If you Google ‘Business Coaching’, you’ll likely get more than 7,000,000 hits. ‘Career Coaching’: 2,8M. ‘Life coaching’: 20M. ‘[Blank] coach’ seems to be a thing. Particularly, after all sport coaches in all sports in the history of the world, and Tony Robbins.Talking about sports, I bet Canadians are pretty happy with having Toronto Raptors’ coach Nick Nurse in the house, instead of Peter Horacheck (worst ranked Toronto Maple Leafs’ coach). And, what about a coach for a specific skill? Like, increasing your basketball shooting accuracy - with NBA shooting coach Dave Love. Or, watching in YouTube, a puck-shooting coach named Tim Turk (with 553 views), to improve your hockey’s shooting mechanics. Or, what about watching NBA’s 2x MVP, Steve Nash demonstrating a new App that tells you what’s wrong with your free-throws. I’m not promoting these coaches (App included), I’m making a point.Coaching is important to grow the different pieces of our career and business in a complex world with information overload. And, selecting what you want to develop, and find a coach for that particular purpose is as important as your decision to improve yourself.Getting coached and the coach are not just browsing LinkedIn profiles or social media favorites to find a [blank] coach, and magically achieving results. Not all coaches are a Nick Nurse, Dave Love, Tim Turk or the free-throws’ App. More importantly, the results they can help us achieve, vary widely.The Law Society of Ontario’s Coach and Advisor Network (CAN) tells participants that “Coaching is an approach for managing change: moving an individual from where they are ‘now’ to ‘where they want to be’. It builds capacity and motivates individuals by raising their awareness about their strengths and how to leverage them to create change. It is a conversation and a process that occurs over time, between the Coach (volunteer) and the Participant (person being coached). Through conversation, goals are identified and actions to achieve them are planned.”I was a privileged CAN’s participant in “Curious About Coaching?”, a webinar where two Nick Nurse-type of coaches, guided by legal sector’s futurist lawyers and adult educators from CAN, talked about what coaching for lawyers and paralegals is. I invite you to watch it.In this webinar, I was able to learn a few more easy things that I can do to improve my next experience with legal business and career coaching:
- have a ballpark idea of what I want to achieve in the short term;
- be open to clarify my priorities with my coach and list small steps to take;
- expect the process to help me achieve one or two goals at a time;
- be prepared to take action.
After my experience with coaching, I concluded that it is a perfect process to help us, legal professionals, to improve our careers/businesses in the legal sector, because the process is mindful of time constrains, and it assists us to manage information overload.And there seems to be a value added for the public. I see more legal consultants, advisors, solicitors and litigators including coaching tools and skills to deliver their legal services, based on what we have learned from the CAN’s experience. I expect that this coaching-styled ‘package’ would improve communication with clients, manage expectations better and set and account for clearer steps.Do you have a coach? Get it at Coach and Advisor NetworkAre you looking forward to giving back to the community as a Coach? Apply to be a coach.Antonio Franco Urdaneta is a marathon runner and Director of the Canadian Hispanic Bar Association (2019-21). He is a workplace lawyer, compliance coach and workplace investigator in the Great Toronto Area. Contact him at: antonio@workplacelegal.ca