Learning to Coach with Dr. Binks

jpocock — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 15:26:43 +0000

Learning to Coach with Dr. Binks jpocock Wed, 12/11/2024 - 10:26

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I am very excited to be offering a brand-new course in spring 2025 semester as part of our exciting Department of Nutrition and Food Studies curriculum at George Mason. The course is titled Motivation: Learning to Coach (NUTR 594-DL1 Special Topics Nutrition/Food Studies). There are no prerequisites; just bring your energy and enthusiasm for learning.

Educating people, giving them advice, and encouraging them is often referred to as coaching—but coaching is so much more than that. Also, pointing out what people are not doing right is often thought to be motivating, but it is not. Whatever your career path, this course will help you to embrace great new tools to motivate and empower people.

I often tell the people I train in health coaching that “health coaching is more than just a helpful conversation between a caring healthcare provider and their patient.” What I mean is that, when we seek to motivate, our words are our “prescription.” What we say (or choose not to say) involves a deep assessment of what the person we are trying to motivate needs in that moment, and how we can empower them. This informed interaction coupled with a broad intentional skillset is what separates coaching from conversation. Our clients, however, experience it as a comfortable, collaborative interaction (a conversation).

Achieving this goal often takes the form of holding back our natural tendency to “fix” or “advise.” Instead, for example, coaching asks us to use carefully considered questions, reflections, and other motivational techniques to better meet the person where they are. It involves letting go of the “expert in the room” identity and partnering with the person to help them to move forward.

I recognize that sometimes our role (healthcare provider, manager, colleague) may require us to be the expert; however, the coaching skillset provides a way to help the other person to feel “empowered in the room” while still fulfilling our professional roles. It allows them to show us how well they know themselves.

I find that if I ask powerful, well-thought-out questions designed to keep the client in charge of the conversation, often times they have the answers, identify the next right step, and are able to set the best goal(s) for them. All they need is our help to get there.

In my new course, “Motivation: Learning to Coach,” you will learn behavioral and psychological theory that forms the basis for assisting and motivating people to make health and other behavior changes. You will learn to coach people by engaging in didactic lessons and via self-directed experiential assignments (mock coaching practice and exercises).

Consider taking:

Spring 2025 NUTR 594-DL1 Special Topics Nutrition/Food Studies (Motivation: Learning to Coach). Online asynchronous.

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Department of Nutrition and Food Studies

success coach

innovative classes

Martin Binks

Learning to Coach with Dr. Binks

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