Active Listening and the Coaching Relationship 101
This week we begin to really practice coaching. From here on out we will be applying the learning around creating a coaching agreement (START), exploring the topic with powerful questioning and staying present with the client through active listening.
When I was in school I joined a martial arts school for a few years (bullies and whatnot…). This was a great experience for me in gaining confidence and knowing how to have boundaries as a young lad.
However, the start of the experience was horrible. When I attended my first class, my teacher had the audacity to tell me that I needed to focus on how I held my hand in a punch. This was silly, of course, because I grew up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles–I knew how to throw a punch!
Turns out, I didn’t. If I tried to connect my little hand to a hard surface with my thumb tucked into the palm of my hand my parents would be bringing me to an ER to get a cast! Early in martial arts training I learned the importance of starting at the very beginning.
The same is true for coaching. As we have begun this process, I hope everyone is recognizing the difficulty and value of true, active listening. It may have felt like an overly-basic topic before we got into training, but the more a person coaches the more they realize that the real value a coach offers is found in the quiet spaces of a session (far more than just the questions the coach asks).
Carson Session A
Please Review this recording of a coaching session with Carson. Take note of how we used the client’s language to help build the questions for the agenda setting and the rest of the exploration. Be ready to discuss your thoughts and questions on the recording in our live session.
ICF Code of Ethics
To continue to build upon our foundational understanding of the ICF’s position on Coaching Ethics, please review the following 2 videos. As always, bring any thoughts or questions you have about coaching ethics or challenging scenarios you would like to discuss.
Also, review the written form of standards 1-8 here.
Live Session Prep
This week, we will extend our practice rounds a bit, and we will introduce the concept of offering “Data-Driven Feedback.” Data driven feedback is able to be offered when observers take note of specific behaviors demonstrated throughout a session. Data can be collected a variety of ways, such as:
- Counting how many closed and open questions there are in a session.
- Taking note of how many moments were less than 3 vs 3 or more seconds of silence before the coach asks the next question.
- Counting how many information vs exploration questions were in a session.
- Counting how often the coach used client language to form questions, observations and reflections
Come prepared to begin tracking these behaviors any time you are in the position of observer in breakout sessions. We can discuss simple ways of doing this in class.