What is coaching?

At Torch

Our approach to leadership coaching is a blend of technology with 1:1 coaching. As a Torch client, you will begin with a Leadership Assessment that evaluates you across our 3 key leadership dimensions (Character, Relationships and Influence), to identify hidden strengths and development opportunities.

Your coach will then help design a personalized, specific development plan based on strengths and challenges identified in the assessment. During regular 1-on-1 video sessions, you will work with your coach to strengthen skills based on your plan. Growth will be measured through defined goals and adapted based on continuing team feedback.

What coaching is NOT…

Mentoring

Generally coaching is not about the transfer of domain specific skills or experience from the coach to the client, even when the coach might have such experience. Rather, your coach will partner with you to help you develop yourself, at a level that is deeper and more universal than domain or even role-specific skills. This may include the coach sharing tools, resources and insights that support you to achieve your goals.

Therapy

While there are some similarities (strong client-therapist/coach relationship, regularity, holistic view), therapy is very different from coaching. Therapists are clinically trained to diagnose and treat personality disorders. For that, they often dig deep into a patient’s past, which is where and how more fundamental issues can be addressed. Coaching, on the other hand, takes the coachee’s background and personal life into account, but is much more action oriented and mostly takes place in the “here and now”.

What is the role of my coach?

An effective leadership coach is a partner who helps you clarify your goals, and then achieve them through detailed planning, action, and reflection.

Your Torch coach is there to help you identify your areas of strength and your areas of growth, and to build a development plan with you based on your goals. They are “in your corner”, and will support and challenge you appropriately, always holding your goals in priority. They can be your sounding board, your thought partner, and a person to hold you accountable.

How can I use coaching?

Leadership coaching is a way of committing to your personal, continual growth. You can benefit from a coach at any point in your career.

Most people use coaching for:

• Ongoing development: Set goals for yourself and work on the management skills that will help you become the leader you aspire to be.
• Situational support: know that whichever challenge your work throws at you, you’ll have a coach by your side who can help you talk through tough situations, prepare for a big meeting or a difficult conversation.
• Career planning: your coach can be your thought-partner when it comes to planning your next career move, and they can help you set actionable goals to get where you want to get next.
• Overcoming internal blocks to success: your coach can help you identify limiting beliefs that are keeping you from taking your career and life to the next level. Coaching provides a safe space to clarify and move beyond these inner blocks, with a combination of insight and supported action.
• Improving professional relationships and communication: your coach partners with you to close the gap between how things are, and how you would like them to be with respect to effective communication and productive, harmonious relationships with colleagues.

Could I benefit from coaching?

The best athletes have coaches, and we think the best leaders should too.

We all have room to grow, and we could do so better with an experienced partner to help us on the journey. Coaches can help us in a myriad of ways, but two of the most fundamental ones are:

• They have a different perspective from ours. Often we are limited in our growth by limited self awareness. A coach can see the situation in a way we can’t.
• They are on your team. A coach can fundamentally be your advocate and yet independent from you in a way that is different from anyone else.

Coaching can be leveraged for almost any challenge or situation, but some common use cases include:

• Develop a vision and set a plan to realize it
• Overcome an obstacle that has you feeling stuck
• Increase self awareness and discover  the beliefs that limit you
• Develop deeper and more satisfying career relationships
• Become more efficient in your regular work, so you don’t feel behind and overwhelmed
• Rebuild momentum for an existing goal
• Re-align your actions and your ideas, and hold yourself accountable to your goals
• Take your greatest strengths to the next level
• Deal with a major change or challenge you face

Challenges like these may be constantly in the back of your mind, but you’re too busy to attend to them and find answers. Coaching is designed to help you identify your areas of growth and to cultivate the skills you need in order to achieve your goals.