If I had to write a recipe to create a great coach, an important ingredient in there would be curiosity. For me, it’s a fundamental aspect of how I approach coaching.

Now, if you have ever looked online etc to track down a recipe you may have noticed that it is very common for there to be lots of slight variations of the ingredients and methods about creating the same dish. Each difference will have impact to some degree upon the outcome of the meal, however it still produces a meal that is (hopefully) recognisable to others.

I’ll let you decide for yourself how much further you can take this analogy as I want to use the rest of this post to focus upon curiosity. If, for whatever reason, curiosity is not an aspect of your coaching than I reaffirm that this is my own personal opinion. If your way is working for you and your clients then I suggest that is the important aspect.

As curiosity is one of those words that could mean slightly different things to different people, let’s begin by defining just one meaning. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to use the following dictionary definition:

Curiosity: noun 1. A desire to find out and know things.

2. Something that is of interest because it is rare or unusual

Let me talk about both parts of that definition:

“A desire to find out and know things”,

This seems, to me, a natural part of being coach. After all two fundamental coaching skills are questioning and listening which, to me, are two behaviours that are easily connected with a desire to find out and know things.

“Something that is of interest because it is rare or unusual.”

The second part of the dictionary definition is one that particularly appeals to me as it ties in with some of my other beliefs about coaching. I personally operate from a position that my coaching is in response to the person in front of me – When I’m working one to one, it’s not a one size fit’s all.

When I coach I work with a belief in my client – a belief in the capacity within them that they are to be more than they thought they are capable of. Often, particularly when we first begin to work together, they don’t yet have that belief for themselves but believe that there is something special, something that is of interest because it is rare.

The word curiosity actually originates from late 14^th century Old French with a meaning of “careful attention to detail.” As a coach we often are able to detect a particular detail that is keeping our client stuck – it may be a limiting belief, a misunderstanding or an assumption etc. However, because we are paying careful attention we can ask those questions or set a particular exercise that makes all the difference.

So I’m curious, is curiosity part of your coaching?