Coaching Competences

There are a number of lists of coaching skills collected together by different people and organisations. Here, author and coach Dr Angus McLeod provides his current list which gives insight into the way he thinks as a coach.

The core coaching skills I feel are most important are listed below together with a brief explanation for each.

1 Rapport building
2 Supportive
3 Exquisite listening
4 Reflective language
5 Facilitative behaviours (e.g. content-free)
6 Questioning skills (e.g. reframes, metaphor, eliciting context..)
7 Spotting and acting upon dysfunctional patterns of thinking, and
8 Challenging skills (e.g. provocation of perception, limiting belief & values)
9 Powerful use of silence (reflective space, staying with issue..)
10 Awareness of, and checking of congruence
11 Facilitating psychological states
12 Handling emotional expression, and
13 Hooking and unhooking emotion
14 Isolating root-cause and principal target
15 Widening coachee's perception/context/options
16 Reality checking
17 Recognizing need for mentoring and asking permission
18 Story-telling and metaphor
19 Focussing on target
20 Graceful flexibility (e.g. pace and lead)
21 Facilitation of planning and processes
22 Harnessing both away-from and towards motivations
23 Invoking celebration
24 Facilitating sensory journeys
25 Reflecting (feedback, patterns of thinking and behaviour)
26 Receiving feedback
 

1 Rapport building

Coaches need to build rapport quickly before dealing with the issue or target. Rapport does not have to be maintained and indeed must and will be risked because probing interventions create deeper stretches in the coachee.

2 Supportive

The coach will show genuine interest, take care of practical needs, encourage progress and be willing to work with the coachee's preferred style

3 Exquisite listening

Exquisite listening engages sensory and intuitive attention. It demands that the mind of the coach is not busy with self-doubt, interpretation, remembering complex models or rehearsing but is rather wholly concerned with the coachee, their experience, their expression and their wellbeing.

4 Reflective language

The coach will reflect back the coachee's language and phrasing without switching words for their own. Not only does this demonstrate support, interest and listening skills, it also means that the coachee feels heard and does not have to find new meaning in what the coach has said - there is no need for a coachee to interpret when they hear their own words reflected back to them. This helps keep them on their own therapeutic journey, not asking internal questions about the coach's world.

5 Facilitative behaviours (e.g. content-free)

The coach does not stake territory in the coaching environment but rather offers the coachee dominion over where they are to be coached and where (and how proximal) they want the coach to be (but see 'graceful flexibility' also). The coach draws out both content and meaning from the coachee without bringing their own language, interpretations and solutions into the (coaching) dynamic or 'space'.

6 Questioning skills (e.g. reframes, metaphor, eliciting context..)

Questions facilitate much of the process of coaching. Broadly, these will be to extend understanding, to deepen context, to create assessment of will, to explore choices, to create new perceptions, focus on specifics and check our psychological state.

7 Challenging skills (e.g. provoking perception, belief, & values)

Coaching is not an easy option for the coachee. The job of the coach (and this has to be understood by the coachee) is to encourage leaps of learning. Necessarily these leaps are stimulated by novel thinking by the coachee. Coachees may question themselves but rarely do they challenge their thinking, beliefs and values as a coach must. Once rapport and trust has developed through a sequence of such 'risk events' the coach can go further and harder in their challenges and provocations.

8 Powerful use of silence (reflective space, staying with the issue..)

Silences allow the coachee to reach 'ah ha!' learning during self-reflective periods. These periods may last several minutes but, because the coachee is wholly mentally engaged 'internally', their awareness of the time interval is massively diminished - typically, after several minutes they may state that the period was just ten or twenty seconds. A coach will demonstrate their ability to 'hold' such silences without intervention. If the coachee comes out of the self-reflective space without deep learning, the coach will repeat the same phrase (that initially catalyzed the self-reflection). Again, the coachee will go back to self-reflection and will invariably find deep learning.

9 Spotting and acting upon dysfunctional patterns of thinking and belief

The coach will challenge such thinking. Sometimes this may be immediate where it poses a threat to a satisfactory outcome in the process. Otherwise the coach may make a note to return to the issue later (if it does not impact significantly on the prospect of successful achievement with the current issue). Coaches will quickly interrupt and challenge limiting beliefs and thinking that are likely to impact on the coachee's immediate success with the current issue. 'Hot' words and triggers that may alert the coach include the following: can't, never, always and any negative self-judgements.

