The ability to listen, not just hear but listen and absorb what is being said is one of the most important skills a coach can master. We are not natural listeners, during a conversation most people are already working out what they are going to say in response; they’re not really listening, they are just hearing.
As a coach it is vital not to go into a session with your own issues that you are trying to deal with. These need to be left outside or you will not be effective.
Prepare yourself. Employ a technique that works for you to clear your mind, a quiet walk, a few minutes of silent meditation, whatever it takes to concentrate your focus on your client. They need to know that you are truly listening to them. It may be that for the first time in their lives someone actually cares enough to let them express their thoughts.
During a coaching session you may find some of your client’s beliefs challenging to your own and it’s a mistake to try to influence these beliefs and aim to align them more with your own by asking questions or guiding your client to an area which sits more comfortably with your own view of the world. Your own beliefs and views are not relevant when it comes to coaching your client even if you recognise what they are describing and can relate to the situation. If you do this then you will almost certainly have closed your mind to what is being said because you are sure you know the outcome based on your own circumstances. The truth however is that everyone sees the same situation differently. By thinking that you know the answer you are not listening to what is being said.
There are three levels of listening.
Level one, is internal listening. This is listening in an everyday situation and it focuses on you rather than the other person. It’s how you interpret a conversation and it’s meaning to you and would be relevant to organising the next appointment with your client or how much your shopping comes to in the supermarket. Getting information on all manner of things that relate to you. This is not the main level you would use for a coaching session.
Level two is where the focus is on the speaker. This is why at the start of the session you need to clear your own mind, so that you can fully engage with your client. It’s not just the words they say, but importantly how they are said. Is there an energy to the words or is it slow and unemotional? What is their body language telling you as they speak, is that telling a different story to the words? What can you learn from the pauses and how are they responding to your questions and clarification of what they have said?
Being aware of all these nuances will help you to gain a viewpoint to the way your client is responding and for the client to feel valued and understood.
Level two listening is all about the speaker, and this is the zone that a coach needs to be in for a successful session.
Level three listening can be termed as holistic listening. Again the focus is on the speaker, however as a coach you are taking in the big picture. The what’s not said, it is intuitive listening. Using your senses to discern what is happening in the world around your client. Picking up on signals that you neither see or hear, but you can feel! It's not widely used, but being aware of it and gaining experience through it’s use, can be a valuable asset.
For a coaching session level two listening would be the main level ensuring that level three listening is used also. Level one is useful at the start and finish of each session to clarify detail and actions.
A coach will respect what the client is saying because it is important to them that you are genuinely interested. By showing empathy not sympathy, the client understands that you understand and that they know you care, the conversation will not be superficial and they will open up to allow positive progress. Understand and appreciate their world, but do not enter it!
Clarifying what is being said, through questioning to find out what the client wants to achieve. They may not know this themselves at the beginning but getting them to clarify their thoughts helps the speaker to define their direction and ultimately their goals.
Articulating back to the client what they have shared helps them to understand what it is they have actually said and whether there is something that they have been unwilling to face in the past.
Reflecting on what’s been said allows both coach and client to understand and agree a way forward.
Make sure that you know where you are in relation to the client’s goal. If you feel that you are going off in the wrong direction, then find the right moment to ask a question such as “where are we in relation to your goal?”
Be aware of silences, these should be natural and a time to reflect on what’s just been said. If the client pauses don’t jump in with a question or observation, they may only have paused to bring something else to the surface and you have just interrupted their train of thought. Remember the three second rule!
Listening is a key skill to having a successful coaching outcome. The client must feel that you care and that they are important and very rarely will anyone genuinely listen as attentively to what really matters to them as their coach does.
Time to get your own coach or brush up your own coaching skills? Contact Liz Kentish The FM Coach coach@lizkentishcoaching.co.uk or call us on 01778 561326 - 07717 787077
Saturday, 8 October 2011
Sunday, 11 September 2011
Inspiration from Rocky Balboa
Last week I was reminded of this scene from Rocky, and I wanted to share it with you. It might just give you a little inspiration when you need it most.
But somewhere along the line you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good, and when things got hard you started looking for somethin' to blame, like a big shadow.
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows, it's a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me, nobody is gonna hit as hard as life! But it ain't about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep movin' forward, how much you can take...and keep movin' forward. That's how winning is done!
