5 Ways Coaching & New Media Connect

Coaching and new media have a lot in common. Here are 5 ways they connect at TNM...

Sometimes people ask us, "What are you?  A coaching company? A training company? A company that specializes in new media?"  Our answer is, "Yes, yes and yes, as long as media technologies support the coaching, training and transformational programs our clients undertake."

 

Coaching is and will always be what unites TNM affiliates; it's our core competency.  As social networking and other technologies make new kinds of communication possible, we've built upon the ways coaching and new media technologies connect.  Here are some of them:

 

1.     through Executives

TNM started as a group of executive coaches.  We're engaged in conversation with executives across industries and around the world.  "Start where you are" is an adage in every coaching school of thought.  Whether our clients are dealing with rapid growth, drastic cutbacks, cultural challenges... we start from their concerns, perspectives, and needs.  In some ways, our clients led us to the connection between coaching and new media as they asked, "How do we best utilize new media technologies?"  "How do I harness the power of group-think and collaboration?"  "How do we go from strict hierarchical lines of communication to more modern, open, egalitarian community?" We've brought media experts onboard to address precisely these types of questions.

 

2.     as tools

New media technologies and platforms are tools for long-distance coaching relationships, for cost-effective training and for community-building online.  Many of the business drivers and HR directives executives are faced with today can be facilitated using new media as tools.  As coaching is incorporated into training initiatives, mentoring relationships between leaders and an everyday part of organizational cultures, Ning groups, podcasting, video tips, and online interaction facilitate new kinds of communication within organizations.

 

3.     in culture

As organizations around the world go from 20^th century, top-down, hierarchical bureaucracies to flatter, more nimble, open and inclusive ways of doing business, they use coaching not just as individual sessions or for particular projects, but as cornerstones of the corporate culture, a routine part of the way individuals relate to one another and the organization as a whole - as a place where they can grow, develop and be creative together.  It's one of the ways the Net generation is being recruited and included.  New media technologies, like coaching, have gone from being an extra or novelty to a routine part of the business landscape.  Cultures are evolving to include wikis, Second Life, online forums and gaming-as-training.

 

4.     It's all about two-way communication.

One of our largest clients here at TNM is on a mission to create a global Feedback Culture, a corporate environment in which transparency and feedback are regular and honest.  Coaching and new media technologies are both tools for two-way communication.  The way coaching may be overused these days.  When we refer to coaching, we mean communication in which the coach stands for the coachee's success by asking powerful questions, actively listening, creating the space for the generation ideas, supporting him or her in the face of challenges.  This questions-answer-create-support communication requires participation.  Likewise, the success of online communication and new media technologies takes new ways of engagement, responsibility for participation

 

5.     to unleash potential

Combine the two - coaching communication style and effective new media deployment through Ning, podcasting, wikis (whichever combination of new media is right for your demographic, culture and needs) - and at best you create and maintain an environment where individuals can develop to their full potential and express themselves freely.   Add the power of the group and mass collaboration through media technologies and truly we see organizations unleashed - producing results with an unprecedented level of ease and grace.  Call it kismet; some say magic.  Whatever you call it, a systematic approach to coaching and new media can create it. That's what we are at TNM: keepers of the kismet, makers of magic.