How can clients contribute more?
Coaches must let conversations find their path and help clients develop the skills to reflect on them, says David Clutterbuck, visiting professor, Coaching and Mentoring Research Unit, Sheffield Business School
Inexperienced coaches often tend to feel they have to keep the conversation going, which puts them in the driving seat. More experienced coaches allow the conversation to find its own path, helping the client make choices about which direction to follow when there are forks in the road. Allowing the conversation to happen in this way enables the coach to notice so much more – the choice of words and phrases, the tone and energy of the conversation, non-verbal communication, particularly at the level of micro-expression, and the structure of the client’s reasoning.
One of the biggest barriers to attending to this conversation can be the need by some coaches to constrain it within a predetermined model or process – for example, GROW (Whitmore, 2002), Clean Language (Sullivan and Rees, 2008) or Solutions Focus (Jackson and McKergow, 2007).
If the constant, unspoken question is, “Am I keeping this conversation on track?” or “Am I doing the process right?”, then the coach’s focus tends to be on the process, not on the client. It’s difficult then to attend to the spoken conversation, let alone to the subtler, observant inner conversation.
The client can contribute more to the learning dialogue if he or she is also process-aware. The management of the conversation and its direction then become a shared activity.
It’s unlikely, however, that many clients will be aware of their own inner conversations. Yet at some level they will be making choices about what they say, how honest they will be with the coach and how much attention they are paying to their own words and emotions. Part of the coach’s role is to act as a mirror on this inner conversation, helping to surface unspoken thoughts and to heighten the client’s self-awareness. Using approaches such as Gestalt can be very powerful in this context.
However, there is another aspect, which I find few coaches have considered – the coach’s responsibility to help the client develop their own skills of self-observation. It may be more difficult for the client to reflect on their inner conversation in the full flow of the spoken conversation, but frequent pauses for reflection provide opportunities for them to consider questions, such as:
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What assumptions or filters am I applying in answering the coach’s questions?
How am I feeling about the conversation? If I feel uncomfortable, what is making me so?
How is my coach feeling at this moment?
What are the opportunities for learning in this conversation?
How am I helping the coach understand my issues?
One of the advantages of holding coaching sessions where the client has to travel subsequently is that it gives them space for reflection in the immediate aftermath of the coaching conversation. This post-meeting reflection is vital in terms of translating good thoughts into practical action.
Failure here is often, in my experience, associated with coaching relationships, where the client talks endlessly about his or her issues during the session, but makes little progress between sessions.
The coach’s responsibility extends, in my view, to helping the client develop the skills, ability and motivation, to reflect purposefully, hence gaining full value from the session, both during and post the meeting. This may mean discussing with them, how and when they will reflect, and contracting with them that they will do so.
Bibliography
• P Jackson and M McKergow, The Solutions Focus: Making Coaching and Change SIMPLE, Nicholas Brealey, London, 2007
• W Sullivan and J Rees, Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds, Crown House, Carmarthen, 2008
• J Whitmore, Coaching for Performance: Growing People, Performance and Purpose, Nicholas Brealey, London, 2002
Coaching at work, volume 8, issue 1