12 Secrets for Successful Coaching Conversations
You care about coaching because it’s the path to energy, responsibility, fulfillment, and results at work.
You also care because the workforce desires opportunity, purpose, development, mentors, and coaching.
The ultimate goals of coaching are effectiveness and fulfillment.
Coaches help coachees maximize potential, exploit opportunities, and breakthrough barriers.
12 secrets for successful coaching conversations:
- Relax. Lower defenses. Be your curious self.
- Identify goals. Define the win.
- Discuss the process. What do we expect from each other?
- Embrace silence. Don’t feel pressure to fill the silence. Wait a bit longer than feels comfortable. Allow coachees to fill the silence.
- Release the need to be an expert. Don’t solve problems or fix people. Remember #1 and relax.
- Watch for resistance. Coachees often bump against resistance. Points of resistance are growth points. Take your time. Allow coachees to push into resistance themselves.
- Develop next steps. Always identify next steps in behavioral terms.
- What will you do?
- How will you know you’re taking a next step?
- How will colleagues know?
- Monitor and explore swings in energy. When energy goes up, ask, “What just happened?”
- Practice permission accountability. “What would you like me to ask about next time?”
- Be yourself. Don’t use canned approaches unless they express your heart.
- Say what you see.
- Give feedback on both the content and tone of conversations.
- Watch for patterns.
- Explore when your coachee looks weak, powerful. energized, discouraged.
- Bring up awkward topics. Explore apparent inconsistencies, assumptions, and avoidance.
Avoid:
- Fixing and helping. Control your inner fixer. Successful coaches give responsibility and ownership. They don’t take it.
- Analyzing like a psychologist or therapist, unless you have training.
- Defending personal conclusions and agendas.
- Interrupting.
- Circling problems. Focus on solutions, not problems.
- Asking two questions at once.
- Using “why.” Begin questions with how or what.
What tips help manager-coaches have successful coaching conversations?
Which idea is most useful to you?
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Love the 5th secret: “Release the need to be an expert. Don’t solve problems or fix people. Remember #1 and relax.” Remember, you’re a coach – and I’d suggest successful educators are for the most part successful coaches!!! My career was in engineering. The first 11 years, I was an engineer in industry; I sought to learn on my own and through access to coaching to be more expert, more proficient in finding solutions for the situations encountered. This continued in the remaining part of my career; BUT my most satisfying role was as a coach for my students as they learned how to be an effective problem solver. MY OPINION ONLY OF COURSE, BUT I DON’T BELIEVE ANYONE CAN TEACH ANOTHER PERSON HOW TO BE AN ENGINEER – OR ANYTHING ELSE!!!
Thanks John. Leadership can’t be taught, however, it can be learned. 🙂
Dan, I wonder if there is a parallel between selecting a coach and selecting our next President of our country? I realize this may be a stretch, yet in both cases we are not bystanders or spectators, and instead we should be avidly engaged, for much depends on our decision insofar as how we “interpret the present” to forecast our future.
For some, deciding who we want is simply a matter of party affiliation, or who we like. It should not be. We know our organization or government needs a leader or “statesman” irrespective of what affiliation he or she is from. We must cast our vote based on specific characteristics we look for in our person of choice.
So what are some of the qualities or characteristics of a great leader?
HONESTY… a character quality of great leaders that builds credibility and trust–which is the foundation to evoke confidence and respect from fellow decision-makers and constituents.
COMPASSION… the humane quality of understanding the “problems of man”–-the ailments that keep some people from pursuing and attaining their goals, and wanting to do something to alleviate their obstacles. Great leaders use compassion to determine the course of action that would be of greatest benefit to all those involved.
INTEGRITY… the adherence to moral and ethical principles; the soundness of moral character. Great leaders must have the trust of all followers and this requires the highest standard of integrity.
CONFIDENCE… is about having faith or belief that he or she will act in a right, proper, or effective way. Leaders who possess this quality inspire others, drawing on a level of trust which sparks the motivation to get others on board and get the job done.
STATESMANSHIP… respect different views, analyze issues and problems, and identify the best mutual solutions–not based on loyalty to one specific group, but what is good and right, and in the best interest of the whole and all citizens. Great leaders look at the GOAL of government, not government per se. And while government may have dominion over the country, it is not to have “domination” over the states or citizens. Great leaders as statesmen see their role and the aim of other appointees as servants of the people, not as rulers. In a statesman we will consistently hear and see how their professed values, ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs—and behavior—match up. We can notice an integrity-of-congruence: Thoughts, words and action “all-ways” match. A statesman is authentic to be him- or herself in a world that is constantly trying to make them something else.
Great coaches, like all great presidents as statesmen, have one extra, distinguished quality: They deal with uncertainty with mindfulness and courage. They are open to new categories of experience, and their courage is not the opposite of despair–rather the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair…to take the next steps on the paths to process, optimization, actualization, goal-attainment, success, and reward.
This is what I look for in a coach, and in our next President.
Thanks Books. Your last paragraph hits an important quality of a coach. You may feel uncertain when you are coaching. That may be because you are trying to solve someone’s problem for them. In any case, uncertainty must be faced or it controls us.
Thank you, Dan. You’re right about the distinction. Uncertainty and the unknown is one thing.
What they conjure up in our mind is another. How we face and “see” uncertainty and the unknown–and then move ahead–makes the vast difference between coaches and great coaches as in great leaders. Continued blessings and success be to you.
Brilliant, especially #12
I love the question you pose: “What would you like me to ask next time?”. This once again places the coachee back in envisioning where they will be in the future and also maintains the power well and truly with them. I have I am sure made the mistake in the past of assuming that I know what the coachee wants me to ask. I love this question! Thank you
Dan, mentoring within your organization is especially a most important but tricky situation. So a couple of techniques I have used.
1. To get someone to relax and to gain their trust I always start with a lunch outside the office. Sometimes a couple lunches are needed.
2. To get people to talk about their issues I often suggest a comparative ranking or continuum scale. For example if they are concerned about how outgoing or aggressive they are perceived, I will lay out a scale with passive at one end and aggressive at the other. I will then place a couple of others we both know on the scale, often near the two ends, and ask them to place themselves so we can talk about it. This can be used for a lot of subjects and issues like technical skills or advancement.
3. I also ask people to discuss their job from these 3 Cs- Confidence in their ability, Committment to the role and its objectives, and Control they have to do the job. This can tell you a lot about think of their current role or what could make it better.
Brad
Brad James, blogger and author
http://www.bradszootales.com
great thoughts #5 is not an easy task …
Awesome advice. Thanks alloy