confidence

Learning to be a great coach

 in Coaching  tagged business coach / business coaching / career coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching model / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / confidence / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / learning / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal development / questions

I was having a conversation recently revolving around an underlying desire for this person to learn to be a great coach. Rather than write a post about one of the specific skills I think a great coach demonstrates I am going to focus more on how you can learn to be a great coach.

How do you currently define a “great coach”?

This is a step that I find is often missed out. In conversations with people who tell me they want to be a coach but don’t feel that they are there yet it’s not at all uncommon that they haven’t actually defined for themselves what that means.

Once you know that benchmark it’s so much easier to then learn to be a great coach.

I invite you to take a moment to see what your current definition is, and share with you the following questions to aid you with that:

What is an example of a testimonial that a client would write for a great coach?

If you were following a great coach around, what would you see/hear them do?

What skills does a great coach possess?

What qualities does a great coach demonstrate?

Where are you now?

Once you have your benchmark of what a great coach currently means to you then you can take steps so that you are a great coach too. So my next question is where are you now?

I know as a coach/trainee coach you will probably have seen clients give an answer to a question that is outdated yet they still believe to be true. It’s a human trait to get caught up in that from time to time – you may be a coach but as I’m presuming that you are also human I invite you to consider the possibility that you may be wrong with your initial answer and check out the current reality.

So my first questions in this section are:

How do you know? What proof have you got?

My guess is that if you have got this far through a post about learning to be a great coach you are likely to think that there are skills that you could develop further. So my next question is:

How would you know if you too had those skills of a great coach?

Sometimes it’s a lack of information that can keep someone stuck – if you do find that any of your answers are “I don’t know”, find out!

Take action

Don’t just wish for these skills to appear overnight, the chances of your skills developing and you becoming a stronger coach increase dramatically if you actually do something to create that.

The action you take will depend upon the answers you have to the first two sections. My question to you under this heading is

How can you strengthen a particular area of your coaching?

Just some potential actions that may be relevant are:

Practice, study, observation, training, drills/exercises, establishing a strategy. working with a mentor, get your own coach, seeking feedback

What is it for you?

Evaluate the difference a particular approach made

Once you have taken action, check to see how it’s worked. One word of warning here – Don’t beat yourself up if the action you have taken hasn’t immediately resulted in you perfecting a skill. Learning can be “clunky” at times and things can be strengthened using many different ways. However, I find that beating yourself up isn’t one of the most effective ways 😉

Repeat

I was very conscious while writing this that I did not want to give a list of skills/qualities etc that I believe a great coach demonstrates. However, I also know that my definition has influenced what I’ve included and this stage is a prime example. For me, one thing great coaches demonstrate is continuing to develop their own skills etc.

You may have noticed that in the first stage I asked you how you currently define a great coach. I know that over the time I’ve been coaching some of my answers to the questions have remained relatively constant. However, there are aspects that I am aware of now that I was oblivious to when I first started coaching. Your perspective of what makes a great coach can change over time, so it can be worth checking what it is for you now.

Additional questions you may like to add in when you repeat this process –

How can you strengthen your coaching?

How can you make a bigger difference for your clients?

Feel free to share your views below, including your current definition of a great coach 🙂

Coaches, what question is your coaching client actually answering? 2

 in Coaching  tagged answers / business coach / business coaching / career coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching model / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / confidence / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal development / questions

Imagine the following scenario:

You have asked a straight forward and in your opinion perfectly crafted question to your coaching client. However, the answer you get is actually one that may have lots of words but didn’t actually answer the question you asked!

As a coach there are many things that you can do in such a situation.

  • Perhaps you just repeat the question without comment and see if you get an answer the second time.
  • Maybe you point out that they didn’t actually answer the question that you asked.
  • You may even decide that the answer that they gave actually takes the conversation in a useful direction so let the none answered question pass by.

One of the things I personally find really useful is to consider:

What question would the answer given make more sense?

We all filter information through various beliefs and values etc to get it to make sense. Sometimes, the questions that we as coaches ask can also get caught up in one of those filters so that the question they “hear” is different to the one asked.

Identifying the question a client actually “heard” can give some indication about the beliefs, values, your clients perceptions and any patterns. It can give you a clue about what is getting in their way.

For example:

As a coach, you ask a client “What would you love to do?”

The response they give you do not believe is something they would love to do at all. The answer is actually a much better fit with the question “What would be the next logical step to take?”

Why can being aware of what question your client actually answered be helpful? Firstly, it can show you what is getting in your clients way and assist you in wording a “killer question.” It may also indicate beliefs and values that impact other areas of their life.

Using the example above, by immediately considering the logical next step they are missing out on considering bigger better things. Are there other beliefs and values about what “admitting” what you actually want means? Perhaps, looking at the logical next step is something that they think is the natural thing that you should always do.

