the organization, only see a limited set of possible actions and are blind to possibilities of seeing and acting in any other ways. Coaches take the task in hand of shifting this "organizational observer" so that new, more powerful conversations, actions and results are possible … by the individuals and by the team.

Producing sustained change in management, teams and individual employees requires more time, interaction and conversations than typical training interventions allow. Reports show that organizations are hungry for the kind of learning that people come away with from coaching, once they experience the results of it.