Creative Journaling for Leaders and Learners

Journal-based coaching really has taken on many different nuances. In The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile, she used journaling to actually create contextual, if not statistical references to the benefits of progress. What did she notice?

When people journaled where they were progressing, they found out that when they were progressing, they were at their most motivated state. That's the value of journaling. One of the things that we teach at Progress Coaching is for people to actually take the time and observe others and journal about it. If you want to learn good presentation skills, learn from somebody by watching them or watch a TED Talk, and then journal the three main things they did well. What the person is doing (little do they know) is they're actually coaching themselves.

We created a whole series of journal-based coaching books to help people improve and master various skills. People listen to embedded audios within the books providing instruction, asking thought-provoking questions, and then people journal answers to those questions based on what they actually learned.

Here's the value of journaling. When we bring other senses, other learning modalities, or learning techniques into play, we tend to retain more. When you merely watch a presentation versus watching that same presentation and then actually write down what you learned and then share it with somebody, you're more committed to improvement or retention related to that particular area.

Journal-based coaching is applicable in a lot of different ways. One of the services we just launched is something called Cadence Coaching. Cadence is when we send out content specific to a coaching topic (for example, how to coach to employees), we ask the following question sets:

-What did you learn?

-What's an area that this could be applied to?

-What's a challenge that resonates with you when you go through this content?

What they're essentially doing is journaling what they learned. When we see that, we can collaborate based on their world. Journaling is one of the most valuable things that we could do, and leaders need to be creative in the way we facilitate it.

Interested to see the various topics available in the Journal-Based Coaching Guides? Check out WorkplaceCoachingBooks.com and see all the different ways to accelerate skill and career development. These are also valuable tools leaders can give to their teams to start their journaling-based coaching journey specific to the area they could use a little extra focus. Topics include Motivation, Teamwork, Self-Awareness, Emotional Intelligence, Effective Feedback, Applying DISC, and more!