How often do you consider the question your client is actually answering?

 

Finding the confidence to start coaching 1

 in Coaching / confidence  tagged business coach / business coaching / career coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching model / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / confidence / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal development / starting coaching

One of the questions I quite often see some trainee coaches struggle with is how to find the confidence to find clients to coach. They have often done lots of preparation; maybe even have a secret suspicion that they do know the basics but they don’t feel that they have the confidence to actually start coaching.

If you think you are in this situation yourself then I’ll share some brief thoughts below. If you have been through this and are now happily coaching and helping lots of clients then feel free to share your thoughts.

Why do you need to feel confident before you actually start coaching?

Sure I get that feeling of confidence is far more pleasant than some of the alternatives (and I certainly am not against someone increasing their confidence) but why do you have to feel that first before you take action?

Give yourself a break

It’s not unusual to find that when I dig a bit deeper in this situation that the expectations a trainee coach has set for themself is incredibly high. Either they are comparing their potential coaching session to one run by someone with many years of experience or just by their own idea of what a perfect coach would do.

Normally this is done with the best of intentions, often a variation of wanting to be the best coach possible and making the biggest difference to their clients.

My suggestion is to allow your session to be what it is, focus upon your client and what is going on for them at that moment.

I’m going to guess that even if you give yourself that break you will still do the best that you can and even look to see how and where you can improve in the future. You just don’t have to add the extra pressure on yourself.

Yes, I think it’s possible to continuingly improve your coaching skills. I also think that you can persist in increasing the positive difference that you make to your clients. None of that is of any assistance to your potential clients if you never start!

What’s the worst that could happen?

I love coaching; I think it can have an incredibly powerful effect. It’s also unlikely that if a coaching “mistake” is made or if a question isn’t worded elegantly that anyone is going to loose their life!

However, you may have been telling yourself some horror story about what could happen – how realistic is this story?

It’s not at all unusual when you recognise the story you have been telling yourself for you to realise it’s really a piece of fiction.

Find a technique or approach that will give your feelings a quick boost

There are many different techniques and approaches that you can use to quickly boost your feelings of confidence – you may have come across some in your training or maybe things that you do in other areas of your life!

I’ll include one technique you could use in Mondays general life improvement post.

If you were already feeling the confidence to start coaching, what is the first thing you would do to find clients?

If someone is so caught up in increasing their confidence, self-belief and self-esteem then they often forget to check out the practical aspects of what action they would be taking.

Just for fun, what would be the first thing you could do to do just one coaching session?

Find yourself a coach or mentor

I’m perhaps preaching to the converted here, as I’m sure you already have a strong belief about how valuable coaching can be.

However, I’m often surprised by how many coaches attempt to run their coaching business with no support system in place. Ignoring the messages that gives about the value they place in coaching etc, it always strikes me as making things harder than it needs to be!

Find your local coaching circle and practice group

A sense of community is just one thing that you can get from a coaching circle and practice group. You may also find advice, support and an environment to practice your skills. (You can find a growing list of practice groups and coaching circles here)

Take one small step

Movement is a lot easier once you have started to take some action and got momentum going.

Sometimes that is by taking big steps and other times lots of smaller ones – starting with just one, perhaps just asking one person to practice a coaching session with you.

Who do you know that it would be fun to practice your coaching with?

Who do you know that you think would benefit from having a coaching conversation?

I will end this post first with a short video and then an invitation:

Each Tuesday on our Facebook page you’ll find that a TED talk link is shared. This week was this short video by Mark Bezos: A life lesson from a volunteer fire fighter.

As you watch the video consider the lessons you can learn about your coaching.

If you had been waiting to start coaching I invite you to go and take one action that will actually move you closer to starting coaching.

Feel free to share your actions below. For space reasons I’ve only added a few of many different approaches to this situation – if you have more you want to add then do add your comments.

Dealing with coaching clients who are over confident

 in Coaching  tagged business coach / business coaching / career coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching model / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / confidence / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / over-confident / performance coaching / personal development

When people sign up for the “What to put in your coaching welcome pack”, 7 part e-course I invite them to share what other coaching or confidence topic they would like more information about.

Some people share their answers, while others do not. The answers I do get can vary dramatically in length and topics suggested. I do read them all and bear them in mind if I specifically invite a Friday guest poster or when I write Wednesdays coaching related post.

Today’s post comes from one such comment, because it intrigued me. It simply said “Dealing with clients who are over confident.” One of the very first Wednesday coaching related posts I wrote was about what technique to use to increase confidence and I don’t often get asked about over-confident coaching clients.

So I began to imagine the possible scenarios that may have occurred to lead to such a description and briefly my coaching thoughts about each of those situations. 7 words is not a great deal to go on, so if the individual who asked that question is reading this feel free to get in touch and expand further.