Now, if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth! But you gotta be willing to take the hits and not pointin' fingers sayin' you ain’t where you wanna be because of him or her or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!
...But until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life.
But somewhere along the line you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good, and when things got hard you started looking for somethin' to blame, like a big shadow.
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows, it's a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
You, me, nobody is gonna hit as hard as life! But it ain't about how hard you can hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep movin' forward, how much you can take...and keep movin' forward. That's how winning is done!
Now, if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth! But you gotta be willing to take the hits and not pointin' fingers sayin' you ain’t where you wanna be because of him or her or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!
...But until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Coaching Tools - Part Two -What type of questions to ask and why
If you want to find out something, ask a question. Children do it instinctively and they will keep asking, digging and digging until they get an answer that satisfies them.
As a coach, questions, or rather the right questions at the right time are as powerful a tool as listening. Listening well allows you to understand what is or is not being said, which means that you can ask the right question to dig deeper into your client’s issues to bring to the surface the answers that will ultimately help them to overcome their barriers to success.
There are many types of questions. Here are three of them.
1. Reflective questions
A reflective question is where the coach asks the client to “reflect” on their own experiences, skills, knowledge, subjects that they have an awareness of. This invites the client to be truly expressive and open in their answer; it is their answer, not something that has been fed to them in the way a leading question would do, where the question contains the answer or presumes to contain the answer.
An example of a leading question would be a salesman talking to a customer and saying, “I can see you agree that this product works really well, it’s in the right colour and it’s something that you would like to own, isn’t it? This leads the client to answer the way that the questioner wants.
This is not what a good coach would do. They would ask a reflective question, such as: “When you scored your goal in last weeks match, how did it make you feel?”
“When you go home at night to an empty house what is it that allows you to relax?”
“You started to tell me about the bullying at your school, what did you do differently to avoid it?”
These types of questions allow the client to fully explore their knowledge of a situation and to give voice to the emotions they felt at that particular time and how they dealt with it, or not, which will allow the coach to ask other questions to let the client find alternative ways to move forward towards their goal.
2. Incisive questions
An incisive question can interrupt and destabilise a limiting belief that the client has. Your client wants to gain two A levels, history and geography to get accepted onto a course that would lead them towards the career that they are passionate about, they however have a limiting belief that because no-one in their family has ever achieved academic success, they won’t either. So to get them to put their limiting belief to one side for a moment the question to put to them could be: “Imagine that when you take your A levels you know that you would pass, and having succeeded in getting top grades what would you plan for your future career?”
This allows them to see through the obstacle they have placed in their path to obtain the goal. The client feels that this is fun way of putting their limiting belief out of action for a short while and the first part of the question allows them to move past it, the second part of the question becomes something more substantial and they can feel that this could be a future reality.
When you get a “don’t know” the best question to ask is: “What if you did know?”
3. Presupposition questions
When your client is stuck or fixed to a particular way of thinking and acting to the same situation, a presupposition question can get them to alter their approach. Your client has said that they get annoyed at the way their parents seem to be telling them off all the time. The biggest problem as it appears to them is at mealtimes. They don’t want to eat the dinner that’s put in front of them and they don’t want to eat with the rest of the family because it always ends up in a row, so their answer to this problem is to storm out and go to their bedroom. So to get them to explore other ways of dealing with this is to ask a question or series of questions that the brain will automatically allow answers to.
“Who is the person that gets most upset when this happens?” They will know that through this question people are getting upset and will answer.
“What is one thing that you could do to improve mealtimes?” This will get them to think that things will improve and will provide options.
“When will you help to set the table?” One of the options they provided, this is getting agreement on a course of action that the brain has accepted can happen.
Getting your client to put forward options which would make it possible to resolve the mealtime issue means that through the questions that you have asked the fixed process that your client used to handle the situation has been broken.
If you want to help your client is the only way to do that is to know which type of question to ask at the right time? Well yes, but something to consider is that children ask questions at the right and wrong times, but they still get answers!
David Kentish is an experienced Youth Coach; you can contact him on coach@lizkentishcoaching.co.uk
As a coach, questions, or rather the right questions at the right time are as powerful a tool as listening. Listening well allows you to understand what is or is not being said, which means that you can ask the right question to dig deeper into your client’s issues to bring to the surface the answers that will ultimately help them to overcome their barriers to success.
There are many types of questions. Here are three of them.
