While there are lots of good coaches around, there are a lot more, who are mediocre or worse. Few HR functions have the internal competence to assess coach competence, and standard methods of evaluation, such as client feedback, how very low validity – indeed, the level of challenge within a coaching relationship may be inversely...
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Over the past 30 years or so, I’ve observed many Board meetings. One of the common factors of most of them is that the quality of the conversation is not as good as it could be. Ideally, an effective Board meeting should involve three types of conversation: • Debate – presentation of divergent views, with...
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Asking questions is something we do all the time. It’s essential to how we learn, how we keep safe, how we collaborate with other people, how we make decisions, and so on… It’s a core skill of being human, yet few people stop to think about how they ask questions or whether they could be...
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One of the most common questions in coaching and mentoring is “Who can you get to support you in achieving this goal?” When people struggle to respond, as is often the case, or feel that they are on their own, it may indicate that they haven’t invested sufficiently in creating their community of support. Research...
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A common misconception in organisations is that it’s easy to sell a good idea. The reality, as detailed in the book Originals, by Adam Grant, is quite the opposite. Among the misconceptions his and other research identify are that: So when a coachee or mentee complains that their ideas are not being listened to, here...
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Many of the issues that coaches and mentors encounter can be classified as ethical dilemmas. These occur when a person either feels that they are being asked to do things that are against their moral values, or when they have a conflict between two or more of their own values. An example of the former...
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Every beginner coach or mentor goes through a phase of questioning their own competence, based upon a sense that they could (or should) have had so much more impact. Even very experienced coaches and mentors sometimes feel that they have “failed” their client. While there are some professional coaches and mentors, who think they are...
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Suggesting to someone else that they need counselling takes courage. As a coach or mentor, you will in most cases not be a qualified therapist – and even if you were, there are potential conflicts of role between mentoring/coaching and therapy. The two key questions here are: What to watch out for Signs that the...
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Parallel processing happens when a coach, mentor or therapist reproduces a behaviour or emotion within their client, or more subtly, when they conflate the client’s experiences and issues with their own. It can distort the coaching or mentoring conversation, so that it focuses – usually unconsciously – on the coach or mentor’s agenda, rather than...
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In challenging working environments, resilience is increasingly an essential competence. People, who are resilient, are better able to cope with unexpected change, with setbacks and disappointments, with high stress environments and with periods of excessive workload. The signs of low resilience are generally easy to spot. They include inability to make decisions, frequent minor physical...
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