Getting the Most Out of Coaching

A client of mine recently asked me for advice on how his team can get the most out of coaching. Most of his team, he lamented, were resisting coaching and considered it a waste of time.

This article captures the advice I gave my client who wants his team to know how to get the most out of coaching. This is a complement to my previous article on finding the courage to invest in yourself which outlines the case for coaching and how it works.

Let’s face it—there are several convenient arguments against coaching in the workplace. For starters, you’ll be required to spend precious time and energy on something that may feel more like a burden than a valuable investment. Moreover, if you commit to a coaching engagement, you’ll be asked to open up, share personal and professional challenges, admit weaknesses and mistakes, and reconsider comfortable habits.

If this doesn’t make you feel a little vulnerable, maybe nothing will.

When you decide to work with a coach, you are making an investment in yourself—an investment of time, and unless your employer is paying for it, of money. And when you do, you’re choosing to improve some aspect of your life and get closer to your potential. If this purpose does not motivate you—achieving more personal growth and development—don’t bother. The best coach in the world won’t be enough for somebody who is not interested in changing something in their life or maximizing their potential.

However, if the idea of coaching sparks some positive energy in you, you should consider the investment. And if you want to get the most our of your coaching journey, keep reading.

Channel Five Powers

If you’re ready to embrace the coaching opportunity—for personal growth and development—and you want to maximize your investment, here are five powers you’ll want to show up with (these are inspired by Peter Bregman's "You Can Change Other People").

1. Ownership: take responsibility for your choices and your actions. Your coach can’t be responsible for your behaviors—but they can create the process that guides you to your destination.
2. Independence: make your own decisions (don’t be dependent on others). Remember: it’s your life - you decide.
3. Emotional courage: accept that emotional discomfort is a part of the journey. Finding your resistance is an opportunity and something to embrace and work with.
4. Patience: expect the pace of your learning to be non-linear. Insight and transformation come at unpredictable moments.
5. Sustainability: get comfortable with the idea that change is a constant and therefore so is the need for creative adaption.

When you embrace these five powers, your opportunity for achieving the outcomes you desire increases multi-fold.

Contracting for the Engagement

Effective coaching starts with the change you’d like to see in your life. At the start of the engagement, it’s up to you, the coachee, to determine what this overarching change is. Also, at the beginning of each coaching session, the coach will ask you the same two questions to ensure the focus is on what matters most to you at that moment:

• “What’s most important for us to work on today?”
• “What would you like to take away from today’s coaching session?”

In coaching vernacular, this is called “the contract” and it is intended to direct the coach’s energy. This “contract,” however, is malleable and you can change it real time during the session.

For example, perhaps you want more influence on strategic decisions in your company, but you are aware that you resist speaking up in executive leadership meetings, and you’re frustrated with yourself. When the session is over, you’d like a couple of action items, to experiment with new behaviors in leadership meetings. In this scenario, the coach ask you probing questions and you come to conclusion that preparing more before the meeting and speaking up at the right moments ,when you have something relevant to add to the discussion, might be the two action items to practice.

In the next leadership meeting, you spend significantly more time preparing and when the discussion turns to a strategic issue you are familiar with and have an informed point of view on, you listen carefully to the points of views of others and then offer your thoughts. In the next coaching session, you’re excited to share the positive outcome and we explore the behavioral changes you made that led to it.

Right Mindset

Not everybody is ready for coaching and not everybody is in “need” of coaching. At the highest level, coaching is appropriate when your looking enhance your performance, or experience greater job satisfaction and self worth or gain a greater sense of well being. To reach these goals, you’ll need motivation and the drive to achieve personal growth and development. You’ll need to approach your coaching experience with openness, to explore your attitudes, values, and beliefs. Showing up for coaching with emotional courage and patience are essential for this kind of self-exploration.

New Behaviors

Becoming more aware of who you are and what you are doing is one thing. Reconsidering your assumptions, engaging with your resistance, allowing yourself to see blind spots, and as a result, changing your behavior, is another. If you want to see a return on your coaching investment, you’ll need to pay close attention to your “awareness of what is going on, both cognitively and emotionally” during the coaching sessions. With an awareness of what is going in the now, you will begin to consider other choices and with the support of your coach, contemplate taking specific actions based on these newly recognized choices that resonate.

Practice and Experiment

The behaviors we display, no matter how we judge them, are there for a reason. Certain patterns of emotional regulation, resistance to change, a hesitancy to speak up are more than likely behaviors that served you in some way. These are habits that got you to where you are today. Getting you to your preferred new place, however, may require new behaviors.

Coaching is about changing the behaviors that get in your way of the change you desire. As you reconsider your perceptions and discover new ways to look at things, you may consider and even choose new behaviors that are more aligned with the person you want to be. For these changes to take hold and stick, you’ll practice and experiment with these new behaviors. For this reason, taking ownership and responsibility for the outcome is important for your coaching success.

What to Look for In a Coach

But it takes two to tango, and finding the right coach for you is also really important. Why? Because the foundation of successful coaching is trust. In some cases, style and intangible connection are the salient factors for the best fit.

Style and the intangible connection are really important. Nevertheless, recent research conducted by Richard Boyatzis suggests that certain traits in a coach increase the odds of great coaching outcomes. As you interview coaches, you’ll want consider how each rates in these four areas. These are all characteristics that you can explore with the prospective coach by asking related questions or observing how they respond to you.

• An Achievement Orientation: Striving to improve or meet a standard of excellence.
• Adaptability: flexibility in handling change.
• Emotional Self-Control: keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
• Empathy: sensing others’ feelings, perspectives, and taking an interest in them.

So if you’re looking for a coach, these are traits you’ll want to consider before choosing.

Conclusion

If you invest in personal coaching, do your best to realize a personal return. If you invest in coaching for your team, let them know how they can get the most from their investment and harness it for their personal growth and development. It is a pity when the power of coaching is wasted and the outcome is disappointing, for you, your team, and yes, the coach.

About David Ehrenthal

After a 25+ year career as a marketing executive and CEO, in the US and Europe, David created Mach10 Career & Leadership Coaching in 2021. He now coaches many clients interested in growing their leadership effectiveness and advancing their careers.

Please email David at [email protected] or give him a ring at 617-529-8795 if you want to talk.