Tag Archives: masterful coaching
Establishing the Coaching Agreement: The Misunderstood Competency
ICF’s explanation of this competency is the “Ability to understand what is required in the specific coaching interaction and to come to agreement with the prospective and new client about the coaching process and relationship.” Many coaches take this to mean that it’s all about the coaching contract and all the logistics around the coaching relationship. However, as ICF assessors, we are instructed to apply this competency to determine how coach creates an agreement with a client about the topic and the results that are expected from each given coaching session. It’s one of the most important and yet one of the most misunderstood competencies. And, for a masterful coaching (MCC), establishing “what is required in the specific coaching interaction” needs to be thoroughly explored before moving on to the rest of the session. In my personal experience, exploring what my client really wants often resolves the very issue at hand. What is your understanding and experience with this competency?
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Is establishing a coaching agreement necessary at the start of every session?
First, what is a coaching agreement? It is simply an agreement between coach and client about the work they are going to do together and the benefits the client is looking to get. I feel it is imperative to establish it at the beginning of every coaching session.
When we are talking about a masterful coaching, we must first establish what constitutes “coaching”. There are must be specific guidelines that separate coaching from other modalities — and I feel that creating a coaching agreement is one of those important guidelines. It is especially imperative — as other related professions use similar skill sets. Therefore, it would be a mistake to think that just because we listened deeply, mirrored back what our client said, and asked good questions, that those actions alone would constitute a successful coaching session. It would also be erroneous to think that “it’s coaching” as long as our client benefited from the session. People benefit from talking to a good friend, a priest, a rabbi, their therapist, or a social worker. So, to call ourselves professional coaches, we must establish a coaching agreement. It honors and encourages the client’s ability to determine what would be most useful to work on. It gets them to take charge and to be responsible. However, establishing an agreement doesn’t mean that we necessarily must have a “topic” or shoot for specific “results.” Even though we usually do have a coaching topic and shoot for results, a masterful coach can establish an open-ended coaching agreement by simply mirroring what she heard or intuited to be her client’s desire for the session. An example of such an agreement could be: “It sounds as though you’d like to spend our time sharing with me and speaking your mind about this issue. Is that so?”
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