Coaching with Silence

Martin Hill, Senior Tutor BSC

“As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.” Benjamin Franklin

In a couple of recent supervision sessions two coaches discussed sessions where they had asked few, if any, questions and yet at the end of the sessions it was evident that progress had been made and the client had thanked them for their assistance.


Both coaches were a little despondent and frustrated, saying that they had “done nothing” and were questioning what added value they had contributed. In fact, both had made a positive contribution, conscious (or even unconscious!) use of silence. That also fails to acknowledge the other significant contribution made by the coaches – laying strong and resilient foundations for the coaching relationship through careful, bespoke contracting, which built rapport and trust with each client which was evidenced by the client feeling confident enough, and comfortable with the use of silence by the coach, to disclose information and innermost thoughts.

This led me to reflect on the use of silence in relation to coaching sessions and the following points occurred to me:

• The Silence of the Client – even more frightening for a coach than the Silence of the Lambs!! Here I am assuming that the client is in a “healthy” state, as Julie Starr in The Coaching Manual, describes i.e. they are able to actively and fully participate in a session. The critical factors here for me are the timing of the silence and also the context of the silence.

– Timing – when the silence occurs is interesting to reflect upon. If the silence occurs near to the start of the session (or the relationship), this could be an indication of the client “testing the water” to see if it is safe to engage. My own coaching practice is that in advance of the initial session I forward copies of my coaching agreement, my profile, code of ethics and also a “What is coaching” document. In the session I then check for understanding, and specifically always explain what confidentiality means. I also ask the client if they wish to add anything into the coaching agreement. I have found that this approach assists in quickly developing trust and rapport with the clients, as opposed to simply addressing this verbally in the first session.
If the silence persists, or if it appears later in the coaching relationship, as a coach I begin to evaluate whether the client is ready to be coached (or still engaged with the coaching intervention) and, also, whether I am the right coach for that client.
Mick Cope in The Secrets of Success in Coaching, [2010] Pearson Education Limited, states “As a coach you are there to help the client deliver value through sustainable change- not to do it for them. But this leads to the question: do they want to change, or like so many people who try to change, do they just want to want to? In essence, you need to identify those who can and want to change, as opposed to those who won’t or can’t.”
Cope then outlines what I refer to as The 5 P tool, which describes five category of client, in a descending scale: Players, Participants, Passengers, Prisoners and Protestors. If dealing with a Prisoner or Protestor do not forget to consider your own interests as the coach- do you really want to coach the person? What is the risk that this could pose to your reputation or your practice? What countermeasures can you take to minimise the risk?
– Context – reflect on when the silence occurs – what preceded it? Is the silence evidence of the client reflecting? There may be clues from the position of the client’s eyes or from other body language. Alternatively, is the silence evidence of disengagement or avoidance. Watch out for mounting that white charger and going into rescuer mode! Some clients can use silence to avoid addressing the issue. One of the skills that you will quickly develop as your coaching experience grows is knowing when to break that silence.
Reflect on what your practice is when faced with a silent client? Is this an area for improvement – is it part of your coach continuous development plan? Is it one of the elements you focus upon in as part of your reflective practice.

• Boundary Management – once again the focus here is the silent client. Silence could be an early indicator for you as the coach that the client may need a different type of intervention other than coaching – for example counselling or therapy. Is there still a genuine, mutually engaged and active, coaching relationship? Once again the timing and context are critical factors, as will be the client’s behaviour, actions and emotional state. Consider your own coaching practice – have you planned for this arising? How will you deal with this? Have you identified referral points of contact?

• Contracting – How do you prepare your clients for the use of silence? One of the things I have realised on reflecting on my own coaching practice is that I ensure that each coaching agreement is bespoke to each client by specifically asking them about any particular preferences – for example, learning styles, and highlight that silence will be one of the tools that I will be using and seeking their permission/consent to this. This means that they do not start to be distracted by the silence, wondering what is going on etc. My experience has been that this has led to faster engagement and has reinforced trust and rapport.

• Self-Management – as a coach, your ability to use and manage silence is a good indicator as to your ability to manage your “self” as a coach. Resist the urge to jump in or interrupt – that could distract your client’s thought process, or, it could reduce the impact of a powerful question that you asked – the one that would have provoked a “aha” or lightbulb moment! By breaking the silence, you let the client off the hook of having to answer that question. Reflect on your own coaching practice – are you more aligned to a Trappist monk approach (honouring the silence) or a Ski- Jumper (leaping in)?