1. Reflective questions
A reflective question is where the coach asks the client to “reflect” on their own experiences, skills, knowledge, subjects that they have an awareness of. This invites the client to be truly expressive and open in their answer; it is their answer, not something that has been fed to them in the way a leading question would do, where the question contains the answer or presumes to contain the answer.
An example of a leading question would be a salesman talking to a customer and saying, “I can see you agree that this product works really well, it’s in the right colour and it’s something that you would like to own, isn’t it? This leads the client to answer the way that the questioner wants.
This is not what a good coach would do. They would ask a reflective question, such as: “When you scored your goal in last weeks match, how did it make you feel?”
“When you go home at night to an empty house what is it that allows you to relax?”
“You started to tell me about the bullying at your school, what did you do differently to avoid it?”
These types of questions allow the client to fully explore their knowledge of a situation and to give voice to the emotions they felt at that particular time and how they dealt with it, or not, which will allow the coach to ask other questions to let the client find alternative ways to move forward towards their goal.
2. Incisive questions
An incisive question can interrupt and destabilise a limiting belief that the client has. Your client wants to gain two A levels, history and geography to get accepted onto a course that would lead them towards the career that they are passionate about, they however have a limiting belief that because no-one in their family has ever achieved academic success, they won’t either. So to get them to put their limiting belief to one side for a moment the question to put to them could be: “Imagine that when you take your A levels you know that you would pass, and having succeeded in getting top grades what would you plan for your future career?”
This allows them to see through the obstacle they have placed in their path to obtain the goal. The client feels that this is fun way of putting their limiting belief out of action for a short while and the first part of the question allows them to move past it, the second part of the question becomes something more substantial and they can feel that this could be a future reality.
When you get a “don’t know” the best question to ask is: “What if you did know?”
3. Presupposition questions
When your client is stuck or fixed to a particular way of thinking and acting to the same situation, a presupposition question can get them to alter their approach. Your client has said that they get annoyed at the way their parents seem to be telling them off all the time. The biggest problem as it appears to them is at mealtimes. They don’t want to eat the dinner that’s put in front of them and they don’t want to eat with the rest of the family because it always ends up in a row, so their answer to this problem is to storm out and go to their bedroom. So to get them to explore other ways of dealing with this is to ask a question or series of questions that the brain will automatically allow answers to.
“Who is the person that gets most upset when this happens?” They will know that through this question people are getting upset and will answer.
“What is one thing that you could do to improve mealtimes?” This will get them to think that things will improve and will provide options.
“When will you help to set the table?” One of the options they provided, this is getting agreement on a course of action that the brain has accepted can happen.
Getting your client to put forward options which would make it possible to resolve the mealtime issue means that through the questions that you have asked the fixed process that your client used to handle the situation has been broken.
If you want to help your client is the only way to do that is to know which type of question to ask at the right time? Well yes, but something to consider is that children ask questions at the right and wrong times, but they still get answers!
David Kentish is an experienced Youth Coach; you can contact him on coach@lizkentishcoaching.co.uk
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Coaching Tools - Part One - The BWF Model
BWF (Body Words Focus) helps us get from an undesired state to a desired state by understanding how we inwardly communicate to ourselves and outwardly communicate to others.
It is how we manage our state, which is a way of being at any given time. It is how we can control our emotions in any situation rather than allowing a situation or others to control the way we react.
Our state determines how we feel and behave and it’s a combination of the way we are feeling, our body language, our cognitive process and the connection it makes in our brain, which ultimately determines our state.
Anger, happiness, love, nervousness, sadness, meditative, these are all states that we may want to get out of or get into.
Someone cuts us up on the motorway, we can choose our reaction, annoyance, anger, pity or just being calm. The other person does not make us get angry that is the choice that we have made for ourself.
These are the three factors that will determine your state:
Your Body language, your physiology the way that you hold and shape your body and control your breathing. Just standing up from a sitting position and stretching will create a state change.
The Words that you use, whether you are talking inside your head or to others, it’s the choice of words. Expand your use of words that have a positive and complimentary meaning and ou will find that a more resourceful state comes naturally.
Your Focus, the questions you ask yourself. What we focus on is what we experience. Internal questions such as “why can’t I do this” and “why do I never have any luck” Change those words to “I can do this” and “ I make my own luck” will mean that a far more beneficial outcome can be achieved.
