knowledge-base

Coaching

In the coaching process you have a “Coach”, the one who coaches, and the “Client”, the one who is being coached.

Coaching does not involve telling clients what to do but empowers them to find their own solutions.

What It Is

Coaching is a developmental process where a coach supports someone in achieving specific personal or professional goals by providing guidance, feedback, and encouragement. It involves active listening, questioning, and facilitating self-discovery to help clients enhance their skills, overcome challenges, and maximize their potential. Coaching is goal-oriented, collaborative, and focused on the client’s strengths and future aspirations.

What It Is Not

It is not therapy or counseling, which deal with resolving past issues and emotional problems, nor is it consulting, where the expert provides specific solutions and advice.

“The Coaching Habbit”

This is a coaching strategy by Micheal Bungay Stanier, based on 7 type’s questions to use during coaching. This strategy is more for coaching people around you and help them, rather than helping someone progress in their career or such. Nevertheless, many of these questions are reusable tools for communicating and coaching in general.

Tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good as you think it is.

ALWAYS LISTEN TO THE ANSWERS

• 1. The Kickstart Question: “What’s on your mind?”
     • This turns your conversation into a real conversation.
     • If you know what other question to ask, ask it, kickstart the conversation.
     • Lead with “Out of curiousity” if you must, it lessends the heaviness of a question if necessary.
• 1. The AWE Question: “And What Else?”
     • You can ask it multiple times.
     • This triggers to explore more options (insteado f shoulld we do this or not)
       • Often results in better options
     • Tames your advice monster (that urge to give advice)
     • Buys you time to figure out more about the situation
     • “There is is nothing else” is the response that shows success, all options are explored. Also, too many options are neither productive, but this line of questioning at least explores alternatives.
     • If energy drains, then move on.
     • Use this question with other questions to keep probing till you get to the bottom.
• 1. The Focus Question: “What’s the real challenge here for you?”
     • Often when people lay out a challenge, its not the actual problem. This allowes to probe deeper. Cause if the actual problem is not identifed we often end up solving the wrong problem or nothing at all.
     • Slows down the rush to action, and forces focus.
     • “For You” is important part of the question, as it focusses on the development of the individual.
• 1. The Foundation Question: “What do you want?”
• 1. The Lazy Question: “How can I help?”
     • Don’t offer or tell what you should do to help, they need to formulate this.
     • Delivery matters, if you are worried, you can soften it with:
       • “Out of curiousity…”
       • “Just so I know…”
       • “To help me understand better…”
       • “To make sure that I’m clear…”
     • If they ask something you cant/wont do:
       • “I can’t do that… but I could do " if you are not comfortable to just say no.
       • “Let me think about that” if you need some time before saying yes or no.
     • Be cautious to not now switch to the “rescuer” habbit
• 1. The Strategic Question: “If you’re saying yes to this. what are you saying no to?”
     • It is easy to say “YES”, but with this approach, you go a level deeper.
     • You can use the 3P’s (People, Projects, Patterns) as guide to deliver things one says no to.
     • It helps for people to not overcommit.
• 1. The Learning Question: “What was most useful for you?”
     • Helps reflection and people to really grow.
     • Double loop learning, you fix it and then create a learning moment.
       • Here the real connections are made and aha moments happen.
     • Similar:
       • “What did you learn?”
       • “What was the key insight?”
       • “What do you want to remember?”
     • Reasons for this question:
       • It assumes the conversation was usefull
       • Asks people to identify the big thing that was most useful
       • It makes it personal
       • It givesy you (the coach) feedback
       • It’s learning, not judgement
       • It reminds people how useful you are to them

Reasons To Coach

• Decrease Overdependence: People can become dependent on you if you usually provide answers, with coaching you make them less dependend on your to find their answers and solutions. Making everyone more selfsufficient and growing. Now you are not the bottleneck anymore.
• Dont get overwhelmed: By making others selfsufficient, you get more time again and less workload.
• Become More Connected: You will be more connected to work that matters again and also with the poeople you have coached.

3P Method

Tips/Insights

• These questions work via any communication channel
• Information retention is notourisly bad, so better to help building a habbit of finding answers instead.
• Get comfortable with silence after asking a question
• Actuall listen to the answer
• Acknowledge the answers you get like “nice”, “I like it”, “Fanastic”, “Goone One”, “Yes, Thats good”, and “mmm-hmmm”.
• Don’t offer advice, answers or a solution.
  • Neither do this as rhetorical questions (“Have you thought of…”)
  • Only consider offering explitly an “idea” when you exhausted all the questions. Offer it as an option.
• Stick to questions that START WITH WHAT, “Why” can put someone on the defensive, and if you are not fixing the problem, you don’t need the backstory.
• The first 3 questions allow for a robust coaching conversation.
  • Use these 3, combine, probe, and yuou can have a productive conversation.
• Ask 1 question at a time, and then be quit while waiting for the answer.
• “Coaching For Development” vs “Coaching For Performance”
  • Coaching For Performance: Addressing a specific challenge/problem.
  • Coaching For Development: Foussing to the person who is dealing with the challenge/problem.
• 3P Method: Choose what to focus on in a coaching session. Which aspect of the challenge/problem might be at the heart of the problem?
  • Projects: What is being worked on.
  • People: The relationship and your role in it.
  • Patterns: Behaviour or ways of working.
  • You can say “There are these 3 facets we can look at… ... Where should we start?" and then you can pull in the different facets as you go.
• Manfred Max-Neef describes 9 universal needs (for question 4)
  • Affection
  • Creation
  • Recreation
  • Freedom
  • Idenity
  • Understanding
  • Participation
  • Protection
  • Subsistence
• Some of these questions could be effective for facilitation activities.
  • As facilitator you are also trying to be distant from the content and more focussed on guiding the thought process.

Resources

• Book: The coaching Habit