Three tools to expand your coaching skills

Three tools to expand your coaching skills

A good coach possesses a combination of personal attributes, coaching skills and knowledge that combine to provide effective guidance and support to clients.

Personal traits:

Ability to empathise with the feelings and experiences of others. Patience to give clients time to grow and achieve their goals. Honesty and reliability to gain and maintain clients’ trust.

Professional skills:

Active and attentive listening. Asking the right questions for deeper insights and promoting self-reflection on the part of the coachee. A good coach can help clients identify problems and find effective solutions

Knowledge and expertise:

A good coach has a solid foundation in the theories and techniques of coaching. Experience helps a coach to recognise and deal effectively with a wide range of situations. A good coach is committed to continuous professional development through courses, workshops and literature. 

Benefits of new skills for you as a coach

Learning new skills can help you to:

• Become more effective in coaching clients.
• Attract a more diverse group of clients.
• Offer innovative techniques and methods that set you apart from others.

In addition, it contributes to:

• Your personal development as a coach.
• Solving problems by knowing different approaches.
• Improving listening skills, non-verbal communication and feedback techniques.
• Understanding and managing one’s own emotions and those of others.

Three coaching tools to expand your skills

1. Vital Questions Framework

• This framework helps you structure coaching sessions by looking at the task and human aspects of each situation, further dividing them into external and internal factors. You can use this to analyse your clients’ personal preferences, career development and challenges, as well as team and organisational cultures.
• During a coaching session, the Vital Questions Framework allows you to: Look at all aspects of the issue or problem the person is presenting to you Enable them to look at their problem from many different perspectives. Develop a more strategic and focused set of actions to solve the problem. This may include areas not considered because they are outside people’s preferences. Have more confidence in the chosen outcomes. Finally, develop a vision that encompasses all aspects of the person’s challenge.

2. Jungs typology

Jungs typology allows you to apply type theory in practical situations to guide clients towards personal excellence in areas such as management, leadership development, career counselling and education. It also helps you understand communication between people and encourage individuals to understand themselves and the processes between people as a means of maximising their potential. In a world where organisational teamwork, problem solving, leadership styles and dealing with change are some of the most important factors for success and improving outcomes, type theory is already often applied as a quick fix to help individuals, teams and companies work better together.

3. Personality preferences and workplace behaviour

A detailed practical guide to help you understand topics such as preference and ability, learning styles, values and motivation, and problem-solving styles in the workplace. It includes a self-examination questionnaire that allows you to identify your clients’ innate ‘competencies’ or preferences and apply them to their work environment. We are all born with an innate preference for certain ways of living and working, just as we are born with an innate preference to write with our left or right hand.
The same applies to our innate personality preferences. Dissatisfaction or inefficiency in some aspect of our lives is very often a result of having to use functions of our personality that are not the ones we would prefer. It is a very practical Tool to use in your coaching sessions and helps understand human behaviour.

Our above practical coaching tools were created in collaboration with Ralph Lewis, leadership development coach. He is also co-founder of the UK Centre for Servant-Leadership. Ralph taught Management Development at Cranfield School of Management and is the programme director at London Business School.

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