As professional coaches, the journey of learning coaching skills never ends. Contrary to what you might believe, earning your credential is just the beginning.
In my 5 Step Guide to Having Real Coaching Conversations, I share with you an overview of my 5-step process that I created to help you have coaching conversations that follow ICF’s definition and standards of professional coaching.
We teach this proven 5-step process in depth in our Coach Approach System™ Academy. This includes lots of practice and feedback so that our students can really embed the learning and hone their coaching skills.
Coaching helped me overcome my obstacles using my mindset and working through limiting beliefs. Above all, it really helped me to inspire others and it’s the reason behind the goals I´ve been able to achieve with my clients and why I’ve reached this level of success in my business today.
Coaching really helps us in many different ways, not only because we learn to coach, but also every coach needs a coach. People know me as the “coaches coach”. We all need support along our journey and at times we need different people for different things.
You will often hear me say “What got us here won’t get us there”.
We have certain experiences that brought us to where we are today in order to help us reach our goals and desires for where we want to be and sometimes we just don’t know what we don’t know. We need someone to hear where our gaps are or where we might be stuck in our process to lead ourselves and others more powerfully.
My goal of course as always, is to help you play bigger in your life, your business and with your clients.
Here is an overview of the 5 steps of the coaching conversations you can work on that are foundational to coaching. (We teach this in The Coach Approach System ™ Level 1 Coaching Foundations):
1.Connect
Super important before diving into a coaching conversation to set the foundation. You want to assess your client, team member, direct report readiness for coaching before you begin. Their senses may be heightened so you will want to ensure they feel relaxed and comfortable.
2. Focus
Sometimes the focus of the conversation may not be clear at the start. There might be a lot of information being downloaded when you ask your client what they want to get from their coaching conversation. Your job is to find what is the most important thing that is pressing for your prospect or client to discuss.You need to be mindful that you are not solving the problem for your client.
3. Discover
Take your client on a journey of discovery. Stay curious throughout the conversation. Ask questions that help your coachee help themselves. Watch out for problem solving!
That is not coaching, it’s problem solving that doesn’t engage the executive logical part of the brain.
When we solve problems, the brain becomes “lazy” and offloads. You hold all the information and do all the work. This is not helpful for you or your coachee! The outcome of being the problem solver is , you will get repeat business (not the good kind) because the client isn’t working through their own brain, or worse owning the problem, you are.
4. Overcoming Obstacles and listening for opportunities
What are the obstacles (or opportunities) you’re hearing in the conversation? This can be the biggest sticking point for yourself and your coachee.
If you skip this step and move to “just do it!” It’s ineffective and a big time waster. Making assumptions we know what the coachee is talking about is a common trap coaches fall into.. Watch out for this. You know the expression, It makes an A** out of you and them!
5.Take action
Inspiring action, it is not telling them what to do. Is about telling what you are hearing to guide your client through what they feel ready to take action on. Guiding your clients is your job as a coach. Not taking on their action plan in telling mode. Instead asking the right questions that help them decide what they’re ready for.
If you are interested in learning more about successful coaching conversations click here to download your 5 Step Guide to Having Real Coaching Conversations.Or if you’re feeling ready to take a deeper dive in your coaching conversations we would love to hear more about that. What is calling you right now to uplevel yourself? .
Click here to schedule a call with my team to learn how we can support you!
Becoming an effective coach doesn’t stop at learning the 5 steps to having successful coaching conversations.There are many more skills that we need to learn as coaches to be able to help our clients in a more effective way and to make sure we’re staying in alignment with the standards of ICF (it can be easy to default back to old habits of telling or directing). If you’re interested in learning coaching skills through our Academy, The Coach Approach System™, click here to connect with my team to learn more about our programs! We can help you get your coach credential with the International Coach Federation (from a-z).
We are here for you when you are ready for more!
