Thought Exchange: The Blog of Jonathan Reitz

There’s a question we use in cnLaunch (the first unit in CoachNet’s coach training process) that illustrates the power of an open-ended question. The question is “How can you increase the learning in this situation?”

It’s a solid, open-ended question. It opens up possibilities for the person you’re coaching. You can’t answer this question with a simple, thoughtless answer. You have to work.

But there’s one problem: I’d never say “How can you increase the learning…” Would you?

Not every question works for every coach. This question doesn’t work for me because I just don’t talk that way. “Increasing the learning” just doesn’t flow out of my mouth.

But you know what? I can think of several coaches who not only can say this question 100% naturally, they have used it to great effect!

Here’s what makes the difference: You have to know yourself to the point where you know what you can say and what you can’t.

This doesn’t just apply to question choice or word choice. It runs all the way through your coaching. Maybe think about it like this: You have to understand what you’re bringing into the coaching relationship. Effective coaches understand themselves at a high level. If you don’t, you are cutting the legs out from your coaching effectiveness.

The best coaches bring three things into their coaching relationships. What do you carry into your coaching every time out?

What are your values and how do they inform your coaching? Coaches who have high levels of clarity about their values understand HOW they interact with their clients and what clients can expect from the coaching relationship.

What experience do you have that would be valuable? Effective coaches use their experience to frame questions that dig beneath the surface. That’s the ideal use of experience, but you do have to guard against predicting outcomes or insisting on a particular plan because of your experience. Be especially careful about telling your own stories, unless you have a moment where you re-orient the story to be useful to the client.

What attitudes or beliefs do you have that are helpful? A coach I know believes that coaching is the ideal way to help congregations get unstuck. He carries that into every coaching conversation. It makes him more effective.

What are you good at? What questions flow naturally in your coaching conversations? When are your personal experiences helpful? How can you draw insight and wisdome out of your clients? What are your strengths and gifts? What’s your vision for coaching?

Here’s one final thought: People often just want you to listen. There are seasons in just about every relationship where the person you’re working with just needs a friendly ear. A high commitment to listening is one of the key foundational issues for any coaching relationship. Always listen a little longer than is easily comfortable.

What do you bring into your coaching? How do you ensure that those things are useful to your client? I’d love to hear in the comments.

A few years ago–before I was married–I heard a sermon series about ways to build love that lasts. I wasn’t even thinking about getting married at the time–I thought I was called to be single–but one concept really changed the way I think about relationships, not just marriages.

The pastor of my church had built a whole series around Dr. Willard Harley’s concept of The Love Bank. The idea is that every one of us has an account in our Love Bank for every other person with whom we have a relationship. We make deposits, driving the balance up. When we goof up, we make withdrawals, driving the balance down. Dr. Harley builds an entire marriage philosophy around the idea that our spouse should always have a big, positive balance. If we’re diligent about maintaining the positive balance, our marriage gets stronger because it’s built on that large, positive cushion. We always operate from abundance, in this case, an abundance of love.

What a simple, easy idea about how to treat the people who are most important to us!

Coaching works on a similar idea, but it’s not love (though it’s probably grounded in a love for people). Coaches strive to maintain a positive Help Balance in their Coaching Bank.

If coaching is a relationship focused on God’s purpose that facilitates change and accomplishes the client’s purpose(s)–which it is!–then one of the key measures of effectiveness is how helpful a coaching relationship is in bringing the client’s goals to life. Maintaining a positive Help Balance is a good running measurement.

Here’s how it works: A client designs an action that is intended to move them toward their purpose. The coach has a role in identifying and structuring that action. If you’ve made a positive contribution in that design, you make a deposit! If you’re not helpful or you work against it, well, that’s a withdrawal. The more positive–the more helpful–you are, the bigger your balance gets.

This is a key orientation for coaches. Be helpful to your clients!

You’re helpful when you come alongside a client to draw out an action–any action–that moves the client closer to their goal. Lots of coaches are almost judgmental about the actions their clients choose. That’s NOT helpful!

