Improving The Coaching Conversation

“The Coaching Conversation” is the last conversation in the five leadership conversations that make up the Bay Consulting leading for results program that I have been unpacking over the last few weeks. While all the conversations that we’ve been looking at are vital, and part of a mutually supportive system, this is the one that strongly resonates with me.

It's my favourite for two reasons:

1) The coaching conversation facilitates people developing?their capabilities for today and tomorrow. In a rapidly changing world, your capabilities will help ensure you can perform today and be relevant for tomorrow. I have seen peoples’ value and marketability decline if their capabilities are not upgraded.?

2) Human capital is the vital plank of an organisation's enduring success. People are an organisation’s key assets.

In terms of developing your capabilities in this area, Sir John Whitmores' GROW model is a fast-track approach to coaching people. He called it the sequence of coaching:?

Firstly, you want to ask what your goal is. Coaching is outcome-focused,?it’s?a targeted conversation framed by a specific goal.?

Secondly, you need to determine what the reality is. This is about understanding what is going on in relation to that goal. It's the diagnosis.?

Then the next question is to examine what the options are to become more competent in that goal area. What combination of initiatives will generate the new capability? This is usually a mix of theory, learning from others and experience - doing with quality debriefs to consolidate learnings.?

Finally, you use the above information to formulate a plan for what will you do. Some have changed this step to call it the “way forward”. The bottom line is that coaching is action orientated. If no action happens, and nothing changes, we have to question if coaching actually occurred.

A simple Google search will pull up plenty of resources on this GROW system, and other useful coaching methodologies that are based on it.??

We rise by lifting others. To make a start in this area you could just give someone what they need to hear to feel better about their work performance. In doing that you’ll make a start on investing in their tomorrow.??