Lessons from the Field (January, 2012)
This month, our Lessons from the Field have been sourced from feedback from participants of both ReciproCoach
coaching and
mentoring rounds, as well as readers of Coaching Research in Practice. If you're one of these people, you might recognise your words below, as a few experiences of powerful learning, shared with hundreds in the ReciproCoach community, serves to sharpen professional coaching practice around the world:
Balance each session
Find that balance between flexibility and structure in a session to allow your clients to talk through what they need to, but still bring them back on track to the key area of the session and ensure that each session reaches a conclusion that is satisfactory to the client in relation to the goal that was set for the session.
Articulate what you are seeing and hearing
Don't undervalue what you notice. Clients really value constant focus and discussion on what the coach is seeing and hearing and the ability to build on this awareness week by week.
Cultivate intrinsic motivation
In the light of our most recent issue of Coaching Research in Practice, a ReciproCoach shared two questions that she asks her clients to expose if their goals were externally, rather than intrinsically motivated:
- If you were not concerned about what others thought, what would you do?
- If you were not concerned about what others thought, would this still be your goal?
Hold off on the questions
Just holding the space, listening and giving your clients space can provoke more thinking than asking a question. This space creates the trust and connection and makes clients feel safe to open up.
Finally, remembering the three-phase learning process of discovery, application and integration (
see our first issue of Coaching Research in Practice) which we, as coaches all facilitate, and consider, what have you discovered (or re-discovered) in this email that you could apply to your coaching practice?
As always, thank you to the ReciproCoaches who share their learning so openly and honestly during and after coaching, mentoring and supervision rounds, and make collective learning like this possible!
Kerryn Griffiths
Global ReciproCoach Coordinator
