A belief that one needs to coach the person and not just the problem. It’s easy for coaches to stay at a relatively superficial level but for lasting change to happen, we believe that we need to invite clients to look one level deeper and identify what patterns they are living out with respect to the problem. For example, if a leader wants to be able to give feedback in a direct manner, coaching the problem would involve questions like – who do you want to give feedback to? What do you want to say? If the person responds emotionally what will you do?. Coaching the person would have us asking questions like – how do you feel about yourself when you have to give negative feedback? What do you believe about the other person’s capacity to handle feedback? What are you worried would happen if you were direct?
A firm belief in every client’s capacity to think for themselves; to articulate the goals they want to work towards and to bring about changes in themselves. Coaching works when we invite clients to share this belief; not when the coach directs the client in terms of what they should think or do.
An understanding that for coaching to work, we need two things
People need to willingly commit to the process. Leaders may say yes to coaching because they believe saying no would mean they are not interested in development or they may say yes believing that the coach will bring about the transformation. We therefore invest in educating leaders about what coaching is, what they can expect and what they need to bring to the process and then ask if they would like to commit (clearly communicating that there will be no repercussions if they feel coaching/our style of coaching is not for them)
The leader needs to start with a level of heightened self-awareness that helps them identify what they want to achieve for themselves in coaching. This could happen through feedback from the stakeholders; a 360 survey or 360 interviews or a Development Centre
The belief that change in coaching happens when there is reflection and insight happening in the sessions accompanied by active experimentation with new behaviours (based on those insights) between one session and the next. Our job as coaches is to both deepen awareness and further the action.
Stakeholders have a vital role to play – one, in terms of validating the goals the leader sets for themselves and two, in terms of paying attention to and calling out the changes that do happen.