选择职业教练的四大误区

    记住，寻求辅导并不意味着自曝弱点。如果你需要在一个领域内改进，你的同事们很可能也知道这个问题。伯曼说：“人们通常不愿让别人知道自己在寻求帮助。但技能不足对于别人并不是什么秘密，只当事人自己把它当个秘密。”

    对于辅导期的长短有个预期是件好事，比如6个月或12个月。“辅导只是一座桥，不是一辈子的陪伴，”梅尔奇说。“即便一直接受辅导，也会出现新的问题。”

没办法或不愿意投入必要的努力

    与请营养教练或健身教练一样，你必须得自己付出相当的努力，才能达到目标。教练是合作伙伴，而不是保姆。

    “教练有责任帮助推动这层关系，”哥伦比亚特区一位专门辅导女性律师和会计师的教练琳达•默库瑞表示。

    有时，默库瑞会遇到一些希望找到晋升捷径的人们，这些人一旦知道首先要做的是了解自己，自己的技能、成就、失败、关系和目标等等，然后需要与教练一起坚持新的道路，他们就会退出接受辅导。毕竟，持续的改变需要付出时间和努力。

    “如果你希望外部环境发生变化，内在必须要先变化，”与很多女性高管合作过的亚特兰大教练汉娜•伊南表示。“如果你只是改变行为，一旦面临压力，就会退回到原来老路。”

    译者：杨智

    Remember, you are not revealing a fatal weakness by seeking coaching. If there's an area where you need to improve, your colleagues most likely are aware of the problem. "People get very self-conscious about anyone knowing that they're getting help. The skill deficit is not a secret to anybody but them," Berman says.

    It's healthy to have an expectation for the length of the coaching engagement, such as six months or 12 months. "It's a bridge; it's not a lifetime retainer," Melcher says. "Even if you keep on with your coach, there should be new issues."

You can't or won't put in the necessary work

    Just as with a nutrition or fitness coach, you have to expect to do significant work yourself to achieve your goals. The coach is a partner, not a caretaker.

    "The coachee has a responsibility to help drive this relationship," says Linda Mercurio, a Washington D.C.-area coach who specializes in female lawyers and accountants.

    Mercurio sometimes meets with people who want a simple road map to a promotion, and who back out of coaching once they realize the work they'll need to do first in understanding themselves, their skills, accomplishments, failures, relationships, and goals -- and then sticking to a new course with a coach. Lasting change takes time and effort, after all.

    "If you want any change to happen on the outside, something must shift within you," says Henna Inam, an Atlanta-based coach who works with a lot of executive women. "If you just address the behaviors, people revert back to old behaviors under stress."