Supervisor's Toolkit

• Planning and Documentation
• Creating Effective Member-Supervisor Relationships
  • Coaching
    • Critical Coaching Areas
  • Communicating
  • Problem-Solving
  • Multilayer Benefits
• Monitoring and Evaluating Members
• Working With Host Sites

Home > Supervisor's Toolkit > Creating Effective Member-Supervisor Relationships > Coaching

Coaching

Help bring out the best in your members

Coaches aren't just for athletes! Your members are likely to encounter many situations where personal coaching will make a big difference in outcomes—whether it's improving communication, resolving conflict, making better decisions, managing transitions, or negotiating with agencies, supervisors, and clients.

Unique to any other service, volunteership, or work experience, AmeriCorps programs are intentional about the personal growth and goal setting of its members. In the VISTA Supervisor Orientation, supervisors explore how coaching can benefit member-supervisor relationships. They look at the following benefits of coaching:

• When you coach members, you increase interaction with them. You listen, inquire, communicate and search for solutions.
• Coaching allows people to share their perceptions of what happened in an event or situation, and discuss the perceptions.
• A coach asks open-ended questions and guides someone to think something through, instead of giving answers.
• Coaching is performance focused and provides feedback on both strengths and weaknesses.
• Coaching requires people to slow down, listen more deeply and become less reactive. A coach could be wrong. A coach does not have all the answers.

Use these resources to become a better coach to your members:

• Good coaches use tools that help members discover their own paths for personal growth. The Personal Growth Plan is a tool for your members to use when setting goals.
• Critical Coaching Areas highlights four critical areas you can use to understand your strengths and weaknesses related to coaching AmeriCorps and VISTA members.
• The Johari Window is a training activity that helps individuals or groups look at how their behavior influences productive personal and working relationships.
• The Reactive Thought Exercise presents different stories and related questions to help members examine how our thoughts influence our feelings and behavior.

Go back to Creating Effective Member-Supervisor Relationships

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