How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 132

know what I need to do.” !! But often the coachee will agree and I will
say, “How about if you come up with two possible solutions, then I’ll
add two, and we’ll carry on until we have a whole bunch?” Depending
on the confidence of the coachee in this problem, I could also ask him to
come up with a whole bunch of possibilities and then I’ll add some
more afterwards.
A coachee is often not aware that there are any possible solutions to his
problem, so he will find it encouraging to think that together we will
find many. It is up to the coach to provide this confidence: essentially
the trust that coaching will work and that there are always possibilities
and choices in any situation.
Here are some of the other advantages of this approach:
By focusing on creating possible solutions rather than solving the
problem, you temporarily stop the judgment and critical thinking that
often blocks creativity. Your goal is to collect all the solutions first, and
then evaluate them later. Doing this unleashes creativity and in itself
will help the coachee think of things they haven’t thought of before.
Coachees often mistakenly believe that the solutions coming from the
coach are more valuable than those they generate themselves. You can
counteract this assumption by collecting the ideas together so that they
have more equal weight. It’s also possible to generate contradictory
ideas to make it clear that the coachee has to choose based on his own
evaluation of what will work best for him.
Sometimes this process works so well that the coachee immediately
comes up with an excellent solution that he knows is perfect for him
and that he is excited to implement. Other times we generate a long list
and feel safe with an abundance of choices for actions to take. This is
what coaching is all about: creating new ways of thinking that change
people’s lives.
Most people are not very experienced at being coached. This fact makes
it even more important that coaches trust the coaching process and let
the power of coaching reveal itself to coachees. The ‘aha’ moments that
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