Coaching on a credit card

In a couple of days I am off to Dubai to deliver two 'Manager Coach" workshops to a client of Spring Coaching and Development.

This will be a training/handover exercise to Spring who are our latest licence partner for the ASEC Coach Certification Program.

We have fully developed workbooks, trainer's manuals, handouts, audio and visual resources, and e-learning programmes to support companies running this programme themselves. We are looking to sign up a partner in another major city in the next three months.

The two day workshop includes an introduction to several coaching models, including the GROW model and our own ThreeTicks NLP coaching model.

I start every workshop with what I call the fundamental coaching question. I learned this nearly 20 years ago from John Seymour. It was a great relief because I was getting frustrated that people who were practising on me so often seemed unable to ask me the transformational question that I was crying out for.

The question is: "What would be the most useful question for me to ask you now?" The client tells you and then you ask it.

It is amazingly powerful; ask this a few times and you will surely get that stunned look when someone goes right inside their brain to sort something out.

One of the big challenges for people learning to coach is the temptation to solve people's problems.

The key lesson in coaching is that the client is in charge – the coach is just responsible for the process.

By consistently returning to this simple exercise I help new coaches learn this lesson through enlightening experience.

This one question is enough for a long career as a coach. However, even when delivered with elegant rapport, it is likely to become a trifle repetitive, so I have devised 'Coaching on a Credit Card' as a reminder of six questions that are all you need to know.

Select from this list until you reach a conclusion, and then get the client to commit.

And there you have it – all you need to know to become a competent coach! blog comments powered by Disqus