Tag Archives: coaching agreement
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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Attention and Intention in Coaching
How effective is intention without attention? To what extent are these two concepts connected and dependent on one another? If we have an intention but don’t follow through with it, it means that it’s lacking attention. Attention is our focus — our mental and emotional energy. Without that energy, intention is dead. On the other hand, attention alone is not directed to anything. It’s like an empty vessel. We need to know what to direct our attention towards. That’s where our intention comes into play. Intention is the meaning and the engine that moves us forward to where we intend to go. Intention gives us the direction. So, in that sense, the intention can be viewed as something we define when we ask our clients what they want to work on as we establish our coaching agreement. And attention is that space of mental energy and focus that is provided during our coaching sessions.