I’m guessing that because more information has been requested and with the choice of the word “dealing” that at the very least the coach perceives the over confidence as a “problem”.

Mainly because whenever I answer a question I start with the person who asked it, my first question would be to explore who says this is over-confidence?

Potentially (and I have no way of knowing if this is true for the actual questioner) this may reveal more about the coach than it does about the client.

However, I also accept that over-confidence may be a “label” that a coach may have been briefed about from a third party such as a manager in a business context. – Is this really a question about building better relationships in the workplace?

The only context I can possibly imagine a client using the descriptive label as over-confidence is in hindsight – probably in response to something not going the way they had intended and looking for a reason why and questioning their every action. In reality it sounds like this client has actually lost confidence and trust in their own opinions and actions.

I’m also going to guess that rather than a “feeling” of a certain level of confidence, this is actually a question about how to deal with certain behaviours, something that the client is doing that in this case has been “labelled” as over confidence.

So my next question is what behaviours tells this person that this client is over-confident?

If over confidence is your own description, as a coach, of your client is this behaviour directly linked to something happening in or as a result of the coaching session?

For example, is it the “homework” that your client is committing to which indicates to you that they are over confident?  Does a client try and commit to overwhelming a situation with lot of action between each session?

What impact is this behaviour actually having?

For example, is it challenging your expectations for them? Is committing to so many actions actually creating an overwhelming feeling and stress for them?

In one situation, it is the coach who is being affected more than the client. In the other it is the client who is being affected by their action. In which case I would suggest using questioning to first see if this is something the client wants to alter and secondly guide them to identify the behaviour that is causing this and what they can do instead. Perhaps you can agree to play with it for a week or two and see the difference that it makes?

If this is an issue just for the coach then I would suggest that they may want to explore that deeper – is this a case of a particular behaviour pushing your buttons? Have you got strong beliefs about how someone should behave in certain situations? I’m not going to tell you that you have to change that; I will ask if it is affecting your coaching? Do you want it to influence who you work with? What would you suggest to a fellow coach in a similar situation?

If you are finding that this is a trait you see in all your clients then you may want to look at if there is anything that you are doing in your marketing and interaction with your clients that is encouraging this behaviour. Depending upon what behaviour you are actually talking about it may be as simple as how you set expectations at the start of your coaching relationship – what you say during an initial chat, or put in your coaching welcome pack etc?

Coaches, what else would you add to a request about “Dealing with clients who are over confident?”

 

“What technique can I use to increase confidence”? 1

 in Coaching / confidence  tagged business coach / business coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching confidence / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / confidence / confidence coaching / executive coach / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / techniques to increase confidence

I often read a variation of the above question. Maybe you’ve even landed on this site looking specifically for the answer to your version of this question so let me give my answer. (This article is written for coaches, if you are looking for how to increase your own confidence you may find Here provides you with more a relevant  (free) resource.)

My short answer is the technique that works. I know that might read as flippant but let me expand on what I mean by that.

Firstly, I will say that the coaches who ask that question do so as they genuinely want to provide the best service they can for their clients.

I find that when coaches ask that question there is one, or a combination of, four things going on:

1)      The coach is not clear upon what confidence means for their client and how they will know that they have got there.

2)      The coach is not clear about what’s getting in the way of feeling confident/ taking action on what the client wants to be confident doing?

3)      The coach does not know how the client was “doing” unconfident? – They don’t know where the client is starting from.

4)      The coach feels lacking in trust and confidence in their own skills.

A technique for any problem really is just a method of transportation to get someone from point A to/towards point B. So in this instance, move someone from where they were to what they mean by confidence.

I find that once you have the answers to the first three points a technique or a method to move the client forwards becomes clear to either the coach or the client. Remember that the client is the expert on them so it is quite possible that with your facilitation clarifying points 1, 2 and 3 that an easy and fun solution is obvious to them.

It’s point 4 that often gets in the way of the other 3. If you find that during a session that your focus is pulled towards you feeling a lack of trust and confidence in your own skills you will probably find that by doing whatever you know to do to bring your focus back onto your client that you will find steps 1-3 already easier.

Most coaches’ find that practice will also increase your confidence as the more you actually do the easier it becomes. As will expanding your own knowledge of different techniques, not with the aim of following them to the letter with a client but so that it can expand your own ideas for creating methods that work for each client.

I started this piece by saying that the technique to use is the one that works. It’s important to bare in mind that your client has not only got to be willing to use that technique but they have actually got to use it outside of the coaching session in “the real world.”

Sometimes, you may find that a technique that they loved in the session can encounter some form of obstacle in “the real world.” If this happens this does not mean that either of you failed it just means that it needs a tweak to make it more suitable or a different option picked.

Sometimes it may take a number of gentle nudges or manoeuvrings to get to point B, there is no rule (at least that I’m aware of) that says it all has to be done using just one question or technique!