COACHING AS A COLLABORATION

When you coach, you collaborate. It’s inevitable. The questions that follow from that are: How well do you know that? How well do you act on that? All of the core competencies that you went through in your ACMC training were designed to enable you to be effective in collaborating with your client. That’s why you listen and support, question and meta-question, receive and give feedback. Of course, effective collaboration requires more— much more— but it begins here. This is the foundation for collaboration.

I recently discovered that simply stating this helped some coaches slow down and engage in more effective and active listening. Prior to that, their focus was on themselves— what they were doing and how much they were helping. Once they captured the idea that the coaching experience itself is a collaboration and that you, as the coach, have to earn the right and trust from your client to collaborate— they slowed down and created a much deeper and more intimate relationship.