Coaching’s Basic Skills
Coaching’s Basic Skills
Sparking Useful Insights
In a previous article, we saw that coaching is fundamentally simple.
Coaching is a special type conversation. One person (the coach) makes the conversation helpful to the other (the coachee), but not by sharing knowledge or giving advice — by prompting the coachee to have useful insights of their own. The coachee ends up seeing things more clearly for themself.
The article also talked about the mechanism that drives the coachee’s insights. The coach asks questions that will force the coachee to escape their normal patterns of thinking, then — by listening attentively — they make the coachee feel that they have to come up with a good answer. It is while the coachee is assembling their answers that the insights appear.
There are, therefore, two basic skills that we have to develop in order to provide effective coaching:
- Asking coaching questions. We must learn to ask the type of question that spark useful insights.
- Attentive listening. We must learn to give a person the quality of attention, as we listen, that will encourage them to think insightfully.
Coaching Questions
A good question will direct the coachee’s attention to an area of the life where fresh insight might prove useful. This could be a complex part of the coachee’s work life that would benefit from high-quality thought, or it could be a part of their personal life that is troubling them.
The question should be a personal question. It should ask about the landscape of challenge in front of the coachee — the things that the coachee could impact through their actions. It can be enjoyable to talk about abstract beliefs and generalities, but it’s rarely helpful. It is the specifics of the coachee’s situation that count.
The question should also be a values question. It should ask about what matters to the coachee — about how they would like things to be, or about what holds meaning or purpose for them. Good coaching helps the coachee discover what they can do to help the world become more like they think it should be.
The question should also be an open question. Rather than look for any correct answer, or any particular kind of reply, it should invite an exploration. It should prompt the coachee to think freely and imaginatively.
Finding Appropriate Questions
Since it is the specifics of the coachee’s situation that matter, the most effective questions are always a good fit for a particular moment with a particular coachee. It rarely makes sense to draw on a stock of favourite coaching questions.
What works best is responding authentically to the coachee in front of you. It really is true that if you just let your attention rest on the coachee, then you let a question enter your head, the question that appears will be just right for the coachee.
The more you practice, the easier it becomes to let suitable questions appear. You get steadily better at finding questions that work for particular coachee you are with. You build up your instincts.
Listening
The second skill, attentive listening, is just as important as the first. Your questions may point a coachee toward some territory where fresh thinking might be useful, but it is the attentive listening you give them that actually forces them to think. It’s as if your attention creates a space for thinking — a space that the coachee feels that they must keep on filling for as long as your attention lasts.
If your question has been a good one, the coachee will have to have fresh insights to answer it properly. The more powerfully the coachee feels that they are being listened to and heard, the more likely they’ll be to explore radical new possibilities as they talk.
People are very good at picking up on the attitudes of those they are with. So if you are genuinely curious about how the coachee could best handle the challenges in front of them, the coachee will sense it. Their own thinking will become infused with curiosity and they will think creatively.
The Power of Silence
Coachees often fall silent as they wait for the right words to come.
In normal conversation, you would fill the silence with a fresh question or a statement of your own, but as a coach you can let the silence linger. The coachee’s minds will still be working away. As long as you keep giving the coachee your attention, they will keep thinking hard and perhaps, while you listen, have a valuable insight or two.
How To Begin Coaching
Coaching is a practical art. So the only way to master its core skills is to get stuck in and start coaching.
If you like, you can dive in and take any opportunity to coach that arises. Coaching is a wonderful way to interact with our fellow human beings. All you’ll be doing is asking a probing question and listening carefully to the reply, so you don’t have to ask permission from the coachee or tell them that you’re about to start coaching them. Just do it!
Of if you prefer, you can practice your skills in a safe setting before you try any real-world coaching. We offer two courses that can help you get started. Both are free.
- On our Introducing Coaching course, you’d learn more about coaching’s two core skills.
- On our Start Coaching course, you’d practice the core skills by playing a series of skill-building games. The games are designed to be played by three people to enable you to take turns playing the roles of coach, coachee and observer. You can ask friends or co-workers to join you, or you can find people to learn with through our platform.
A Challenge
It can be fascinated to experiment with ways to interact with the people we spend time with during the courses of everyday life.
All you have to do to add coaching to your repertoire of interaction patterns is to try asking coaching questions then just listening to what the person says. It’s simple. It’s natural. And it it is astonishing how powerful such a coaching interaction can be.
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