Coaching skills generally fall into two broad categories; Coach asking customized and responsive questions to clarify, explore, expand, or elicit further self-discovery by their coaching client. Coach sharing customized and responsive comments, informed by being present to what the coach...
Category: Coaching Mentoring Tips
Engaging in ethics clarifying conversations
One of the things we coaches need to become masterful at is the ability to have conversations with potential clients, as well as at any time within a coaching session with a current client, about the boundaries of coaching. I...
What is Process Partnering?
This article was originally published September 2017, and last updated February 2024. The ICF definition of coaching is, "Partnering with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential." Core Competency...
Exploring Space as a Coach
When looking up to the night sky, perhaps with a full moon over the ocean, what feeling do you experience? Even if you’ve never experienced exactly that scenario, simply gazing up to the night sky with stars, clouds and the...
How realistic is it to do pure coaching?
Mentoring clients studying coaching skills in my mentoring programs often ask whether doing “pure coaching” sessions is a realistic expectation. Pure coaching refers to when the coach stays in “coaching mindset” through an entire coaching session, refraining from giving unasked-for...
Finding center
Our world is complex, and our relationship with the world is complex. Our personal “world” and what is going on at any given time is also complex. There are known elements and unknown; both can be experienced feeling emotions ranging...
How to demonstrate more ICF core competencies by having a Coaching Plan
Note: This article has been updated in 2023. There’s an easy way for a coach to demonstrate more competencies in their coaching, which is by having a Coaching Plan for your coaching engagement. Definition of a Coaching Plan A Coaching...
Coaching client language of laughs and giggles
During a coaching session, a Professional Coach uses a range of coaching skills, including asking the client clarifying and discovery oriented questions, giving back their summaries or comments to the client, and offering observations, sensing or intuitive thoughts or feelings...
Let the client do the work
A common saying in coach training programs is that coaches ask questions, and offer observations, yet it’s the client who does “the work.” Along with another common saying; that coaches believe their clients to be “whole, resourceful and capable, and...
Coaching Client Identity
Especially in recent years, there’s been heightened focus on Identity. Yet Identity has been part of societies for every generation, in all cultures of the world. Whether it’s based in political, religious, racial, gender or age differences (to name a...