Stage 1: Engaging
Fundamental Skills used by the High Growth Enterprise Coach during the Engaging Stage of the High Growth Enterprise Coaching Cycle
Building Rapport with Clients
Rapport is the foundation of all effective coaching relationships. Without enough rapport coaches are unlikely to have the necessary level of trust and respect from clients; they are unlikely to be able to ask sufficiently probing and challenging questions; they are not going to have the leverage to demand the best for their clients.
Building rapport is not about being liked although this is usually one of the bi-products of establishing high levels of rapport. Rapport is a two-way notion. It is about the quality of the interaction between the Coach and the client. It is about trust, honouring commitments and promises; it is about doing the right thing and being sufficiently comfortable to be able to disclose highly sensitive, confidential and often personal information, feelings and beliefs.
High Growth Enterprise Coaches help clients to develop extraordinary levels of focus and commitment to achieving their goals. To achieve this, coaches must ensure that clients are 100% present during every coaching session and that they leave sessions with the commitment and confidence to achieve their goals and vision.
Setting up the relationship right at the beginning involves understanding the client, their goals and aspirations and ensuring that they are committed to following through and doing the hard work that follows a coaching session.
At the beginning of each coaching session, it is important for coaches to spent time re-establishing the relationship. Often clients come to meetings with other issues on their minds and therefore coaches need to help clients to be mentally present through additional rapport building.
“Two of the main reasons why people do not achieve their goals are [1] they lose their focus and [2] they do not have sufficient motivation and commitment” – John Moore
Explaining, Discussing and Agreeing the Format and Outcomes of the Coaching
This includes:
- Helping clients to define their requirements
- Discussing client expectations of the coaching to be delivered
- Explaining the role and responsibilities of the High Growth Enterprise Coach
- Clarifying client roles and responsibilities in the coaching process
- Agreeing the coaching process with clients
- Exploring with clients what they want to achieve from the coaching
- Agreeing with clients the planned outcomes of the coaching
- Confirming understanding of client requirements and planned outcomes before moving on
During the engaging stage of the High Growth Enterprise Coaching Cycle, it is essential to lay the ground rules for the remainder of the programme of coaching. This means that the Coach and client need to fully explore what each of them expects from the programme, to ensure that these are compatible and that the Coach believes that he is the right person to help the client to achieve his desired outcomes.
Some clients are not looking for a coach, but for someone to do their job; take the difficult decisions for them; to tell them what to do; or to show them how to do it. Therefore, one of the important discussions between coaches and clients before the coaching process begins is about the client’s expectations and goals for the coaching.
In addition to establishing the goals and objectives of the High Growth Enterprise Coaching programme, coaches need to establish the goals and objectives for individual coaching sessions. Clarity of goals and objectives helps to provide purpose, direction and a measurement against which progress can be measured.
Managing client expectations is essential. Some coaches are able to and are willing to take on role some aspects of the consulting role and other are not. Some clients may require considerable education and training whilst others might require more of a life coach than a business coach
Having agreed what roles the Coach may be called on to adopt, it is important for the client and coach to fully agree on the expectations that the Coach will have of the client in terms of frequency, duration and format of meetings, commitment to completion of action plans between meetings, openness about aspects of the business, payment terms and so on.
Everything that is agreed needs to be recorded so that it can be referred to during the programme of coaching and stands as a record in case of disagreement.
Inviting Clients to Review and Reflect on the Previous Action Plan
Reviewing and reflecting on previous actions plans should be one of the first actions of any client meeting. The clearer the action plans, the easier this is to accomplish.
Reviewing is important as it is part of holding clients to account, but also allows for any changes that have taken place to be considered.
Plans are working documents and as such should be frequently updated to take account of new information which has been collected as part of a review of progress. There is no point in continuing to implement a plan if it has been identified that:
- It is not achieving what it was designed to achieve
- The objective has changed
- It is resulting in unintended negative consequences
- It is proving difficult to implement
Therefore, when reviewing progress, the Coach should always check the above points and agree appropriate changes to the plan.
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