To be best prepared to achieve a desired outcome we need to be in our most resourceful state. Going into a meeting, a sporting event or having that difficult conversation with a family member and not being in peak state (which could also be termed as being in the wrong frame of mind) will lessen the chance of a successful outcome.
When I run a coaching session I need to be in peak state. If I were slumped in my seat (body) I would not be able to ask the right questions (words) because I have something else on my mind (focus); I would not be in my most resourceful state to enable my client to move themselves forward towards their goal. My whole demeanour would communicate to that person that I was not interested in them or what they had to say.
To get into peak state requires adjustments in three areas:
Sit up straight, take deep breaths, run through your mind how good a coach you are and that you will benefit your clients/team, use the words that allow you to focus on the most important thing because 'the most important thing is always the most important thing'.
Another way to change your state would be to create an “anchor”, by making a link to the desired state through an association to a certain emotion through repetitive use of a trigger. Get into peak state and then make a movement, say a word, tug or press on a part of your body and repeat the process until the trigger can automatically move you into your peak state.
When working with a client the BWF model is not just for me to use on me, it is a process that they can subconsciously adopt to enable them to reach their goals as quickly as possible. I can’t sit there and explain what BWF is and how it works. It needs to be achieved through the overall coaching sessions and importantly by my example.
Ask them how they would feel when they reach their goal, how would they stand, what would they say, what questions had they asked of themselves to get there. Ask them who they admire and why, what do they think has made that person so successful, well liked, respected, excellent at what they do. Is there anything that they could learn from that person.
David Kentish is an experienced Coach working with young people. You can contact him on 01778 561326 or coach@lizkentishcoaching.co.uk
It is how we manage our state, which is a way of being at any given time. It is how we can control our emotions in any situation rather than allowing a situation or others to control the way we react.
Our state determines how we feel and behave and it’s a combination of the way we are feeling, our body language, our cognitive process and the connection it makes in our brain, which ultimately determines our state.
Anger, happiness, love, nervousness, sadness, meditative, these are all states that we may want to get out of or get into.
Someone cuts us up on the motorway, we can choose our reaction, annoyance, anger, pity or just being calm. The other person does not make us get angry that is the choice that we have made for ourself.
These are the three factors that will determine your state:
Your Body language, your physiology the way that you hold and shape your body and control your breathing. Just standing up from a sitting position and stretching will create a state change.
The Words that you use, whether you are talking inside your head or to others, it’s the choice of words. Expand your use of words that have a positive and complimentary meaning and ou will find that a more resourceful state comes naturally.
Your Focus, the questions you ask yourself. What we focus on is what we experience. Internal questions such as “why can’t I do this” and “why do I never have any luck” Change those words to “I can do this” and “ I make my own luck” will mean that a far more beneficial outcome can be achieved.
To be best prepared to achieve a desired outcome we need to be in our most resourceful state. Going into a meeting, a sporting event or having that difficult conversation with a family member and not being in peak state (which could also be termed as being in the wrong frame of mind) will lessen the chance of a successful outcome.
When I run a coaching session I need to be in peak state. If I were slumped in my seat (body) I would not be able to ask the right questions (words) because I have something else on my mind (focus); I would not be in my most resourceful state to enable my client to move themselves forward towards their goal. My whole demeanour would communicate to that person that I was not interested in them or what they had to say.
To get into peak state requires adjustments in three areas:
Sit up straight, take deep breaths, run through your mind how good a coach you are and that you will benefit your clients/team, use the words that allow you to focus on the most important thing because 'the most important thing is always the most important thing'.
Another way to change your state would be to create an “anchor”, by making a link to the desired state through an association to a certain emotion through repetitive use of a trigger. Get into peak state and then make a movement, say a word, tug or press on a part of your body and repeat the process until the trigger can automatically move you into your peak state.
When working with a client the BWF model is not just for me to use on me, it is a process that they can subconsciously adopt to enable them to reach their goals as quickly as possible. I can’t sit there and explain what BWF is and how it works. It needs to be achieved through the overall coaching sessions and importantly by my example.
Ask them how they would feel when they reach their goal, how would they stand, what would they say, what questions had they asked of themselves to get there. Ask them who they admire and why, what do they think has made that person so successful, well liked, respected, excellent at what they do. Is there anything that they could learn from that person.
David Kentish is an experienced Coach working with young people. You can contact him on 01778 561326 or coach@lizkentishcoaching.co.uk
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