My Approach To Coaching
Yesterday I pulled together some headline thoughts, to share with a client, about how I view an individual coaching relationship. Each coach's approach is different, and there is no right or wrong way. It's about customising what you do to what is best for the client. The important thing is to be light on your feet and flexible in your approach, actively listen, and adapt your approach and tools basis the coachee's unique needs, comfort and learning style.
I'm sharing some thoughts on what has worked well for me in the past. The most important thing in my book, is establishing a safe space and a relationship of trust at the start. That is the bedrock upon which everything else is built. What has worked for me in establishing this foundation, is demonstrating my own vulnerability to my clients. I find that when I put my own skin in the game, they are more comfortable sharing their own innermost thoughts and feelings.
The beauty of coaching though, is that when I ask a client to try an activity or tool out for size, more often than not, I try it myself at the same time. It allows me to not only live the same experience that they are living, which makes for a more meaningful discussion when we meet next, but also allows me to benefit from the tools myself. Add to that, we get to learn from each other's method of applying the tools or practices in our respective lives.
Andrew Carnegie’s thoughts also strongly resonate with me. He shared that people are developed in the same way that gold is mined. Several tons of dirt must be move to get an ounce of gold, but you don’t go into the mine looking for dirt. You go into the mine looking for gold. I believe that excellent coaches approach coaching conversations looking for gold in the other person.
Some headline thoughts on my principles and approach towards individual coaching:
I believe the objective of coaching is to open up new pathways in your head. These pathways should help you draw on your personality and strengths, and move you in the direction of achieving your goals.
I like to take on whatever role is required to help my client achieve their goals. So in addition to being a coach, I sometimes wear the hat of a mentor, ideator, connector or consultant.
While typical impact areas of a coach tend to be around the part they play as a capability developer, supporter, thought partner and process partner, I don’t believe in restricting conversations to specific areas. My focus is always on the individual and I’ll try and do my best to help you achieve wholistic growth.
While most of what we do will be customised around your specific dreams, goals, and relationships you’d like to have an impact on, over the years I have found certain practices that have really helped my coachees. I’ll ask you to indulge me with giving some of them a shot.
Some of our sessions will also have a training element to them. Over the course of my experience as a corporate trainer, there are various tools and techniques that I have picked up along the way. I’ll be sharing with you the ones that I feel will be most appropriate in helping you achieve your goals. Of course, once we go through the tools, we will customise how we decide to apply them to your specific situation, goals and relationships. Context, values and leaderships styles are three key factors that will determine how what we decide to work on will manifest itself.
Personal growth, especially the improvement in relationships, is a something that takes time. Some things that feel like intangibles are often the most tangible things you can do. However the results of those interventions may take a little time to become visible. Should you feel the need, we can establish some criteria at the top for how we choose to measure whether those relationships have improved.
Some of the stuff we do early in a coaching relationship is inward looking and establishes a foundation on which we can build. Given the gestation period for coaching results is usually a little long, we’ll need to put in place some criteria to measure whether you feel you’re moving in the right direction after 5-6 sessions. That may be more on the lines of changes in your thinking and a few behaviours. 12 sessions however, will be a better time frame to measure tangible changes in the quality of relationships, although you may see signs of the same a earlier on.
On the professional front, it is useful to establish 2-3 outcomes to measure against at the start of the engagement.
I usually do stakeholder interviews to establish a baseline (strengths, areas of improvements, blindspots, advice). This also works as a good starting point to measure against later down the line.
My measurement of success of a coaching relationship is whether a change has taken place in your vision, behaviour or relationships. Also, changes in 360 feedback and movement towards achievement of goals and objectives.