Welcome back to the Journey Podcast! On this episode of the podcast, Terry and Sarah are talking about what being a Journey Coach looks like and the general characteristics of a good coach.


Transcription of the Podcast


Sarah: Hello, hello. Welcome back to the Journey Podcast. I’m Sarah Banowetz and I have Terry Carlson her today, and we are talking about what it takes if you would like to be a Journey coach.

Sarah: Terry, can you answer that question?

Terry: I’ll give it a try. Basically what I think Sarah’s trying to get at is, if somebody out there that’s listening has kind of listened to some of the other podcasts, if you haven’t, I ask you to go back and kind of re-listen to. We’ve talked in other podcasts about how coaching is different from counseling, how coaching is different from life coaching, or how Journey coaching is different from life coaching. We’ve kind of distinguished it among some of the other things. And so if you’ve gone through and you’ve listened to that stuff and you say, “Yeah. This really strikes with me. I really think I’d like to be a part of Journey and I’d like to do some coaching,” then I would really encourage you give us a call or email us or text us or message us, any of those contact points that we have. We can kind of talk further about what that looks like

Terry: But I’ll give you some basics here. The very first thing I’ll ask if somebody talks to me on the phone is are you willing to be coached yourself? If you haven’t already gone through the Journey process, it’s a seven session process, typically, and in that time period you go through your own story, your strengths, your weaknesses. You’re looking at how you’re wired up. This is really a key part for a coach, partly because if you’re going… There are certain kind of characteristics that make somebody a better coach than others. And so you’ll want to know, first of all, is this something that’s in a strength area of mine. One of the things that Journey does is it helps you identify how are you matched or mismatched with your strengths and your weaknesses. And so we really want to encourage somebody to do the coaching, to be a coach if they feel like this is an area in their strengths.

Terry: Some of the things that you’re going to also kind of look at is what… One of the things about going through the coaching yourself is it helps you be a little bit more self aware of the things that are in your story and how that might pertain. It might make you a little more aware of how somebody else going through the coaching process might feel. There’s uncertainties. There’s some fears sometimes when you’re talking about strengths or weaknesses and if you’ve gone through it yourself you can say, “Hey, I understand. I totally understand that it’s a little difficult to talk about these things.”

Sarah: What about some characteristics of the coach?

Terry: Well I think the very first characteristic I would out in that category is good listening, good active listening skills. A coach is really somebody who listens. They’re not the expert. They’re just somebody else who’s been on a journey that’s similar and you want to be able to listen very carefully to what the person’s story is. And an active listener kind of shows that they are listening by the way that their body language is and by the questions that they ask in return to kind of encourage somebody.

Terry: So good listening skills. Someone who isn’t very, very quick to offer advice. It’s not your place to really offer advice, but it does help as you’re listening to kind of say, “Oh, that’s an interesting concept. It’s an interesting story.” You might take somebody, as you’re listening to the story, you might say something along the line of, “Oh, what strengths have you… That was an interesting event that you went through. Did you learn anything about yourself?” And so they’re kind of good at asking questions and not really quick to offer advice.

Terry: A good coach will be pretty non-judgemental. They’ll have an attitude of unconditional acceptance. There may be things that you’re listening to as a coach that other people may have a different lifestyle, a different worldview than you. Can you listen to somebody else’s perspective and ask questions or have conversations, but not be judgemental about them? A good coach will have pretty good relationship building skills. Being able to talk openly and freely with somebody that you don’t really know that well.

Terry: And I think the last one I’d like to point out here, and I know there’s more and again, if you contact us we’ll give you some more information, but the last one I would list here, today, is to build trust and to keep someone’s confidences and show their respect. All of that is a way of building that trust. If you can keep their confidence, if you’re hearing something, it’s kind of like what they say about Las Vegas, what’s said here stays here. A good coach keeps the person’s confidences and doesn’t share them with anybody outside of that relationship. It helps to build trust and it shows respect.

Sarah: Thank you for the insight, Terry. And if anyone is interested in talking more with someone about the potential of being a Journey coach, please reach out to Terry at journeycoaching.org. You can also find us at journeycoaching.org, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. And yeah, so reach out to us and ask us questions and we will talk to you soon. Thank you. Bye.

Thank you for listening. Tune in next time and make sure you like and subscribe. Visit us at journeycoaching.org and check us out on Facebook and Instagram. Start your own journey at journeycoaching.org