A practical toolkit for your coaching practice

Judith Barton, Director of Coaching & Mentoring

In this blog, I want to share my thoughts on personal preparation and practicalities to support your coaching practice as professional and effective.

Practicalities:

•    Timekeeping: if you have to travel to a venue, ensure that you arrive there in plenty of time so that you can prepare the room and yourself for your coaching practice.  This includes making allowance for travel delays, checking road conditions and/or real-time train departures and arrivals when deciding when to leave your own starting point (home or office).
-    If the client is coming to your offices/home go to the room where you will be coaching in plenty of time to prepare the room and yourself.

•    Materials/resources – ensure that you have ready access to all the materials and resources you may need during your coaching practice, for example flipchart, paper and pens (for scaling, noting down ideas, action points), glasses of water.

•    Make sure that chairs are comfortable and positioned so that you and your coachee can see each other clearly without being so close that you risk invading each other’s space.

•    It is good practice to keep the business administration (how much, how and when to send invoices/make payments), of your coaching practice separate from the actual coaching sessions.
-    If you have the benefit of employing a secretary or administrator, it is best to refer all business administration to them and maintain your distance from these matters unless negotiations beyond their competence or role are required.
-    If you have to manage this yourself, try to ensure that these matters are fully agreed in advance of the coaching sessions.
-    All components of Terms and Conditions should be dealt with beforehand, before the coaching proper commences.
-    It makes sense to use PayPal, a debit or credit card rather than cash for payment.

Preparing yourself to coach

•    To ensure that you are wholly present for the client, try the following:
-    Centre yourself, focus on deep breathing and removing all distractions from your thoughts – this will lead to you asking better questions and being more able to pick up all the nuances of what your coachee is saying.
-    Remove any assumptions about your coachee, their progress since the last session, their personality, their issues.
-    Review and reflect upon any previous coaching sessions, your knowledge and understanding of the coachee.
-    If the client is new to you and, where relevant, find out something about their organisation
-   Put into the client into the front of your mind and be ready to go into the session, without having to refer to notes from previous sessions.
-    If you are meeting a number of coachees, e.g. for a corporate client, know who you will seeing, and the order in which you expect them to attend.
-    Consider what information you may wish to exchange with client, in order to develop trust, and personal safety.

During the coaching session

•    Ensure that you remain open-minded and suspend judgement so that you are able to really hear what your coachee is saying – verbally and non-verbally.
•    Sit with your feet flat on the floor (not cross legged) with an upright posture (not slouching) so that you are physically demonstrating your focus on and interest in your coachee.
•    At the beginning of each session review contract, revisit confidentiality, your code of conduct, and reconfirm the coach’s objectives from the session.
•    Agree with client how any notes you make are to be disposed of or retained – you could offer to give them your notes at the end of the coaching programme.

After the coaching session

•    Review and reflect on the session – what went well, what really worked, where you could have improved your coaching practice.
•    Maintain proper records with the minimum necessary information to enable you to issue accurate invoices and continue with the next session where you finished the last.
•    Identify and keep a note of any issues you will want to raise with your coaching supervisor.

What Does it Mean to be a Coach?

Martin Hill, British School of Coaching

My coaching supervisor, in highlighting further development opportunities, suggested a couple of avenues to consider. One of them was “What is required in ‘being’ a coach- rather than simply ‘doing’ coaching.”

This concept intrigued me and made me reflect on the skills and qualities that I think a good coach should possess. In no particular order, as this was a stream of consciousness thought process:

• Emotional Intelligence- Daniel Goleman (1998) “ Working with emotional intelligence”, New York: Bantam Books) outlines five main elements – Wikipedia summarises these as follows : “(i) “Self-awareness – the ability to know one's emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals and recognize their impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions. (ii)Self-regulation – involves controlling or redirecting one's disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances. (iii) Social skill – managing relationships to move people in the desired direction (iv) Empathy - considering other people's feelings especially when making decisions and (v) Motivation - being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement.”  In my opinion “being” a coach means being aware of emotions in coaching conversations (both yours and your clients) and managing them.

• Curiosity- this is the element that I love – ensuring that I go into a coaching conversation in a “curious” state of mind, means that my questions and listening assist the client in achieving the goal set for the session. Resetting that state of curiosity prior to each session also serves to boost the energy levels I take into that session and assists in preventing unconscious transference from previous sessions. Curiosity is infectious and frequently serves to re-energise the client and achieve breakthroughs on issues that have become something of a blockage.

