Unlocking success in life

Whatever your coaching style or specialism, you will see progress with your clients if you are able to quickly create an atmosphere of trust and collaboration within your coaching sessions. This is normally based on the fundamental belief that your clients can find their own solution, but with some help from you through techniques like active listening and strategic questioning to get to the detail, you can really help them identify and overcome any obstacles that hinder progress or having real success in life.

In your role as coach, you will:

Encourage – to get your clients out of their comfort zone and explore new behavior
Empower – so they can find their own solution
Support – to identify smart objectives, achieve goals and unlock success in life
Stimulate – their personal and professional development

Your coaching style can be helpful in promoting the development of solutions to remove the brakes, use and capitalize on the resources available and facilitate a positive and creative mindset.

One-to-One Coaching

Effective one-to-one coaching can really help your clients identify how they will react in difficult or stressful situations and how they can make full use of any natural talents to leverage the existing strengths they may not always be unaware of. By asking the right questions and quickly getting to the detail, you can help them focus on the actions and outcomes they would like to see happen in their lives. And then help them to develop detailed step-by-step action plans so they can track their progress over time.

Within our core coaching manual we suggest using a two-stage approach for this type of conversation with your clients so you can offer some help in exploring how they could plan for the future, unlock success in life and start making real progress:

Stage One – The initial questions

Ask open questions about a topic your client wants to explore within the safe space of a coaching session and see how they feel about it. Explore their experiences so far and try to understand how they are currently feeling. Make a note of any recurring themes or topics they return to, as you may want to come back and explore these with them in more detail.

Stage two – Getting to the detail

Review your notes and playback what you heard during stage one to check you captured everything correctly. Now ask some more specific follow-up questions to explore the detail behind the answers they initially gave. Then have them make a list of any positive experiences they can remember from the last 12 months. And now ask them to make a list of any negative thoughts or feelings they may have about this subject as it could be holding them back. You can use the answers from this more detailed questioning to explore their feelings and try to uncover where they come from, or what the triggers could be. The overall aim is to try to identify, and then work to remove any negative associations they may have so they can focus their energy on the things that make them feel happy or more positive.

Unlocking success in life