Challenging Clients
Challenging clients should focus on discrepant, inconsistent and mixed messages that coaches perceive that clients send. Challenging is often thought of as a hostile and aggressive act. However, in coaching, challenging is usually a far more gentle process in which, the coach point out the client’s discrepancies between or among attitudes, thoughts, or behaviours. Clients are faced directly with the fact that they may be saying something different to what they mean or doing something different to what they say.
Challenging is about enabling someone to develop new perspectives and then turning these into action.
What challenging is and is not:
- It is not a verbal argument or a ‘head-on clash’
- It should be a tentative suggestion, not a declaration
- It is an observation, not an accusation
- It should be made only after careful deliberation
- It should never be used as retaliation or a put-down
- It is safest when the relationship is well established
The main areas of challenging in coaching involve challenging clients regarding unhelpful behaviours, patterns, actions or beliefs. These may manifest themselves in a number of forms such as:
Discrepancies, distortions and manipulations
- Use of excuses, manipulation, complacency, rationalisations, procrastination
- Negative thought patterns
- Use of games, stories and smoke screens
Type of Unhelpful Behaviour | Examples of Challenging Statements Coach Could Use |
Discrepancy | ‘When you arrived I observed a confident, dynamic person sitting opposite me, and yet this doesn’t seem to fit with the words I am hearing.’
‘On the one hand you say you want to grow your business, but on the other you are not prepared to invest your time and money.’ ‘You have mentioned to me several times that you hate arriving late for appointments, yet Ive noticed that you have been late for the last two sessions, and I’m wondering what that’s about.’ |
Distortion | ‘You say you feel really depressed, yet you laugh whenever you say that, as if it was nothing at all.’
‘You say you are not worried about raising the finance for the plan, yet you haven’t taken any action.’ ‘You say you feel isolated from your fellow directors, yet you shrug it off as though it’s not important.’ |
Type of Unhelpful Behaviour | Examples of Challenging Statements Coach Could Use |
Manipulation | ‘You say that you don’t think you are up to making such a major change which is why you haven’t implemented it. Yet you are clearly a resourceful person. You’re intelligent and motivated and have coped well with changes in the past.’
‘You say you are finding it difficult to decide whether you should adopt this strategy. Yet from other things you have told me, you strike me as a person who normally finds it easy to make decisions.’ |
Excuses | ‘You say you believe in taking responsibility for what you do, yet I hear you blaming your management team for everything that is wrong in your relationship with them’.
‘You say you want to go dismiss your Operations Manager, and yet it feels as though you are putting obstacles in the way when I hear you keep saying: “Yes but.” |
Complacency | ‘You say you’ve been worried about declining sales for six months, and it really gets you down. Yet in all that time you haven’t taken any specific action to resolve the problem.’
‘You say you would like a better relationship with your key customers. Yet for the past six months you have not met with a single one of them.’ |
Procrastination | ‘A month ago you moaned because you hadn’t made much progress on the development of new products. We discussed this and you agreed to draft a new product development plan, but now you’re telling me you haven’t done this.’
‘In our last session, you told me how important it was to you to reduce expenditure on overheads. Yet now you are telling me that you haven’t met with the management team to implement these savings.’ |
Type of Unhelpful Behaviour | Examples of Challenging Statements Coach Could Use |
Rationalisation | ‘Last time we met, you admitted that you keep putting off launching your new product line due to a lack of time. Now you’re saying you couldn’t do it because you need to focus on preparing next year’s budgets.’
‘In the last session, you told me you wanted to delegate more to your management team. Now you’re saying, none of them have the necessary skills and experience to take on more responsibility.’ |
Effective Challenging
Challenging clients should be preceded by careful consideration, for instance:
- What is the purpose of the challenging?
- Can you handle the consequences?
- Does the challenging relate to the here and now?
- Whose needs are being met by the challenging?
- Is the relationship well established enough for the challenging?
