What exactly a coach is is not easy to say. In Amsterdam, for example, you may encounter a bicycle coach. In other words: an employee of the enforcement department who ensures that cyclists follow the traffic rules. But coaching can also include personal guidance to take career steps. Do the buddies at the Regenboog coach their participants? And if so, what does coaching mean?
The word coaching can easily raise false expectations. Images loom of tightly directed conversations about radical change, facing challenges, and happiness and success as a choice. Those images are not consistent with what we do at De Regenboog Groep.
No linear process
Who expects a participant at De Regenboog Groep to go into the first meeting with a clearly defined development goal will almost always be disappointed. Articulating the question or need the participant has is often quite complicated. Many participants live under pressure from loneliness, debt or psychological problems. They have very little room for introspection. As a result, helping to formulate someone's desire is already a considerable step. Moreover, participants can go through very changing ideas and moods. Volunteer coordinator Marije Maliepaard: "Don't picture a linear process in our coaching, a Rainbow buddy moves very much with the participant."
A coaching question
Most often participants do not ask for coaching, but mainly for contact or a listening ear. Some of the people who come to the Regenboog do have a clear coaching need. They ask for help in taking a certain step. A common coaching need is the desire for a larger social network. Or rather, people feel lonely. Sometimes participants ask for coaching because they want to get out the door, but literally dread stepping over the threshold.
Small steps, big difference
Coordinator Marije: "When I visited Walter at home, he seemed very gloomy and capable of almost nothing. I paired a buddy with him because I hoped it would break through his loneliness a bit." Marije says the buddy started with very low expectations. Going for a walk and having a cup of coffee somewhere seemed like the highest achievable goals, but there was no coaching.
During the buddy's visits, the two got into deeper and deeper conversations and Walter's wishes became sharper. Marije: "By now they are to the point where Walter is going back to his education. That succeeded after numerous small steps and constantly setting new goals, such as getting up on time or starting sports." Marije explains the success in part because the buddy went with Walter to activities, encouraging him. Something you don't readily expect from a regular coach, but which is not uncommon at the Regenboog. What began as a friendly home visit has become a very successful coaching program.
Coaching Changes
If someone seeks support from De Regenboog Groep, we match them with a buddy (volunteer) who can provide that. We deliberately don't call that contact coaching, because with coaching we easily conjure up the wrong image. That applies to the image that the volunteer has of coaching, but it can also scare the participant. Marije: "People who have ever had a job or work coach from a benefits agency feel obligation or control with the word coaching." And that is definitely not what De Regenboog Groep wants.
Although we don't usually call a buddy a coach, you can certainly say that some of the buddies do coach, but in a way that suits our participants. And that is small, involved and side by side with the participant.
Want to hang out with another Amsterdammer that way? Then don't become a coach but a buddy.
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