Effective Communication - Communicate via curiosity & exploration

Still on the ICF standard One, Meeting ethical Guidelines & Professional Standards. The ICF highlights the role of the coach as “focused on inquiry & exploration”

How do you elicit this through your communications as a coach?

Here’s a starter with what NOT to do.

• Don’t tell them what to do – you may think it’s great but they may not be as keen! This can damage your relationship & cause doubts about whether you trust them to create their own answers
• Don’t tell them the how – you want to focus on freeing their creativity so they can discover the answers for themselves. You want to teach them how to fish for a lifetime, not give them their dinner for one day!
• Don’t focus all your attention on the past. It may help to explore the issue however you won’t get the forwards coaching movement that the client has entered into the coaching space for.

So what DO you communicate to explore & inquire?

• That you are focused on THEIR agenda. How do you do this? By asking questions to elicit what they want to work on & what their goal for the coaching is. By understanding what results they are seeking you can keep on track & help refocus back to the core issues
• Spend time at the start of the coaching relationship setting up the co-active alliance. Each individual relationship you coach has different nuances & goals. Each client will want slightly (or hugely!) different goals for their coaching – even when they seem to come with exactly the same issues!). Take the time to understand truly what this is
• Focus on questions that lead to genuine depth & enquiry. “What” questions are a good place to start, along with “how” questions – you want to be deepening the clients understanding of their own situation so they can find their own solution.

Action Challenge:

1. Review the materials / process you have set up for your coaching. 
2. What work do you do when you set out the coaching relationship?
3. Take one action to find out what would benefit new clients that you can introduce to your process.