THE COACH/MENTOR CONNECTION MODEL
“Reentry is tough to figure out on your own. Come and get connected to someone who can help you find your way and take your next steps.”
The Opportunity
The Problem The Way Forward
If you haven’t already done so, invest in a “Coaching 101” course to begin to build your coaching skills. Establish connections with other reentry ministries to let them know you are available for coaching.
Unfortunately, coaching and mentoring suffer from stereotypes that make them unappealing to many returning citizens. This can make it challenging to create a robust pipeline of people wanting to be coached.
There’s probably nothing more accessible, flexible, cost-effective, and life-changing than a strong coaching or mentoring ministry. It aligns wonderfully with desistance research and can also be used effectively in a wide range of ministries.
Use coaching as a capacity-building
measure to help you do the other models even more effectively.
As the name suggests, the Coach/Mentor model is really two distinct methods, but there are enough family resemblances between them to treat them together here. Though there are a host of competing definitions of what constitutes “real” coaching, for our purposes, let’s consider coaching to be a relationship between coach and coachee where the coach comes alongside (not above) the coachee… • to help the coachee develop/clarify his or her own goals and objectives (Where do you want to go?). The coachee sets the agenda. • to help with a reality check (Where are you now?). • to identify roadblocks and resources (What needs to change?). • to be future- and action-oriented (What next?). Practical steps to try.
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