Hong Kong College Students Become IAC’s First Student Members

In
Hong Kong, those born later than 1990 (the “post-90s”) have been
stereotyped as “lazy, promiscuous, confused, selfish and overall hopeless.”

As coaches, we believe these post-90s are our future leaders and they have
potential to create a better future. The crucial issue is how we can help them
to realize their potential and empower their sense of self-responsibility.

Coaching transforms people with higher self-awareness, multi-perspective and
self-convicted action. Sir John Whitmore says, "One of the definitions
of coaching is to make people think on their own." We would like to assist
post-90s students to think, to act and to feel positively on their own through
coaching approaches.

As part of the IAC, an international coaching organization, we feel it is our
mission to connect and nurture these Hong Kong students with a proactive personal
development approach and a global vision by involving them in an international
coaching culture platform.

HKIVE (Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education) is the first college we
approached in March 2012 as a way of connecting with the post-90s in a learning
environment. We collaborated with the institute to promote coaching on campus
and organize the Student Coaching Club. We did not really teach them the nine
IAC Coaching Masteries^®. Instead we designed the flow to let them experience
what coaching is and how the coaching dynamic works for individuals and groups.

Here is what we did:

• We used IAC Coaching Masteries #4, #3 and #5 to design an experience learning
  workshop named “PAUSE-LISTEN-QUESTION.”
• The original group was made up of 18 students. We respected students’
  wishes if they were not ready for the journey and chose to drop out. 12 students
  completed three 3-hour coaching workshops and committed to the next step of
  the learning journey.
• In the next phase, each student received three 45-minute 1-on-1 coaching
  sessions from an IAC coach on a personal growth topic chosen by them. Upon
  completion, each student wrote a 400-word article about their coaching and
  learning insights for the purposes of their own self-reflection.
• Students also co-created a list of the benefits of coaching, based on their
  personal experiences.
• In this last phase, the students participated in a follow-up coaching workshop
  designed to give them some basic coaching skills while they practiced with
  their buddies.

The students found coaching to be a respectful self-discovery process, providing
them with a safe space for deep thinking. They become motivated for more possibilities
in their learning and personal lives. As a result:

• 11 students committed to organize the second round of the Student Coaching
  Club to pay forward what they had learned, and successfully recruited 20 new
  students.
• 11 students enrolled as IAC Student Members in order to learn more about
  coaching.
• They are working on a dream to bring the Student Coaching Club to their
  former high schools to benefit younger students.

Leanne Chan, Alic Koon and Bonnie Chan are the three coaches involved in this
voluntary project. We believe these students will be able to use coaching in
their future workplaces. As coaching is still very new to the education field
in Hong Kong, we have a dream to introduce coaching in universities, colleges
and schools in the following ways:

• HR to provide coaching for teachers’ and staff’s professional
  development
• Schools to hire full-time coaches for student development
• Schools to support students to organize student coaching clubs

Bonnie
Chan, MCC, is an executive coach at http://www.coachlite.com.
Bonnie believes that a coaching approach to conversation empowers creativity
and innovation.