A Type of Conversation
A Type of Conversation
Removing confusion
The world of coaching — life coaching and business coaching — can be a confusing one. So let’s build up a simple picture, piece by piece, of what coaching is and how coaching works.
Let’s begin with the most obvious feature of coaching.
Coaching is a type of conversation.
It is a special type of conversation, where one person (the coach) is skilled at making the conversation helpful to the person they are talking with (the coachee).
Coaching is a conversation that is helpful to the coachee.
An arena for insight
Not all conversations that are helpful to a person are coaching conversations, however. When a teacher gives a pupil instructions or explanations, for instance, they aren’t coaching.
Coaches don’t impart knowledge to coachees; they lead them to see things more clearly for themselves. Coachees have their own insights.
In a good coaching session, the coachee escapes their normal patterns of thinking. The coach uses questions and attentive listening to force the coachee to think in ways that they wouldn’t if the coach wasn’t there. If the conversation has been guided towards important and problematic areas of the coachee’s life, the coachee can have valuable insights into what they want to happen, or into the courses of action they can take.
Coaching is a conversation in which the coachee has useful insights.
The coach’s role is to create the conditions for the coachee to have the most useful insights possible.
Looking forwards
Counsellors and therapists also use artful questions and attentive listening to help people have useful insights. So let’s add one final element to our picture.
Coaching sessions and therapy sessions have a different focus. Therapy and counselling tends to look backwards. The assumption is that, by reaching a new understanding of how their patterns of thought and feeling have developed, the clients will become better able to move on and escape whatever patterns are causing them distress.
In coaching, however, the emphasis is on the future and on what might be possible. The basic assumption underlying all coaching is that the future holds countless possibilities — far too many to be imagined — and that coachees can have insights into what possibilities they’d most like to realise and into the actions they can take to help bring about those desirable possibilities.
Coachees often spend time talking about the present, and sometimes they even talk about the past, but the focus is always on the future. What is possible? What does the coachee want to happen? What courses of action might the coachee take?
At the end of every coaching session, the coach will encourage the coachee to make clear action commitments. The coachee will state what exactly they intend to do and when they will do it. Often the coach will set a time to follow up to see how the coachee has got on.
Adding action commitments into our picture give us this:
Coaching is a conversation in which the coachee has useful insights and then commits to taking a definite course of action.
The benefits of coaching
It always feels great to be listened to and understood. So, as in counselling and therapy, most coachees find that the time they spend with their coach is valuable in itself. It helps them accept the reality of who they are. They feel that they have someone on their side who knows the ins and outs of their life and who appreciates what it is like to be up against their particular difficulties and dilemmas.
But the main benefits of coaching come through the actions that the coachee takes as a result of the coaching. Coachees typically finish their sessions with a clear plan to enact. It is their plan. Their insights will have built it. With the coach following up to witness how their ongoing story unfolds, there is every chance that they will see their plan through and reap the rewards of taking insight-enriched actions.
There is also a narrative aspect to the coachee’s plans. Coachees can see how, like the heroes in the best stories, they are actively overcoming obstacles in order to achieve something meaningful. Everything the coachee does can gain new significance. Often the coachee’s sense of themself is transformed.
Just a conversation
There is nothing mysterious or esoteric in the coaching process.
Coaching sessions are just conversations where one person (the coach) is skilled at making the conversation helpful to the person they are talking with (the coachee). The coach makes it helpful by creating the conditions for the coachee to have useful insights and, towards the end of the session, by helping the coachee make clear action commitments.
When a coachee then goes on to act in line with their insights, in their working or their personal life, they end up being more successful and fulfilled than they would have been if it wasn’t for the coaching.
The coaching industry is encumbered by all sorts of nonsense. But when we escape the blather and the lazy thinking and learn to see the coaching process clearly, we find that it is simple enough. Simple, natural and easy to teach and learn.
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