Core coaching skills, models, frameworks, agreements, contracting
Procrastination is typically a repeating cycle with four stages: Coaches and mentors can help clients break this vicious cycle by firstly helping them to recognise it, then to develop strategies for addressing each stage. When people fail to break the cycle, it is often because they address only part of it – so the process...
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Since I first got ensnared by the world of coaching and mentoring, part of my learning has been to focus less on what is assumed and taken for granted and more on the question “What do we have evidence for and how valid is that evidence?” In the 1990s, I began to explore critically the...
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A common situation brought to coaching is that the client feels powerless to achieve change, because they believe that the problem is someone else. For example: “My manager micromanages and won’t let me get on with my work.” “My colleague is untrustworthy.” “She is impossible to work with.” The problem for the coach is firstly...
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Coaching textbooks are full of advice for coaches to develop their skills of empathy. It might seem to make common sense, but this advice doesn’t seem to be based on any credible evidence. In fact, the contrary may be true — empathy may be a dangerous and unhealthy addiction for the coach and an unhelpful...
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Giving feedback is a key skill in coaching, mentoring and leadership. Not surprisingly, there are several models for how to do this. Among them: STAR-A stands for: Situation/Task – Clarify the situation or task – what should have happened. A: Action – Give details about what you or another person did R: Result – Describe...
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Coaching requires skills, such as listening, questioning and giving feedback, but all of these should already be developed to some extent in line manager coaches and in coaches more generally. What makes them effective is the coaching mindset, and this we can summarise as the three Cs: Caring: Co-learning: Creativity: © David Clutterbuck,...
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Scaling is a technique for helping someone quantify a goal and how they are working towards it. The basic question is always, “On a scale of 1 to 10, where do you think you are and where do you want to be?” This can apply to performance, a change in situation, or emotions. So a...
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Summarising is one of the key learning processes of a learning conversation strategies a mentor needs to develop and is a crucial part of any mentoring conversation for several reasons. It provides an opportunity to: The point of summarising is not just to condense what has been said. It is just as important as a (more…)
Observation is an essential coaching / mentoring skill; high quality feedback depends on high quality observation. A good coach / mentor uses the interactions, behaviours and actions to provide data that informs feedback. There are a number of key components to factors in the observation process: genuine, relevant, empathy, accuracy and timely. If a coach...
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These three concepts from psychotherapy and counselling are useful for the coach or mentor to have at the back of their mind, particularly when addressing behavioural or motivational issues. Transference happens when we unconsciously and irrationally attribute attitudes, motivations or other characteristics to someone else, because we create an association between them and someone in...
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Read More How not to get caught up in the coachee’s hang-ups: Transference and countertransference
