In that morning was my turn to interview with the coach. His name is Lesley. In our first meeting, he makes a joke about his name. “My friend sometimes called me Lesbi,”. All of the students laughed when he said that. In this period 6, I take three different courses. First is Academic Consultancy Training or ACT, Negotiation Skill and Academic Writing. And I got Lesley for our coach in ACT course. We are consist of 7 different people with different background. So his job is to monitor us and help us while we are doing the ACT.
From my perspective, this course is working as a consultant. We need to solve a problem given by the company. Our objective is to determine that tuna aquaculture is feasible or not to do soon. We have two months to finish the feasibility study. Our meeting with Lesley is intense. He has monitored us, even had dinner with us. Or maybe made a joke in Whatsapp group. From what I see, is not many coaches also contribute to the daily conversation in Whatsapp group.
Even he is not young anymore, but he still feels young. 🙂 FYI, he became our driver while we went on a field trip to Kingfish in Zeeland. He drove the car by himself.
Back to the meeting on that morning. We sat down together in Forum building to talked about my reflection for this course. This meeting is part of the reflection in the four weeks. He wanted to know how I made a progress start at the beginning of this course.
“What you write in your proposal is great, Adhie. I love what you write in your paper”, he starts with a compliment.
“I’m not good as you said,” I replied.
And start from that part, Lesley talked about my weakness. He saw me as a modest person who always said ‘but’ when getting a compliment. Lesley told me that would give a negative impact on yourself. He explained how we need to react when getting a compliment from other people.
For example :
Coach: “Adhie, you already doing a good job.”
Adhie: “But, I do nothing, I just help a little bit on the proposal,”
‘but’ word is making us have negative thinking about yourself. A compliment should make us feel better not vice versa. Rather than you reject the compliment, maybe you should say thank you for the person who gives a compliment.
For example :
Coach: “Adhie, you already doing a good job.”
Adhie: “Thank you, I appreciate that. Everyone is also doing a good job for the proposal.”
Saying thank you for the compliment is giving positive energy back to the person. So his advice to me: say thank you when you get a compliment and appraise him/her back. So both of you will have same positive energy.
Thank you, Lesley, for giving me such good advice. 😊
Written in Beringhem
1:19 CET 22 June 2018
After had dinner with group member and coach.