• Questioning – to quote Ronan Keating (I NEVER envisaged the day when I would use that phrase!!) “You say it best, when you say nothing at all”. OK, stop singing now, I apologize for creating that Earworm! Silence can be a powerful form of questioning – but beware that you make sure that it does not enter the realm of confrontation or oppression. Silence is a good response when the client responds to your question by asking “What do you think?” If the client is silent – that is often a prompt for questions to explore what was going on and what they were thinking of.

• Challenge – similar to questioning, the use of silence can be a form of challenge to the client – prompting the client to reflect or evaluate what they have said or thought. Again, be careful as to how silence is used and avoid it becoming oppressive or confrontational.

• Duration – the reason why silence is so powerful is that we have a natural human instinct to interact with others and it can feel very uncomfortable breaking those societal norms by using silence. There is no golden rule as to how long an “appropriate” silence should last – each client and each situation is different. One of the key skills that I have always seen develop as coaches gain more experience, is that they become more comfortable in handling silence and the duration of those silences increases as their experience increases. Reflect on your practice – do you allow the silence to be used to maximum effect? Is this something that could be improved upon? Have you tried timing a minute’s silence – how did it feel? Longer or shorter than you imagined? Comfortable or uncomfortable?

• Evidence of ethical and professional coaching – my approach when asked if I am coaching a particular individual (or team) or when asked to disclose additional information beyond that contracted with the client (and sponsor) can be best depicted by the following image.

Silence is not simply desirable in these situations, it is critical. The wartime slogan was “Loose Lips Cost Lives”, as a coach our slogan should perhaps be: “Loose Lips Costs Clients and Your Reputation”.

• Critical Review/Reflection – Finally, as a coach, critical review/reflection is an essential skill that you will need to develop to ensure your own continuous professional development. The use of a short period of silence after a coaching session is a useful practice to develop as this enables you to capture key highlights from the session and also serves to “ground” yourself as preparation for the next client.

Finally, how could I deal with the topic of silence without quoting from Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence”. Silence in coaching is “People talking without speaking”.

Known Unknowns

Martin Hill, Senior Tutor BSC

Ramadan provides an excellent opportunity for self-reflection- and an opportunity to reflect on your coaching practice and yourself as a coach.

One of the common themes from candidates that I have encountered, when delivering the British School of Coaching’s Level 7 coaching and mentoring course, has been angst about encountering topic or issues in sessions that they would not know the answer to, which results in the candidates being desperate to be experts in every possible field that may arise. One of the key features of being a coach is the fact that you do not need to be a subject matter expert- indeed that ignorance on your part is frequently the enabler that leads the client to the new knowledge or understanding. This is because your questions to help your understanding make the client reflect when they are explaining matters to you. It is often the simple, curious, questions used by the coach to clarify matters that makes the client realise something they had failed to notice or misunderstood the significance of.

The challenge for you to reflect upon for your coaching practice is how comfortable you are with dealing with ambiguity. Remember Donald Rumsfeld’s comment?

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.” Unpicking that and applying that to me own coaching and supervision practice:

·         Known knowns- I reflect on my own skills and knowledge – not just from coaching and supervision, but also the holistic knowledge and experience that I bring- work and life experience etc. Remember that coaching is not something that occurs in a vacuum.

·         Known unknowns- I research the client industry/client prior to first session to establish some background knowledge- also great tool for rapport building. Sometimes the pre-session meeting reveals areas that I need to research and/or refresh. 

·         Unknown unknowns- I use my coaching journals to reflect on my development as a coach and reflect on how my emotional development in dealing with unknowns- initially it was a source of anxiety, now my reflection is that this is the source of excitement. I am also comfortable with being honest and open with a client and saying when I do not know something and then exploring countermeasures to address that. 

Martin Hill LL.B (Hons), FInstLM, FISQC, MAC, EMCC Member, Coach &Coach Supervisor

Faculty Member

Programme Director for ILM 7 Coaching & Mentoring Courses

Staying in control of your decisions

Charlotte Randall

We have all had to make choices in our life that have required decisions to be made to affect an end goal. The bigger the end goal the more resilient you need to be to aspire to achieve it. Once the wheels are in motion towards your target you embark on a journey that will test your commitment, resolve and emotional stance. Excitement of the possibilities ahead is often the first emotion and the driving force behind the energy that supports the planning phase of the change process. However, as major new experiences loom excitement can start to wane and in its place fear is waiting.

When fear takes hold behaviours alter and coming off your trajectory is a very plausible outcome. You start to convince yourself that you’re still in control, you know what you’re doing and where you’re going; you push on with ever increasing urgency trying to make your mental map (where you think you are going) fit with where you actually are. The longer you operate in this paradigm the easier it is for fear of failure to manifest; lurching from one irrational decision to another looking for the emotional reprieve a particular course of action might bring, hoping that equilibrium will once again be restored.  This is neither a sustainable nor a productive environment in which to operate and holds the potential of derailing your pursuits altogether.

