16/04/2024
POWER OF ACKNOWLEDGING IN COACHING
In my role as a Coach Mentor to my student-coaches, I listen to many audio recordings of coaching sessions. Invariably, student-coaches tend to have a pattern of asking their clients questions and then as soon as the clients have finished answering, they tend to follow up with another question. This pattern continues throughout most of the duration of the coaching session.
Questions that arise are:-
• What is the purpose of this pattern?
• How does this pattern serve the client?
• How will the client feel?
• What is missing?
A GOLD Standard way of ACKNOWLEDGING in coaching includes :-
Coach Summarise in one sentence a few key points the client has said and reflect it back to the client for them to listen to what was said. Then follow-up with a new interesting question
Client Summarise in one sentence a few key points the client has said earlier. Then observe any significant changes in the client – facial expression, tone of voice, pitch, body language changes, etc. All these present information which the coach can then use to create the next follow-up interesting question
Coach Paraphrase in your own words what you heard and check in with the client if that is accurate. Then re-align any discrepancies. Then follow-up with a new interesting question
What do you think is the
𝙄𝙢𝙥𝙖𝙘𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙂𝙊𝙇𝘿 𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙉𝘿𝘼𝙍𝘿 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙨 ?
