I am often asked what sort of coaching I offer. This question is most often asked by potential corporate clients, looking to procure a leadership development coach to work with their top team and tick a box regarding the quality of service on offer. There’s lots of different sorts / types / styles – Situational, Co-active, with NLP, Outcome-focused, GROW, CLEAR – and that’s before you get to the contexts for coaching – Business, Life, Sports, Career, Developmental, Breakthrough … it’s a busy field.
However, there are quite a few times this question is asked, when people aren’t in the least bit interested my professional definitions. That’s just too esoteric. In fact, what they want to know is how their sessions would run. They want to know what it would be like to be coached. Even more, they want to know whether they would enjoy it. Essentially, they are asking me whether it’s a good idea for them. They ask from a position of uncertainty (sometimes even mild distrust). It’s so tricky to answer, because it’s all a matter of taste. It’s also, very importantly, a matter of the coach’s skill. That’s what has motivated me to write this article, because it can be tough to explain this to clients without either waffling or looking a really smug smart-a*se.
OK, maybe it’s easier for some, but for me, it’s really difficult. I can sell stuff to people with ease – made a success of this in Birmingham’s Pallisades and London’s Oxford Street in another life. Trick is, selling a good product is much more difficult when it’s yourself, or at least it is for me. So I thought it would be sensible to set out my approach, so that I can point people to a blog, and save us all the awkwardness!
My coaching journey (the short version!)
Best to start at the very beginning, as the song says. I trained as a coach over 20 years ago, specifically trained to coach and facilitate group coaching and meetings at Board level. I was trained in the corporate basic GROW model, and NLP techniques. In those days, certification wasn’t as easy as now, so I simply used my skills in coaching and mentoring peers, reports, management and politicians for the next two decades in public service in the UK. This invaluable practice reinforced a key element of my initial learning: everyone is different. Consequently, they will need to be coached differently too.
Fast-forward to the mid 20-teens, and I am facing a hip replacement, domestic relocation and redundancy. Oh and I am turning 50. What else to do but … start a business, using my coaching and mentoring expertise?! Suddenly I am meeting people from totally different walks of life, few of whom have come across even the concept of coaching, let alone which sort they’d prefer. I find myself with a growing client base, happily, and there are some similarities, for sure. Lots of young professionals looking to expand their career, lots of perfectionists looking to avoid burn out, lots of Board level executives looking to move away from their current workloads and develop the next phase of their careers. Despite those similarities, every single one of them is an individual, and therefore requires … deserves … a different coaching approach.
The nuts and bolts of my coaching
The key element, which underpins every coaching session, is that I listen. Really listen. Not sit there, nodding and rehearsing my own To Do list (yep, I really have seen that done). I listen to what the client is saying (and what they’re not). I also “listen” to what their body language tells me, what their silences tell me, what their eyes tell me. Observing how the client likes to take on information, how they like to explain things to me, how they like things done.
Once I know all that, I can start to ask my questions. Purposeful, insightful questionning is another cornerstone of quality coaching. My questions will often hit home faster (and harder) because of the time I have invested in checking them as the coaching conversation has progressed. The questions should not be “leading”, because coaching is about the client’s agenda, not the coach’s. Good ways to frame this are using the “4 bums on a rugby post” approach (ask me about that one!). The questions should only be “closed” when I am checking facts. The questions should make it easy for the client to see their perspective from a different perspective … but very often, the questions will stop clients in their tracks, purely because that different perspective is one which either they haven’t considered, or one that they have been avoiding. And there’s the rub – the words that are left unspoken, the gaps in the story.
And then …
This takes me to another key element of my coaching style … silence. This will make some people, who think they know me, laugh out loud as I am a chatty soul. That’s the point, ‘though. For me to hold client’s silences, keep their headspace clear for their thoughts, protect them in a safe quiet space to allow reflection and analysis of the issues, is a massive responsibility, an acknowledged duty … and largely the point of my role. If I were to talk through their silences, it would make it difficult to think about the different perspectives raised by the questionning. It would also make it difficult for the client to be able to think about a way forward.
And then …
That, in turn, brings me to another vital part of my coaching sessions … the plan. I am an inveterate planner. Always a woman with a plan! Why? Because it helps formulate all the different busy thoughts into a way to move forward on a particular project. And that’s the same for clients. I encourage clients to focus on what they want (their Goal), work out what’s working for them and what’s not (their Reality), understand what they could do, no-holds-barred (their Options) and then devise a brief list of tasks to move them towards their Goal (their what-they-Will-do list). That’s the GROW basic. I also tack on Tactics (how they will turn that action list to their advantage) and Habits (what clients need to change, to make their new Goal and associated changes stick). That’s why I actually use the GROWTH model. Tried, tested, proven.
The privilege of coaching
As you can see, so much of coaching with me depends on the client, and also on the coach. A coach has a massively-responsible role, helping a client to identify, nurture and achieve their dreams. It’s a huge privilege and one which I relish. It’s also great to hear from clients what they take from coaching sessions. Sometimes it’s structure in the maelstrom, sometimes it’s emptying their heads, sometimes it’s simply having a plan.
Some of the points in this piece may have triggered thoughts for you, and made you think you might like to find out more about coaching. Great idea. It may even have made you think that coaching with me would be helpful. Brilliant idea! Please get in touch – I would love to hear your reaction to this piece – and how you think I might be able to help you. Just don’t ask me how I will do it!