• Competence- one would hope that this would go without saying- but a search of any internet search engine will reveal hundreds and hundreds of hits re coaches- few of whom appear to have any coaching qualification. Competence means that the coach has a range of tools and models to use to assist the client in achieving their objectives – it also implies that the coach knows what they are doing – and more critically knows when those competencies are insufficient for the particular needs of a client- and ensure that they help the client in identifying someone who did have the necessary specialist skills.

• Challenge – this distinguishes coaching from a simple conversation and it is from challenge the client frequently gains the most useful and important learning. Challenge does not have to mean confrontation – it can occur in a variety of ways. For example for some the simple presence of another person can be a challenge; for others challenge can be made through silence or tone of voice; questioning and reflecting back the client’s own comments. One of the tools I use in reflecting on a coaching or supervision intervention is to assess whether there was any challenge. I also check this out with the client directly.

• Courage- not something that would immediately spring to mind perhaps, but this idea stems from reflections on my own coaching practice. It is not uncommon to find candidates embarking on coaching training, worrying about whether they will know what questions to ask; worrying if they are the “right” question etc. etc. Reflecting on my own coaching and supervision practice now, I am surprised to note how I often have the “sense” of something – and have the courage to follow up that feeling/sense. Obviously this has to be done consciously and carefully, but the courage of following one’s instincts has often uncovered the real heart of the client’s issue.  Courage also is involved in ensuring that as a coach one does the” right thing” – having the courage to decline work if it will impinge on your own ethics, values or beliefs or to ensure that it is the “right thing” for the client themselves.

• Integrity-  a key element of being a coach is to ensure that one operates ethically, professionally and with integrity. Maintenance of confidentiality is often an indicative benchmark of the level of a coach’s integrity.

 

• Open Minded-  this links in with curiosity perhaps, but although you may hear the same topics/issues cropping up it is crucial to keep an open mind as it will be a unique experience for each client . Keeping an open mind ensures that you also manage your own values and beliefs and are focused on the client’s objectives.

• Resilience- again, not one that may immediately spring to mind. As a coach you are often the guardian of the client’s declared goal or objective. It is not uncommon for obstacles or issues to crop up in the course of attaining that goal/objective. As the coach you must have the resilience to assist your client in navigating through the storm and steering them into the clear waters to reach the intended harbour.

To close, some short bullet points that are also spring to mind and which are self-explanatory:

• Commitment to excellence- both for self and for the client
• Commitment to reflective learning
• Continuing professional development
• Authenticity- Being Oneself
• Awareness of Own Values & Beliefs-Knowing Oneself

Those are my starters for ten – what are the ones that you would suggest?

 

COACHING RESOLUTIONS

Resolutions- I know, I know – you’ve been bombarded with resolution suggestions in the newspapers and TV!! But bear with me – forget about the personal resolutions- I’m not interested in your resolutions (again) to start that diet, to quit smoking and to be nicer to everybody – what resolutions have you set yourself as a coach for 2013?

What about these thoughts?

• I will become a more Curious Coach- forget about curiosity killing the cat- curiosity as a coach means that you maintain focus on the client and approach each session with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm. Curiosity will influence the questions that you pose and further hone your listening skills as you help your client explore the topic of their choice. It may be a topic you have encountered before – but the fact that it is a new client can be the spark that ignites the curiosity to explore what makes it an issue for this client.  

• I will aim to learn something new each week- a good way to keep your continuing professional development as a coach up to speed is to set yourself a goal to read an article or a chapter a week to ensure that you keep up to speed with coaching developments. 

• I will set coaching goals for myself- given that we all are used to setting personal resolutions- why not set resolutions for yourself as a coach or resolutions for your coaching business. Make sure that you write these down – an idea committed to writing is much more likely to be followed through.  

• I will develop my coaching skills- why not set yourself developmental goals as a coach – aim for the next ILM level qualification? How about exploring coaching supervision?

Hopefully, that has got the thought process started. What resolutions are you going to set for your coaching self? 

My mantra for 2013 is “Learn from yesterday, Live for today, Hope for tomorrow.”

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

Faculty Member

Programme Director for ILM 7 Coaching & Mentoring Courses

British School of Coaching

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