Positive behaviours

Negative behaviours

Score out of 3

How to overcome any negative behaviours next time

Establishing the relationship

• Establish professional credibility as a coach
• Provide a clear explanation of the role of the coach
• Create rapport with the coachee
• Demonstrate interest in the coachee
• Appropriate self-disclosure

Useful questions
What is the chemistry between you and the coachee?
Did you put the other person at ease? How quickly?
Did you establish a friendly, but business-like atmosphere? 
How observant were you of the coachee’s mood?

Did you project a ‘quiet confidence’ that helped the coachee relax?

• Jump into the coaching without establishing rapport
• Dominate the conversation
• Focus too much on your credentials

Managing the coaching session

• Establish coachee needs/priorities at the beginning of the session
• Collaboratively manage the time allocated to the session
• Confirm the action the coachee will take
• Review coaching process to ensure that the coachee is satisfied with the coaching session

Useful questions
Did you let the coachee influence the process?
Did you contract at the start?
Who generated the ideas and options?
Did you check progress at key points?
Did you ensure the presented goals were the real goals, or take them at face value?
Did you manage the coachee’s expectations with grace and utility?
Did your notes capture what you thought important or what the coachee thought was important?

• Over-control
• ‘If you know where the conversation is going, it’s not coaching!’
• Jumping to conclusions about what the coachee’s problem is
• Pushing too early for solutions
• Not letting the coachee come to their own conclusions

Quality of listening

• Demonstrate active listening by re-phrasing and summarising to check understanding
• Seek clarification of points that are not explicit
• Offer non-judgemental responses that encourage the coachee to explore and validate his/her feelings, concerns and aspirations
• Use silence appropriately
• Being attentive and aware
• Demonstrating appropriate empathy

Useful questions
Did you seek mainly to understand for yourself or to clarify how they made sense of their issues?
Did you listen with your ears only, or with your eyes and intuition as well?
Was your intuition working well?

• Interrupt the coachee
• Tell the coachee what to do
• Being more focused on your own inner thoughts than on the coachee
• Talking more than 20% of the time

Questioning skills

• Ask questions to elicit information
• Explain the reason for a question
• Ask powerful incisive questions (quality rather than quantity)
• Ask questions appropriate to the coachee’s situation/state

Useful questions
Did the conversation reach appropriate depth?
Did the questions take the coachee to significant insight?

• Use primarily closed questions
• Use judgemental questions
• Use suggestions disguised as questions
• Ask too many questions

Other communicating skills

• Show sensitivity to the needs and emotions of the coachee
• Respond to both spoken words and body language of the coachee
• Mirror and match the coachee’s physical and emotional state
• Explore the meaning of the coachee’s words and metaphors
• Help the coachee articulate their thoughts and emotions
• Communicate back what (emotions) they are experiencing

Useful questions
Did you have intuitive insights into the coachee’s issues?
Did you recognise and acknowledge silent partners in the conversation?
Did you create powerful metaphors that helped the coachee to insight?

• Talk too much
• Use inappropriate language
• Talk across the coachee
• Language colourless/toneless
• Tell irrelevant stories

Other intervention skills

• Demonstrate an awareness of the influence of organisational dynamics on business process, interactions and outcomes
• Enable the coachee to discover the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that could support the achievement of desired outcomes
• Use a range of tools and styles to facilitate coachee learning
• Assist the coachee to define actions that could enable him/her to demonstrate, practice and deepen new learning
• Promote active experimentation and self-discovery
• Express belief in the coachee’s ability to manage their own issues

Useful questions
Did you help the coachee take third party perspectives/get inside the thoughts and motivations of other stakeholders in the issue?

Was there appropriate use of challenge?

Did you demonstrate systemic thinking?

Did you explain tools you used and invite the coachee’s collaboration?

Did you make appropriate use of their own knowledge and experience?

• Inappropriate interventions
• Excessive interventions
• Manipulate the coachee

Diversity issues

• Demonstrate awareness of different perceptions and values
• Create an environment where difference could be explored
• Where appropriate, recognise and acknowledge the role of racial difference in this and other relationships

• Feel uncomfortable about addressing difference/diversity issues?