BLOG #7 - How visual notes improve tracking skills and help build trust with coaching clients

When your client doesn’t have a sense you are following their process, you fail to build a trustful relationship with your coachee.

Assuming your clients trust your expertise, the relationship with your client however, still needs to strengthen when you start working together. With many facets to building trustful relationships, I like to focus in this post on the facet of tracking skills, which ties directly into following the process.

Following the process closely and listening with attention and intention, does not only support the creation of a safe container for clients to express themselves freely. Have you ever heard someone say, ‘I really like my coach because they really get me’? Just to be clear, that doesn’t mean that the coach agrees to everything their client said or that they aren’t direct about pointing out the blind spots. It means that the coach listened and tracked so well, they have given their client a sense of being known for what they are going through, being respected for who they are and caring for the well-being of their client.

And if you look at it, there is a lot to track in the sessions and over-all process with a coachee: topics, capturing the essence, thought patterns, open loops, action items, milestones, set backs, blind spots, limiting beliefs, repetitive blocks and barriers, strategies and other important matters that show up or that you need to remember.

How do you take note and track all of that? While notes can be very powerful to help you do that, it’s the way you take your notes that actually make them efficient and effective.

Visual notes help you track the process of your client before, during and after the coaching session.

Don’t think now right away, I need to take more notes. No. Let’s assess first if it makes sense for you to take notes by looking at some situations that help you identify when and how visual notes help you improve your tracking skills. 

The 3 situations that tell you, taking visual notes is a thing worth doing as a coach:

SITUATION 1 – YOUR COACHEE IS CONFUSED AND RAMBLES ABOUT VARIOUS MATTERS.

TIP: How do you track the different topics, capture the essence and support your client to become clear? It all starts with listening, however, when a clients is in such state, it can be hard to track the back and forth to different topics brought to you. Creating a mind map of what you are hearing and adding relations and highlights, helps to unravel the confusion. Not only can you better track the conversation, you can also discover links, commonalities and odds when reflecting back with your client on what you have heard – and created. 

SITUATION 2 – YOU GUIDE YOUR CLIENT THROUGH A SPECIFIC PROCESS BUT THEY KEEP TAKING A DIFFERENT ROUTE

TIP: You want to give them space to speak, yet you also want to facilitate their growth by taking them through the process you had in mind. Before you know it, you are not finished when the session is over. Or you extend the session but at the expense of your lunch time. Having a visual outline of the process in front of you, constantly helps you as a visual reminder of where you are and where you are going. It supports you in gently guiding your clients back on track. When making a visual template out of it, it leaves you space to take notes at different points in the process. Templates are in that sense a pre-made visual outline for the process you are facilitating and for the notes you are going to take.

SITUATION 3 – YOUR MEMORY FAILS TO PROVIDE YOU PARTS OF PREVIOUS SESSIONS

TIP: Though lots of coaches keep a file of each client, having a file doesn’t mean you quickly pull out the information you are looking for. When notes are made in a visual language, they convey the meaning in less sentences. Also, visual notes are structured and colored in such way, it is easy to navigate through them. Your preparation time before a new session is more efficient and your client will sense you are fully present, well prepared and are tracking their process and this increases the level of trust between the two of you.

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MAIN INSIGHTS It makes sense to start taking visual notes when ...

INSIGHT 1 ?? Your coachee is confused and rambles about various matters

INSIGHT 2 ?? You guide a coaching process but your client keeps taking a different route. 

INSIGHT 3 ?? Your memory fails to provide you the essence of the previous sessions.

Do you find yourself in any of these situations?

Please share which one(s) and how you try to cope with it in the comments.

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Have you become curious or exciting for creative ways to build trustful relationships by improving your tracking skills with visual notes? 

On May 1 & 2, 2019, I facilitate a Dutch Training VISUAL NOTE-TAKING during COACHING in Den Haag, The Netherlands.

The training includes also a group call and an individual call, so you are sure to implement and further develop your visual skills in your coaching sessions. More info at the sign up page HERE

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My name is Mireille van Bremen and I work internationally as a visual catalyst.

Everything I do as a graphic recorder, visual mediator, visual facilitator, trainer, facilitator and coach, stems from an intention to invigorate creative energy in others so they can express themselves visually.

Over the past years I trained hundreds of trainers, facilitators, coaches, educators and leaders from all over the world in becoming resourceful in their communication and their approach to have the impact they envision.

The programs I design and offer live and in the Online Visual Skills Academy which I founded, help people to develop visual communication skills that lead to greater understanding, stimulate confidence, empathic leadership, connection, engagement, creativity and increase the impact of trainings, seminars, workshops, presentations, meetings or conferences.