How to Coach Yourself and Others Techniques For Coaching | Page 517

Challenging is not meant to be a confrontational stage of
counselling, rather a holding up of the mirror to the employee
who has the problem. Sometimes, employees will reach the same
conclusion as you do and your challenging will not need to be too
forceful. In these cases, the challenging stage will be short and
you can both move on to solutions.
However, sometimes, your employee will not fully grasp the
position and you will need to be explicit in your challenging.
For example here are a couple of challenging questions:
‘Each week you have seemed determined to carry out these
actions but each time you have found some difficulties. What are
you learning about yourself from this?’
‘Just now you mentioned that you wanted to start running
again…although in your last session you said that you didn’t
really enjoy running…tell me what the truth is here?’
‘You have said that in order to be a good parent you cannot leave
them for any time with a babysitter. Where has this belief come
from?’
The following 5 techniques can help you.
1. Bring Things Out In the Open
Sometimes the only way to make people aware of the nature of
the problem is to spell it out, along with the implications of doing
nothing. For example, "You realise that if you don't sort out this
personality clash between you, one of you will eventually have to
decide whether you are to stay in the team or not". Psychoanalyst Alfred Adler called this "spits in the soup" because
spelling things out disturbs the employee's unawareness and,
like spits in the soup, no longer makes it taste so nice.

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