Coaches can help clients by challenging:
- Clients to speak for themselves
- Mixed messages and ‘stories’ they are telling themselves
- Distortions of reality or interpretation
- Clients where they do not acknowledging or recognise their choices
- Clients where they do not acknowledge their role and responsibilities
- Clients by helping them to reframing issues
Effective challenging usually contains elements of some of all of the following:
Challenging Technique | Description/Examples |
Reflecting | A reflection or summary of what the client has said so that the client feels heard and understood.
Always start your response by showing that you have heard and understood clients’ messages. Then build on this understanding with your challenging response. This way you are more likely to keep clients’ ears open to your viewpoint. Step 1: Make a statement about the coach’s feelings and position Step 2: Make a concrete statement about what the coach has noticed or observed |
Challenging clients to speak for themselves | Assisting clients in self-challenging often leads to less resistance than directly challenging them from your external viewpoint. By failing to send ‘I’ messages, clients can distance themselves from their feelings, thoughts and actions. Therefore, clients should be encouraged to use sentences starting with ‘I’.
Owning a feeling · Clients ‘non-I’ message: ‘He is impossible when he behaves like that.’ · Client’s ‘I’ message: ‘I feel hurt and frustrated at his behaviour.’ Frequently clients require help in speaking for themselves. Ways in which clients avoid speaking for themselves include making statements starting with words like ‘you’, ‘people’, ‘we’, and ‘it’.
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Challenging Technique | Description/Examples |
Challenging clients to speak for themselves | Owning a thought
Client’s ‘non-I’ message: ‘What do you think about women serving in the forces in combat roles?’ Client’s ‘I’ message: ‘I think women should/should not serve in the forces in combat roles.’ Owning an action Clients’ non- I message: ‘The car crashed into the garage door.’ Client’s ‘I’ message: ‘I crashed the car into the garage door.’ Sometimes clients avoid sending ‘I’ messages by asking questions, in the hope that they can agree with the answer. |
Challenging mixed messages | Mixed messages in a client’s communication can take any of the following forms:
· Discrepancy between verbal, voice and body messages: ‘On the one hand you say that you are nervous, but you smile.’ · Discrepancy within verbal messages: ‘You say you are doing poorly, but report being in the top 25 per cent of your class.’ · Discrepancy between words and actions: ‘You say you are a very committed person, but you take so many days off work.’ · Discrepancy between past and present statements: ‘You now say you do not want to do business overseas, but at our last meeting you were saying how you intend to expand into the European market.’ |
Challenging Technique | Description/Examples |
Challenging possible distortions of reality | Clients may have unrealistic perceptions that can harm rather than help them. Sometimes coaches need either to challenge such perceptions directly or to assist clients to test the reality of their own perceptions.
For example: ‘They are all out to get me.’ ‘I have no support at work.’ ‘I’m a terrible manager.’ ‘I’m not good at selling.’ ‘She doesn’t rate me as a leader.’ Reasons for such distortions Clients often jump to conclusions based on insufficient evidence and use black and white thinking (e.g. ‘Either, I’m perfect or no good at all’). They may also fail to take responsibility for their thoughts, feelings and actions (e.g. ‘They made me do it’). Coaches should use their judgment about whether to continue listening to the client’s internal viewpoints or to challenge their possible distortions of reality. Use questions such as ‘Where’s the evidence?’ and ‘Is there any other way of looking at that?’ in order to invite your client to produce their own evidence or provide different perceptions to confirm or negate their version of reality. On other occasions you may suggest some evidence from your external viewpoint. |
Challenging by reframing | Coaches may also challenge clients’ existing perceptions by offering new perspectives. Though the facts may remain the same, the picture may look different in a new frame.
Sometimes a skilful coach can change the way a client perceives events or situations by ‘reframing’ the picture which the client has described. Reframing means seeing these negative qualities in a different light. |
When challenging, remember:
- Use a minimum amount of ‘muscle’. Only challenge as strongly as your goal requires. Strong challenges can create resistances
- Do not talk down or threaten. Avoid threatening voice and body messages, such as raising your voice and pointing your finger
- Do not overdo it.No one likes being persistently challenged. With constant challenges,\ you create an unsafe emotional climate
- Leave the ultimate responsibility with the client. Allow the client to decide whether your challenges actually help them to move forward in their explorations
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