What is Coaching?

A brief overview using the GROW model

Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

What is Coaching?

Coaching as a profession has exploded over the last ten years, mainly the previous two, with the pandemic forcing people to re-evaluate their lives. So what exactly is coaching? As it isn’t a protected title, defining what coaching or a coach is can be somewhat ambiguous.

But, what many researchers have come to decide is that if you are following a coaching theory and working from a scientific background, coaching is defined broadly as a managed conversation supporting people to achieve goals using evidence-based research.

Becoming a coach is a process that involves training and practice, the embodiment of which consists of three main aspects:

1. A set of skills — active listening, asking powerful questions, paraphrasing, summarising, and noticing.
2. A conversational framework
3. A coaching philosophy

A Set of Skills

Listening may seem like a relatively common and obvious skill but when it comes to coaching it is a specific type of listening to that needs to be employed; active listening.

Active listening in a coaching relationship involves more than being present when the client is talking. It involves listening with intent, body language that conveying genuine interest in what the client is saying (noticing micro-expressions), and curiosity around the topics the client is talking about. Listening allows the client to speak openly and deeply about themselves and feeling like they are heard, which encourages them to continue the coaching process and progress to deeper levels of engagement.

Staying quiet when the client is talking is another component of active listening that involves not only not speaking but not diverting your attention to considering how to respond. This can be difficult as it is natural to consider what you’re going to say next, and logically, you need to think about what you want to say before you say it when you are working from a conversational framework. This skill comes with practice.

Powerful Questions

Asking questions is an essential conversational skill like listening, but when used in a coaching relationship, the questions elicit, clarify, and provok information. When using a conversational framework, those questions will be used in a certain way and at a particular stage.

Four types of questions are discussed in the coaching process; closed, open-ended, leading, and multiple.

Closed questions provide straightforward single-word/yes/no/short-phrase answers, e.g. “How often do you get a full seven hours sleep per week?”

They are suitable for gathering primary data and establishing a baseline.

Open-ended questions are the opposite of closed questions eliciting a longer concentrated more meaningful response. Open-ended questions are used more in coaching to facilitate the client’s journey through their goal progression. For example, “What does your sleep routine look like?”

Leading questions manipulate the client to a solution, e.g. “Do you think if you stopped using your phone before bed, you could sleep better?” These types of questions should never be used in a coaching session.

Paraphrasing and Summarising

These two words are often confused as meaning the same thing and used interchangeably when they are in fact different. Paraphrasing is explaining a concept using your own words, and summarising is using the same or similar terms in a shorter form. Both can be incredibly useful in the coaching context.

Paraphrasing what the client has said is a way of clarifying and reflecting on what the client has said to raise awareness. This can often result in the client developing insights and a new perspective by hearing their concerns and way of thinking reflected back on them.

Summarising in the coaching context is a valuable technique to clarify meaning, like paraphrasing, and refocus the conversation on a particular area if the client is ‘getting off-track.’

Noticing

Many aspects of coaching are non-verbal and vital in interpreting the client’s behaviour to raise the client’s awareness and the coaches.

Some aspects of the coaching process to notice are:

• the readiness of the client at the beginning of the session
• how open a client is to challenge from the coach
• the energy the client presents with
• the client’s chemistry with the coach
• the expressiveness of the client
• body language

Conversational Framework

A typical coaching session can last anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. A conversational framework will support the coaching process toward progressing the client’s goals in each session.

For example, suppose you use the GROW Model (Whitmore, 2009) as your conversational framework. In that case, your session will move through stages of the model to facilitate progression toward the client’s goal:

• Goal
• Reality
• Options
• Will

The GROW model intends to raise awareness and personal responsibility among the client. The awareness stage is fact gathering all relevant information during the Goal and Reality stages. The client’s awareness is raised using three techniques:

1. Identifying the gap between the current reality and where the client would like to be (Goal)
2. Looking at all the relevant information about the current situation (Reality)
3. The objective is active listening, paraphrasing, summarising, and noticing the coach

The Options and Will section of the framework are vital as this puts full responsibility on thoughts, actions, and commitment towards the client’s goal. A necessary process if progress towards the goal is to be achieved must come from the client.

Questions to ask during each stage of the GROW Model:

Goal:

• What has motivated you to seek coaching?
• What do you hope to achieve as an outcome of this session?

Reality:

• What is your current situation concerning the goal you want to achieve?
• What is getting in the way of you achieving your goal?

Options:

• If you could do anything, what would you do?
• How mould someone you admire deal with this situation?

Will:

• What is the first step you should take?
• How will you know if you have succeeded?

Photo by Daniel Thomas on Unsplash

Coaching Philosophy

The coaching philosophy is how you conduct yourself as a coach to facilitate the client’s journey. The coaching philosophy has many attributes, e.g. humility, confidence, genuine positive regard for people, belief in the client’s ability to reach their full potential, respect, integrity, intercultural sensitivity, self-awareness, and self-reflectiveness. The coaching philosophy is developed over the lifespan of being a coach.

What Coaching Is Not

A few things a coaching sessions are not is giving advice, proposing solutions, and steering the conversation in a way you think it should go. While it is a managed conversation, a coach needs to toe the line between moving the conversation in a way they think it should go and actively listening to the client and asking powerful questions that ‘pull out the client’s resources and knowledge.

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