A good rule of thumb is to ask the client to connect how the action will move them closer to the goal. If they can’t, ask another question to re-evaluate the action under consideration. (The action should also align with the bigger picture plan–remember, actions are individual steps toward a goal–or tactics–and plans are initiatives made up of multiple actions that cover a lot of ground over the course of a coaching relationship.)

Another helpful coaching behavior is to commit to going deep by default. Listen a little longer than is comfortable. Ask “What” questions that invite deeper reflection. When your coaching gets a client to work on the cause of situation and not the details, you are automatically making a Help Deposit.

The bigger your Help Balance is, the more likely you are to get extended contracts, referrals, and to build a sterling reputation.

What are your best strategies for building a big Help Balance with your clients? Please put them in the comments below!

You’ve probably heard a line like “This and $4 will get you a cup of coffee…:

Think about when someone says something like this. They offer their opinion and say, “Well, that and $4–6 dollars will get you a cup of coffee.” My depression-era parents used to talk about adding a nickel to an opinion, but hey, times have changed. Stuff costs more.

A statement like this is often intended to be self-deprecating. I get the use of humor in a comment like this, it releases tension. We make a joke because we’re a little bit uncomfortable. Three common scenarios cause this for a coach.

First, there has to be a cost for the person being coached. Coaching is one of the most effective ways to help someone change. If you’re reading this blog, you know coaching works. Effective coaches don’t shy away from the fact that the client will have to put something at risk to get what they want. The moment where that sets in can be a little tense, but the cost is worth it. A bit of self-deprecating humor can help if it builds commitment for the client. If that moment is a distraction, then, it’s probably not worth it. Learning to assess the value of a break in the tension in the moment is a high level coaching skill that speaks to the coach’s self-awareness.

Second, tension rises when the coach is on the verge of offering some input or feedback of their own. You might be about to bottom line the client. Or you’re seeing a chance to throw out some of your experience. Is it worth it, to step out of the formal coach role? We want to offer our opinions, but for whatever reason, we’re really sensitive to forcing those opinions on others. This seems to me to be a good thing.

I think something much deeper is also going on. We have a tendency to mitigate the risk of putting our thoughts, opinions, or values out there. The only time this is real is when our own experience is truly helpful for the client. Always, always, always remember that we can offer some of our own experience, but it’s the client’s choice whether to accept it and what to do with it.

Third, tension JUMPS up when the financial cost of the coaching relationship is presented. Every coach I know–who’s any good–has a moment of hesitation when the price is first discussed. Jokes seem like a great tension-breaker. But do you really believe that what you offer is worth it? If not, you should lower your prices! If you do, fight the urge to joke right then. FIGHT IT! The client is in for a battle. Change is hard. If you don’t believe you can help (and that the battle, with all of it’s connected costs) will be worth it, YOU have more hard questions to answer than the client does.

A little tension is helpful…it makes us better as coaches and helps us stay fully present in the relationship. But too much tension about the worth of what you’re offering is a nail in the coffin of your coaching career.

If you’re convinced you’re not worth the cost, you have two options: 1) rethink your pricing or 2) get better. There are plenty of good training and mentoring options available to you. (Check out CoachNet’s here.) You can become a MUCH better coach with a little additional training.

There is a cost for everything worth doing. What are you willing to pay? I’d love to see your comments below.

This particular client and I had been circling an issue for 40 minutes or so. I was doing my best, asking open ended questions and inviting him to say more. He was stuck. The rut was getting deeper with every question. Finally, he said “Why don’t you tell me what you see?”

This is the danger zone for a coach. The client has asked for your opinion–you probably have one–and given you permission to express it. The effectiveness of this coaching session hangs in the balance…as does your coaching presence. What’s a coach to do?

I’ve developed a couple strategies for this situation, but they all work basically the same way: I ask the client what’s holding them back, in some level of bluntness, and I offer something to see see if the client picks it up. In this particular case I said: “I see a guy who’s stuck. What are you avoiding that is keeping you stuck?”

It was bold and risky. I didn’t know for sure that there was something he was avoiding, but my intuition was telling me there was.

The client didn’t say anything for a long time. The he stammered, “Well, there is one issue that I haven’t wanted to bring up…”

He then unpacked an item that, on the surface, only seemed loosely related to what we were working on. But the longer he talked, the more directly connected it became. The client had hesitated because it was a key issue that he himself had caused.

