What can you ask your coach?

You can ask for many things, as long as it relates to your professional life.

Your coach has a vast span of skills and has learned new things with each new client.
However, as anybody would agree, your coach is not your guru nor your psychotherapist, so you will have to give a little bit of yourself in the process of asking.

Because your coach is not a guru, he does not know better than you what is best for you. Therefore, session after session, you will learn how to formulate your expectations so that what you ask for can become material for a contract.

And because your coach is not your psychotherapist, he will seldom be OK with a demand limited to some Listening even though he is very skilled at it, even if you actually need a good portion of listening.

Each coaching session needs a Contract.

Each individual session starts with questions like:

- what do you want for yourself today?

Other contract clarification questions can be:

- why is that a problem for you?
- How big is this problem for you?
- Why address it now? Why with me?
- How will you know you are satisfied?
- What do you expect from me?

No justification:

The clients sometimes perceived these questions as a call for justification. This is certainly not the intent. Any demand from the client is legitimate and needs no justification! These questions are true questions, for which the coach does not know the answer, does not expect any specific kind of answer, and for which there is not Good Answer They will however held focus the session towards a true priority, in a realistic and operational way.

An expectation is not a complain:

Certainly your coach has been taught to differentiate

- I have a concern.
from
- Help me change.

So he or she might very well return to you questions like

- About this concern, what is it you expect from me today?

The expectation is not your target:

Very few coaches will have enough with your target to know how to help you.

They will usually also need to know what you expect them to do on this way.

One example direct  from the coach's tape recording:

Coach - What do you want from this coaching?

Client- I want to increase my sales in the coming year.

Co- Your target is to stimulate your sales, OK, and with this target, what do you expect from me?

Cl- Well, there's this manager. She leads the largest team of my department, and she happens to have the lowest sales results. So if I can put them back to work, then it'll be perfect for my goals. Problem is: I don't know how to handle her. You...you can help me find how to handle her.

Co- So you need me to help you find how to handle her?

Cl- that's it.

Co- And how yould you like me to proceed?

Cl- Come on, you are the specialist!

Co -  Sure, and part of my specialty is to ask how I can help. This way I make sure I will proceed in a manner that is suitable to you.

Cl - Hum. Don't know. (silence)

Co - For example, would you like me to attend one of your meetings with this manager and help you, afterwards, analyse your interactions with her?   (this is something the coach has recently done with good success with another client)

Cl - No, no, certainly not !  It would inhibit me.

Co - OK, I'll make a note of it. Then is there anything else you do not want me to do?

Cl- Well... For example, no general encouragements like I'm sure you'll make it! I don't need to be trusted in, I need practical tricks to help me.

Co -  Practical. OK, good. Give me an example.

Cl - (thinking.) so...let's say a little bit of theory, you know, about how people work and why sometimes they do the opposite of what you expect, tricks like that, because I am a self-made woman and I sort of realize that all these things I have learned by doing, like they say, and it's no longer enough, today. As long as I was managing operations directly, it was OK, but now that I am managing managers, it looks like it doesn't work any more. (silence). Perhaps also some testing, simulations, to let me try with you how it feels for me to say things differently, before I do it for real, and also...

.... And on, and on, until they identified 4 or 5 pragmatic ways to work, serving the target (stimulate sales) , focussed on the client's priority (the team with poor results) and with an approach that will suit the client (analysis of situations, short theory, role play)

The coach will avoid approaches the client is not ready for (on site coaching) or approaches that she does not like (unconditional encouragements), even if those approaches have been good for other clients, even if those approaches may be good for this client at another time.

Other examples:

In order to open up you ideas on what you can ask your coach, here is, (as a special gift to you only), a few items from my private collection. There demands have been put to me by customers with various levels of experience in being coached. Not all of them can be directly translated into a contract, but all of them can be a good start.

- Ask me questions to help me think about my issue

- I want to tell you the story in full, put it down here, show you where it is very confused for me, and I want you to make notes when you feel something strange or inconsistent in my description of the situation. And then we'll talk about it, when I am finished.

- Help me find 3 or 4 paths to reduce my stress at work.

- I need your help to sort out my criteria's before I decide to stay in this job or leave.

- I want to grow as a leader.

- I would like to understand why is it that I seem unable to have a project that works.

- I want to learn to accept conflict.

- My problem is I don't feel much respect for my bosses, and surely they can feel it through how I behave. So let's work about respect for authority.

- Make sure you insist if there are things that I seem not to accept to see.

- Help me take some distance to my problem.

- People tell me I am too gentle. I need help to change that.

- Help me look at this issue with other points of view. Points of view I nave not yet though of.

Now it's your turn, I believe.