Competencies of a Master Coach
Establishing Trust and Safety with the Coachee
Ability to create a safe, supportive environment that produces ongoing mutual respect and trust.
- Shows genuine concern for the coachee’s welfare and future.
- Continuously demonstrates personal integrity, honesty and sincerity.
- Establishes clear agreements and keeps promises.
- Demonstrates respect for coachee’s perceptions, learning style, and personal being.
- Provides ongoing support for and champions new behaviors and actions, including those involving risk taking and fear of failure.
Coaching Presence:
Ability to be fully present and create spontaneous relationship with the coachee, employing a style that is open, flexible and confident.
- Is present and flexible during the coaching process, dancing in the moment.
- Accesses own intuition and trusts one's inner knowing - "goes with the gut."
- Is open to not knowing and takes risks.
- Sees many ways to work with the coachee, and chooses in the moment what is most effective.
- Uses humor effectively to create lightness and energy.
- Confidently shifts perspectives and experiments with new possibilities.
Communicating Effectively
Active Listening:
Ability to focus completely on what the coachee is saying and is not saying, to understand the meaning of what is said.
- Attends to the coachee and the coachee's agenda, and not to the coach's agenda for the coachee.
- Hears the coachee's concerns, goals, values and beliefs about what is and is not possible.
- Distinguishes between the words, the tone of voice, and the body language.
- Summarizes, paraphrases, reiterates, mirrors back what coachee has said to ensure clarity and understanding.
- Encourages, accepts, explores and reinforces the coachee's expression of feelings, perceptions, concerns, beliefs, suggestions, etc.
- Integrates and builds on coachee's ideas and suggestions.
- "Bottom-lines" or understands the essence of the coachee's communication and helps the coachee get there rather than engaging in long descriptive stories.
- Allows the coachee to vent or "clear" the situation without judgment or attachment in order to move on to next steps.
Powerful Questioning:
Ability to ask questions that reveal the information needed for maximum benefit to the coaching relationship and the coachee.
- Asks questions that reflect active listening and an understanding of the coachee's perspective.
- Asks questions that evoke discovery, insight, commitment or action (e.g., those that challenge the coachee's assumptions).
- Asks open-ended questions that create greater clarity, possibility or new learning.
- Asks questions that move the coachee towards what they desire, not questions that ask for the coachee to justify or look backwards.
Direct Communication:
Ability to communicate effectively during coaching sessions, and to use language that has the greatest positive impact on the coachee.
- Is clear, articulate and direct in sharing and providing feedback (when appropriate).
- Reframes and articulates to help the coachee understand from another perspective what he/she wants or is uncertain about.
- Uses metaphor and analogy to help to illustrate a point or paint a verbal picture.
Facilitating Learning and Results
Creating Awareness:
Ability to integrate and accurately evaluate multiple sources of information, and to make interpretations that help the coachee to gain awareness and thereby achieve agreed-upon results.
- Goes beyond what is said in assessing coachee's concerns, not getting hooked by the coachee's description.
- Invokes inquiry for greater understanding, awareness and clarity.
- Identifies for the coachee her underlying concerns, typical and fixed ways of perceiving herself and the world, differences between the facts and the interpretation, disparities between thoughts, feelings and action.
- Helps coachee to discover for themselves the new thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, emotions, moods, etc. that strengthen their ability to take action and achieve what is important to them.
- Communicates broader perspectives to coachee and inspires commitment to shift their viewpoints and find new possibilities for action.
- Helps coachee to see the different, interrelated factors that might affect them and their behaviors (e.g., thoughts, emotions, background, mindset).
- Expresses insights to coachees in ways that are useful and meaningful for the coachee.
- Identifies major strengths and major areas for learning and growth, and what is most important to address during coaching.
- Asks the coachee to distinguish between trivial and significant issues, situational vs. recurring behaviors, when detecting a separation between what is being stated and what is being done.
Designing Actions:
Ability to create with the coachee opportunities for ongoing learning, during coaching and in work situations, and for taking new actions that will most effectively lead to agreed-upon coaching results.
- Brainstorms and assists the coachee to define actions that will enable the coachee to demonstrate, practice and deepen new learning.
- Helps the coachee to focus on and systematically explore specific concerns and opportunities that are central to agreed-upon coaching goals.
- Engages the coachee to explore alternative ideas and solutions, to evaluate options, and to make related decisions.
- Promotes active experimentation and self-discovery, where the coachee applies what has been discussed and learned during sessions immediately afterwards in her work setting.
- Celebrates coachee successes and capabilities for future growth.
- Challenges coachee's assumptions and perspectives to provoke new ideas and find new possibilities for action.
- Advocates or brings forward points of view that are aligned with coachee goals and, without attachment, engages the coachee to consider them.
- Encourages stretches and challenges but also a comfortable pace of learning.
Planning and Goal Setting:
Ability to develop and maintain an effective coaching plan with the coachee.
- Consolidates collected information and establishes a coaching plan and development goals with the coachee that address concerns and major areas for learning and development.
- Creates a plan with results that are attainable, measurable, specific and have target dates.
- Makes plan adjustments as warranted by the coaching process and by changes in the situation.
- Helps the coachee identify and access different resources for learning (e.g., books, other professionals).
- Identifies and targets early successes that are important to the coachee.
Managing Progress and Accountability:
Ability to hold attention on what is important for the coachee, and to leave responsibility with the coachee to take action.
- Clearly requests of the coachee actions that will move the coachee toward their stated goals.
- Demonstrates follow through by asking the coachee about those actions that the coachee committed to during the previous session(s).
- Acknowledges the coachee for what they have done, not done, learned or become aware of since the previous coaching session(s).
- Effectively prepares, organizes and reviews with coachee information obtained during sessions.
- Keeps the coachee on track between sessions by holding attention on the coaching plan and outcomes, agreed-upon courses of action, and topics for future session(s).
- Focuses on the coaching plan but is also open to adjusting behaviors and actions based on the coaching process and shifts in direction during sessions.
- Is able to move back and forth between the big picture of where the coachee is heading, setting a context for what is being discussed and where the coachee wishes to go.
- Promotes coachee's self-discipline and holds the coachee accountable for what they say they are going to do, for the results of an intended action, or for a specific plan with related time frames.
- Develops the coachee's ability to make decisions, address key concerns, and develop herself (to get feedback, to determine priorities and set the pace of learning, to reflect on and learn from experiences).
- Positively confronts the coachee with the fact that he/she did not take agreed-upon actions.
© 2011 Bobbi Kahler. All rights reserved. Developing Leaders, Creating Possibilities: Kahler Leadership Group
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