intervention

3 Common Coaching Traps To Avoid

 in Guest Post  tagged coaches / coaching / intervention / leadership / questions / success / Suzi McAlpine / technique

In this weeks guest post leadership development coach Suzi McAlpine shares some of her expertise and experience.

3 Common Coaching Traps To Avoid

By Suzi McAlpine

"3 Common Coaching Traps To Avoid" by Suzi McAlpine

Recently I was facilitating a workshop for an organisation that wanted its leadership team to become better coaches. And just FYI, big kudos to that company, for recognising the importance of developing coaching skills in their leaders.

But back to the workshop. As the day progressed, I noticed a common theme emerging. Cue, lightbulb moment…

The traps learner coaches fall into are the same traps I can fall into – even as an experienced coach.

Interestingly, when I spoke to other leadership coaches about it, they agreed to suffering from the same afflictions.

Whether you’re new to this coaching lark or a seasoned pro, here are 3 common coaching traps to avoid (and their antidotes):-

1. Over Intervention Syndrome (or OIS, as I’ve coined it). Symptoms include firing too many questions to your coaching client in machine gun-like fashion, resulting in them feeling like they are in a job interview (not a coaching session); an overwhelming urge to give advice or tell them what to do; and feeling uncomfortable about silent pauses in sessions.

Antidote: Recognise what beauty and power there is in silence. Your role as a coach is to hold a trusted and safe space for your client to explore their professional issues.

Some of the best coaching interventions I’ve ever had were the ones I never made.

Tuning into their body language can provide powerful cues. Notice when people are working it out on their own and let the magic of silence ‘do its thang’.

2. Fix it Funk. If you’re a perfectionist, this is one trap you should be extra careful of.

Symptoms include, a frustration they (and you) are not making progress on the issue quickly enough; a desire to move ahead and make progress, despite your coachee’s stance; and your ego getting tied up with the “right” outcome.

Antidote: My mentor, Anouk Grave, nailed it when she said to “work with what is, not what we would like it be.”

There’s a skill in meeting your coachee where they are now, not where you both want them to be.

The irony is, when I have deliberately been patient with the slow pace of progress, it has sped up! As we all know, deep change can be difficult. I’m talkin’ qualifying for the Olympics kinda difficult. Naming what you are noticing about the pace of change, in an honest and compassionate way, might be a good idea at times – but forcing people to change when they are not ready is usually counterproductive.

If you have Fix it Funk, your own coaching supervision could be a good idea.

3. Too Nice Nancy. Symptoms of this affliction? A conscious or unconscious desire to be liked…at all costs. Too Nice Nancy will miss opportunities to honestly challenge people, fail to raise awareness in her peeps and generally hold back communication that needs to happen.

Antidote: Think about it. Some of the most powerful feedback you’ve ever received was probably someone who gave you an honest truth, raised awareness to a blind spot, or challenged you in a compassionate and skilled way.

Like anything, if you’re experiencing resistance to giving challenging feedback, it probably has more to do with your own blocks.

Once again, that’s your cue to get some coaching. Ask yourself, am I challenging this person enough? Are there patterns in their behaviour I am noticing, but not naming? What is getting in the way of me raising them?

If you’re a leadership coach experiencing common themes emerging in your work, I’d love to hear from you. What ‘coaching traps’ can you add to the list above? And, what antidotes do you suggest?

About Suzi McAlpine 

Suzi McAlpineSuzi McAlpine is a leadership development coach and author of internationally acclaimed leadership blog, The Leader’s Digest. Suzi works alongside CEOs and senior executives in organisations throughout New Zealand to ignite better leadership. The services she provides include one-on-one coaching, peer coaching, workshop facilitation and keynote speaking.

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Connect with Suzi:

Twitter: @suzimcalpine

Facebook: www.facebook.com/theleadersdigest

LinkedIn: https://nz.linkedin.com/in/suzimcalpine

Instagram: @theleadersdigest

Blog: www.theleadersdigest.me

 

 

You Can Coach Better if You Give Your Intuition a Toolbox

 in Guest Post  tagged Bill Gates / business coach / business coaching / Career Support Services / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / intervention / intuition / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / nlp coach / performance coaching / Perry Zeus / personal coach / personal development / Peter Tate / Suzanne Skiffington / toolkit / wheel of life / William C. Red Field / Winston Churchill

In today’s guest post coach Peter Tate shares his expertise and thoughts about coaching intuition.

You Can Coach Better if You Give Your Intuition a Toolbox

by Peter Tate

Have you ever found yourself afraid of what is going on during a coaching intervention; you know, when it’s really intense and you feel like you are living on a toxic coctail of adrenaline and intuition?

I used to lie to myself and call it “being in awe of the process”.

Fortunately, for me, experience led to wisdom, and stress led to strategies that helped me mature my own practice sufficiently that I’m pretty certain both client and coach come out unscathed these days.

“If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you”

Bill Gates

I discovered the real power of tools in coaching. I know that sounds like it should be obvious, I mean we all know about the “Wheel of Life” exercise. We know how it can bring direction and focus to a coaching session. So we all use it, even if not in that simple format.

Yet sometimes tools like this for me created a terrifying experience. I started calling the wheel of life the “Wheel of Fortune” when my clients somehow applied arbitrary measures to the segments and found an interpretation of the words based on some distant dialect of a long lost language. The problem was simply that using a subjective tool kept me on my back foot unless I had a really good handle on my client’s reference points and frame of mind.

“Facts have a cruel way of substituting themselves for fancies. There is nothing more remorseless, just as there is nothing more helpful, than truth”.

William C. Red Field

What I discovered about the real power of tools in coaching was that when used more objectively, with structured measures and interpretation, I could get to the real heart of the issues; issues that I had previously used my intuition to probe.

And my real discovery was that these tools helped me cope with myself in a coaching session better. I had a better grasp of the client and I was on firm ground enough that my intuition became productive more often. I could genuinely start to be in awe of the process because I could coach with confidence.

“We shall neither fail nor falter; we shall not weaken or tire…give us the tools and we will finish the job.”

Winston Churchill

I love the work of Suzanne Skiffington and Perry Zeus at the Behavioural Coaching Institute and can highly recommend their books. Their work in applying a rigorous basis to coaching tools taught me to consider the same in my own field and has freed me from some of my fear of coaching.

I specialise these days in career coaching and have found that expert knowledge embodied in tools can lead to breakthrough situations occuring for my clients much quicker. For example, theory states that Job Satisfaction is related to Work Vales. So, the tool on work values comes out to play when a client indicates they are dissatisfied with their work. More often than not the client “discovers” what is missing or what they have to compromise in their current job and all of a sudden I am a successful coach.

Remember that most coaching models are inherently a toolkit, but I’d like to encourage you to find specific tools that do the groundwork and provide you with the knowledge you need in your own niche to give you the space and confidence to coach at your best. You won’t regret the effort.

About the Author/Further Resources

Peter Tate is based near Guildford in the UK, enjoying life as a Career Coach and developer of a powerful Career Coaching Toolkit called Career Horizons. Peter runs a career management practice (http://careersupportservices.co.uk) that equips professionals and those just starting out in the world of work to find their own career success. You can find Peter tweeting as @intolife.