Maintaining control of your decisions as the situation evolves and avoiding emotion alone dictating the next move you make is paramount. Very few successful outcomes are achieved unaided and it is important to develop relationships that provide objectivity to the process and explores the purposefulness of each decision, aligned with the end goal. Utilising the skills of a coach to facilitate a solutions focused conversation and the management of emotions along the journey, is a potentially powerful relationship to hold; one that will help you to stay on track and in control of your thinking and direction.  A coaching relationship then can provide the following scaffold:

1.    Planned time and space to think – the challenge will not feel so overwhelming when you have the opportunity to focus on it without interference.

2.    Talk and be heard - by having someone really listen to your challenge you can establish (re-establish) momentum, clarity of the situation and a solid baseline from which to move forwards.

3.    Solution focused communication - the conversation remains positive, giving you permission to connect with the possibilities through the development of challenging action planning.

4.    Respect for your emotions – the support to be brave enough to consider from the outset your emotional triggers, default reactions as a result and the empowerment to do something about them so you do not derail.

5.    Celebrate achievement – encouragement to congratulate yourself on the small achievements and positive experiences along the way. In a situation where the end goal seems so great, or so far out of reach, it is important to recognise that you are making a difference with your actions.

6.    Importantly a coach will retain your focus on the original impetus for change and when challenging situations arise remind you it really excited you once and it can again!

Challenge of Coaching

Martin Hill, British School of Coaching

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you” Fred DeVito

“Challenge” is one of the key skills that a coach needs to possess, but from my experience as a coach and supervisor it is interesting to reflect upon the many and varied meanings that people apply to the same word. For some challenge equates to confrontation, for others it means causing the coachee to pause, reflect and explain.

Just Googling “challenge” generates the following definition (The Free Dictionary):

• “A call to engage in a contest, fight, or competition.
• An act or statement of defiance; a call to confrontation.
• A demand for explanation or justification; a calling into question
• A test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking.”

As a coach, for me, the latter two bullet points perhaps best reflect what challenge means in a coaching context. It is the stretch demanded by the challenge that moves the coachee from the comfort zone to the learning zone. The coach needs to ensure that the stretch is not too far as this can lead the coachee into the stress zone and endanger rapport, trust and the coaching relationship itself.

How do you gauge tension in the coaching session? This links in to your skills of active listening and observational skills- change in tone, body posture, eye movement etc. Having seen it what do you do?

In their book “Challenging Coaching”.John Blakey and Ian Day suggest the following interventions to INCREASE tension:

• Use of silence
• Prolonged eye contact - especially if accompanying silence
• Probing questions
• Challenging the coachee to take a risk – they pose the suggested question “What is the riskiest thing you could do in this situation? Why aren’t you doing it?”
• Challenging statements
• Play devil’s advocate
• Take the role of opponent
• Use an approach opposite to the coachee’s usual style

They suggest the following interventions to DECREASE tension:

• Increase the level of support by more active listening (summarising, paraphrasing etc.) and less probing.
• Acknowledge the feelings the coach is observing.
• Provide affirmation and praise.
• Set lower and more achievable goals so the coachee experiences the positive feelings of success.
• Take a break, move the coaching into a different environment, take the coaching outside the normal workplace, such as walking in the open air and coaching at the same time.

From my own coaching and supervisory practice, I would strongly recommend the practice of specifically contracting with the coachee about challenge – what is their preference? (Then test and explore that, rather than simply accepting that); what do they understand by challenge? Explain what challenge may look like in the session.

The other recommendation I would make is to have a post session review with the coachee and review challenge. Consider asking the coachee whether they had encountered challenge in the session, and what was the nature and level of challenge. It is often interesting to note what they perceived as challenge, and this may be different from what your views (or perhaps intentions) were. I have found that humour (appropriate and considered) can be an effective tool to introduce challenge in a session, whilst at the same time maintaining rapport and trust.

Reflect on what your challenge style is. Is it authentic to the real “you” and is it effective? Above all else keep it under review. That is where supervision may prove useful.

And finally ….. “Challenge is the pathway to engagement and progress in our lives. But not all challenges are created equal. Some challenges make us feel alive, engaged, connected, and fulfilled. Others simply overwhelm us. Knowing the difference as you set bigger and bolder challenges for yourself is critical to your sanity, success, and satisfaction.” Brendon Burkhard