Enhancing your Coaching Skills

What are the components of an impactful learning experience to enhance your coaching skills?

Here are a few examples of events that I’ve designed and facilitated which the participating coaches have found powerful in enhancing their skills.  See how these resonate for you.

1.     Action learning programs that enable a group of coaches to collectively coach a leader on a current challenge. Participant coaches learn from listening to one another – hearing what questions people ask, and what line of questioning they pursue. They/we often say, “I wish I had thought of that question!” They can also observe the impact of the questions on the leader client, which is a great means of learning.

2.     Ranking the questions –  We/ the group of coaches have experimented with an approach in which we ask the leader to rank our questions on a scale of 1-5, telling us how useful it is in stimulating their thinking and enabling them to discover a new way of thinking about their challenge. We ask them to explain the reasoning behind their ranking.

3.     Inviting coaches to reflect on their experience and their intentions in their coaching conversations, for example: Do they try to rescue the client? To what extent do they resist the urge to give advice if the client hasn’t asked for that?  Are coaches aware of how they/we try to take care of our own needs, for example, I want to feel affirmed in my coaching skills – which puts the focus on the coach rather than the client.

If you’d like to participate in one of these programs or if you’d like to bring this kind of program to your organization, let me know.