10 Awareness and checking of congruence

Coaches will be aware when, for example, a coachee expresses their conviction or enthusiasm for some action but their demeanour does not match what they are saying. The coach may mimic (reflective language and body matching) the expression to illustrate what they have noticed.

11 Facilitating psychological states

Coaches ask coachees to revisit past experiences as if they are happening in the coaching space. They invite the coachee to explore possible future scenarios as if they are being created in the moment and invite the coachee to explore different perceptual positions relating to a real, past event or possible prospective event. Coaches will recognize when a coaching space is poisoned by negativity and will invite the coachee to move to a 'positive' or 'success' space of the coachee's choosing. All this is supported by careful use of language including changing tense as necessary.

12 Handling emotional expression

The coach must be comfortable in the presence of shocking and sometimes powerful expression. Experience suggests that this may include revelations such as the expression of a desire for suicide, sobbing or angry outbursts.

13 Hooking and unhooking emotion

The coach will recognize when there may be a need for a coachee to check their emotional response to a given situation or plan and question accordingly. The coach will also be able to pause the process when the coachee has a need to express emotional content and to question (and perhaps suggest a change in the physical dynamic of the space) in order to unhook the emotion from any need to move forward logically.

14 Isolating root-cause and principal target

Coaches may be presented with a myriad of wants and must question in order to track down to the main issue(s). The coach will also recognize possible root-cause for an issue and will question to allow the coachee to discover any possible root-cause for themselves.

15 Widening perception/context

Coaches help coachees to expand their understanding of the context of their issue or target.

16 Reality checking

Coaches always check the wider context of plans and targets to include social and family factors as well as the possible effects they may have on colleagues.

17 Recognizing need for mentoring and asking permission (including use of story-telling and metaphor)

Coaches will sometimes find that a coachee, however intelligent and skilled, may be significantly stuck in their process due to almost total ignorance - an example might be emotional understandings. In this case, to move forward, the coach will ask if a mentoring intervention may be made and if agreed, will then offer context, stories, personal experiences or metaphor to expand the coachee's understanding to a point where they can again be coached to find their own way forward.

18 Focussing on target

Once a coachee has fully explored possibilities, the coach will facilitate them through appraising the best plan for moving forward so that it can be tested for its overall usefulness to them.

19 Graceful flexibility (e.g. pace and lead)

A coach may be challenged by the coachee when they reject suggested tools and processes. The coach needs to be able to deal with such challenges fluidly and professionally. The interplay in the coaching-space is like a dance. The coach will also use matching pace and tone and when appropriate, lead the coachee to another psychological state that will assist with their learning and progress. The coach will not be stuck in set patterns of process. For example, the coachee may wish to work with pictures on a flip-chart while standing rather than continue sitting.

20 Facilitation of planning and processes

Coachees need to fully develop their plans without skipping important steps (which may happen due to their high enthusiasm). In practice, their enthusiasm may be knocked back if, in the real world, they find that they are out of control due to inadequate planning.

21 Harnessing both away-from and towards motivations

A combination or both carrots and sticks helps raise motivation - the coach will probe for both.

22 Invoking celebration

"Can you celebrate that?" may be used by the coach where a positive attribute or action is undervalued by the coachee. The coach may also ask for a similar reaction to the coachee arriving at established plans towards their targets.

23 Facilitating sensory journeys

Sensory Journeys or 'time-lines' invite a coachee to imagine moving into the past or future as if the clock were spinning now. These journeys may be just imagined mentally or involve practical movement (and the benefits of bio-feedback).

24 Reflecting (feedback, patterns of thinking and behaviour)

Once rapport has been established, the coach will provide feedback on behaviours, patterns of behaviour, language or thinking that may create interpersonal difficulties for the coachee. Often, the coach will be the first person to provide such feedback. Feedback will be given by detailing observations of fact, explaining how these impact on the coach (and possible misinterpretation by others) and describing the positive impact on the coach should a new, described way of behaving is undertaken by the coachee.

25 Receiving feedback

The coach will accept feedback with grace and show their understanding of it by reflecting back what they believe they have heard the coachee tell them.

Conclusion

While the list is not supposed to be complete, its purpose is to provoke thinking around many of the key competences expected of excellent coaches. Where we are weak we must develop and being coached ourselves is a useful part of that work. Without doubt, the best coaches are those that have had a conscious period of personal development over some time and who, at this stage in their career, continue to self-test and self-challenge to raise their perceptive competences.