How can you structure coaching reflection?

2 When to reflect?

Reflection can be done at various stages of the coaching process, depending on the purpose and focus of the reflection. Pre-coaching reflection involves preparing for the coaching session and reviewing the coaching agreement, client's goals, and coach's expectations. In-coaching reflection requires paying attention to the conversation, client's responses, and coach's thoughts. Post-coaching reflection involves analyzing the coaching outcomes, client's feedback, and coach's performance. Ongoing reflection involves reflecting on the overall coaching relationship and progress, such as monitoring client's development, coach's growth, and alignment of objectives and actions.

3 How to reflect?

Reflection can be done in various ways, such as journaling, recording, engaging with a supervisor, partnering with another coach, and working with a mentor. Journaling involves writing down one's own thoughts and feelings about the coaching experience; recording involves capturing the coaching conversation to review later; supervision involves engaging with a qualified supervisor; peer coaching involves partnering with another coach; and mentoring involves working with a mentor. Prompts or frameworks can guide journaling reflections, criteria or feedback tools can assess the quality of recordings, models or techniques can facilitate supervision reflections, questions or exercises can stimulate peer coaching reflections, and stories or examples can illustrate mentoring reflections.

4 What to reflect on?

Reflection is an essential part of the coaching practice, as it helps the coach to assess their progress and identify areas for improvement. Coaches can reflect on their competencies, such as active listening, powerful questioning, and direct communication. Additionally, coaches can reflect on how effectively they are applying coaching frameworks and tools, such as GROW, SMART, OSCAR, or other models. Furthermore, coaches should consider their niche and how they are communicating their specialty and value proposition. Lastly, coaches should reflect on their mindset and how consistently they are expressing beliefs and attitudes of curiosity, empathy, trust, positivity, or other mindsets that create a productive coaching relationship.

5 What to do next?

Reflection is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The ultimate goal of reflection is to translate the insights and learnings into actions and improvements. Consequently, after reflecting on one's own coaching practice, it is important to identify the key takeaways and learnings from the reflection, set specific and realistic goals and actions for further development, seek feedback and support from others to monitor and evaluate the progress, celebrate the achievements and acknowledge the challenges, and repeat the reflection cycle regularly and continuously.