Before too long, he was seeing another way forward that was totally different than the place where he was stuck. He had had a significant shift in what he was expecting from himself and from his situation

There is nothing better than a moment in your coaching conversations when the lightbulb goes on for you your client. All of a sudden they get it.

The lesson we can learn from this story is that often the Presenting Symptom is different that the Key Issue.

The Presenting Symptom or Issue is what appears to be going on. It’s the thing that demands the majority of the time in the early phases of the coaching relationship. We can easily get caught up in the presenting symptom and miss the thing that will really help our clients change. The presenting issue is valuable to understand, because it often points to the root cause of the situation (which points to the solution).

The Key Issue is what needs to be addressed to facilitate a lasting and meaningful change in a particular situation. It’s not always easy to see, but working on it always leads to a meaningful shift, even if you have to take more than one pass at it.

Think of the Key Issue was what’s really going on in a situation. Here’s a metaphor I like: Picture a cool, calm morning next to the ocean. You’re walking along the beach, and the water is still. The surface of the water is the presenting symptom. It seems calm and tranquil. Like there’s nothing but good things going on. (Often this is what the initial conversations of a coaching relationship are like.)

But then a scuba diver walks down the beach and dives into the water. What do you think they’re seeing? Underwater life, the coral reef, plants, fish, maybe a shipwreck and even the occasional shark or other marine predator! With this perspective, what could you work on? What conversation could you have? Picking out an area to focus your efforts on that can really make a difference is MUCH easier and more effective when you have this perspective under the surface.

The ICF coaching competency of Powerful Questioning is really what it takes to get beneath the surfacte. The conversation centers on the key question: what’s really going on? And that is among the scariest questions a coach can ask because the answer requires us to be honest with ourselves.

Why do we hesitate to be honest with ourselves? Our own hesitance is the single biggest reason why coaching relationships don’t get to the heart of the issue. Effective coaches partner with their clients to overcome that hesitation and dig through the layers of the story to what’s really going on.

Here are six reasons why going through the layers of a story can be tough to do:

1. You don’t have enough relationship established with the client. It can be scary to talk about what’s really going on in a situation with someone you know well…now imagine the fear that can take over when you are a little bit uncertain about your relationship with the other person. Building a better relationship allows you to go deeper. The most effective coaches build deep and meaningful relationships by default.

2. The client is in a hurry to see things change. Digging beneath the surface takes time. No two ways about it. A rush to outcomes can often mean that the exploration needed to really understand what’s going on can be missed. Effective coaches know how to help their clients slow down and take a second look at what is actually going on in a giving situation.

3. Human beings don’t always want to talk about areas where they need growth. This is just a fact of life. Our self image is built on the things we think we get right about ourselves. Growth means change, and it’s tempting to connect change with something that we’ve gotten wrong about ourselves. If we avoid it, we don’t have to acknowledge that maybe we’ve gotten this part of our self image wrong. Effective coaches give clients permission to explore areas where they can grow, without falling into guilt or shame.

4. The client doesn’t actually know what’s going on…yet. One of the key questions I ask myself during an intake process is “What level of self awareness does this client have?” The follow up question to this one is “How will that help/harm the coaching we’ll do?” Coaching an individual with low self awareness makes digging beneath the surface much more difficult. Effective coaches help clients understand how they are coming across to others and what the implications of their actions might be.

5. Sometimes we identify the key issues incorrectly. Nobody wants to admit this, but there are moments when we just plain diagnose the situation inaccurately. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. The world’s greatest coaches have done it. The key is what you do AFTER you’ve realized that you’ve made a mis-assessment. Effective coaches come alongside their clients to identify activity in a situation first, and then reflect on what is causing the activity. Always start with what you can see and then go beneath the surface.

6. Hard work is, well, HARD WORK. Surface level assessments are easy. They take no effort at all. Sometimes factoring in all the pieces of what’s really going on takes work. It can be hard. Time is one concern, but the effort involved can scare us off too. Effective coaches help their clients see the benefit of digging deep and how it might pay off down the road.

What has kept you and your clients from going beneath the surface? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!