Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013; Sam Farina

This Tuesday night, we had ministry and life coach Sam Farina join our class. It was quite the interesting class from the start. Professor Rees let us know that Sam would be guiding us in 'designing' the rest of the course, that is, the remaining 7 weeks. We all kind of assumed it was a hypothetical 'designing' in that we just needed some test example by which we could learn and observe Mr. Farina's coaching abilities, and perhaps, glean some of the information off of this 'test case.' This is not what was happening. We were actually designing the class - we discovered this about 45 minutes into the activity.

*Some notes on the things I learned about coaching: I liked that he helped the 'client' to develop their own goals and to get them to talk through what they wanted to accomplish. The only problem with coaching is that, if the person has the wrong idea of what they need to get to, or perhaps goals that will end up being detrimental, there's little the coach can do inside of his 'coaching' role. To step further to help them, as I understood it, would no longer be coaching, but counseling. So coaching seems to be for people who are a little more steady - further down the road than someone, say, who would be referred to for personal counseling [where they might also develop goals]. Again, my understanding was that coaching primarily related to the professional fields [insofar as we understand that character is actually a large part of the profession of pastor].

However, as funny/tricky/interesting as our class situation turned out to be, I think the coach needs to be clear when letting their client know that the things that will be suggested/dreamt up/fooled with are actually part of the plan. If the client doesn't know that the conversation is not 'ideal' or hypothetical, they may suggest outrageous things that, perhaps, would lead them to inevitably fail, and be worse off than before? I'm not sure this is the case, because I have little experience in coaching, I'm just trying to hash this out.

All that said, I think coaching can be an effective tool to guide leaders in becoming more effective with their time, resources, and efforts.

God, teach me to be coachable, as well as to be a good coach for others.