Establishing a Coaching Relationship

SUMMARY

You've decided to give this coaching thing a go and coach your people in your organisation, but you're not sure where to start.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence speaker and trainer of the year and master coach trainer. Today I want to continue our conversation around coaching and mentoring others by helping you to know how to establish a coaching relationship.

In this week's episode, I will give you five key areas to focus on when you are establishing the relationship. 

1. Form a safe zone.
2. Demonstrate your commitment.
3. Set clear expectations.
4. Create a plan.
5. Reflect and Review.

Establishing the coaching relationship and maintaining that as you build and go through the journey together is critical for any leader and coaching methodology.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue the conversation around coaching and mentoring by putting together a framework for the coaching conversation.

I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

You've decided to give this coaching thing a go and coach your people in your organisation, but you're not sure where to start.

Well, stick with me because this week, I want to help you know exactly the first steps to take.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence speaker and trainer of the year and master coach trainer. Today I want to continue our conversation around coaching and mentoring others by helping you to know how to establish a coaching relationship.

Coaching is a mutually beneficial collaboration between a coach and a coachee. Like anything with humans involved, it's all centred around relationship.

Yes, there are certain skills that you need to have. You need to use frameworks (I talked to you about this last week.) However, coaching is about having a conversation or a series of conversations with another human being. So, establishing a relationship upfront and then working on that relationship as you go through it is vital for the success of any coaching situation.

I want to give you five key areas to focus on when you are establishing the relationship. Then we'll go further (continuing in the month) on the other skills that you need actually to make that work.

1. Form a safe zone.

A lot of people fear coaching. They do because they fear that they're going to be found out. As human beings, operating in the universal challenges of not being good enough, not belonging, and not being liked or loved, having someone who wants to talk about you and your life can sometimes be scary for people.

“What's it all about?”

“What's it going to do?”

“Who's going to know about it?”

These are all important questions that are going through the coachee's mind.

As a coach and as someone working as a leader in an organisation within your team, you too might fear that the situation ahead of you has some challenges - some things that you're not quite sure where they're going to go.

So, the first step is to make sure for both of you that there is a feeling of safety; that the person that you're working with knows that this is going to be a place where they can come, open up, be vulnerable, bring everything and take off that mask that they normally wear and be the real them.

When that is established, the coaching goes deeper -- it's not surface level that goes nowhere.

How do you do this?

You want to build trust. And trust is not built immediately; trust is built over time.

Although this is at the start of establishing the relationship, it's tested, and there are many opportunities as the relationship continues to build on this. What I like to do, firstly, is to state that it is a safe zone. Starting with someone I'm new with, and I'm going to be coaching, I want to set some parameters around that for them to know what's going to happen. The fear of the unknown can be overcome with communication.

So by explaining to them that the relationship is a safe zone, that there will be no judgment in your relationship, and that it will be a place that will allow them to be open and vulnerable. It will be a place where they speak openly and truthfully. So, you help them understand the confidentiality.

For example, when I'm working in an executive coaching situation where I have someone that I'm going to be coaching that someone else has asked me to coach, I first get those three people together. And I establish this bond of confidentiality; where I will say:

“When I am coaching, you and I will be having some conversations. Those conversations will only be between you and me. Since I'm working for your organisation, there's a need for me to give them updates. However, that's going to be in context. So, the content of what you and I talk about, that's between you and me.”

And I sometimes find that people drop little hints of things that they want to tell people. So, I make sure that they know that they have to tell me for me to do that. Because unless they do, I will do nothing to break that confidentiality and trust.

So, making sure that they understand that they are in a position where they can feel safe and in control by being a leader who lets the coachee lead. Having a balance in that will help people feel like this is going to be something that will be beneficial to them, rather than be something to be afraid of.

2. Demonstrate your commitment.

I know that as a leader you've got many things to do. I also know that a lot of leaders see coaching as “something else” that they have to do.

As I said last week: In my experience, being a coach and using a coaching methodology actually helps you to get more done. Because if you develop strong relationships with your people, if you're able to help them overcome the hurdles that they're facing, if you facilitate an environment where they can grow, they're going to get more done without you needing to be involved; and everybody wins.

Demonstrating your commitment is a communication thing.

To say something like:

"I'm here for you for the term.”

For example, you might have something that you're going to be doing for the next 12 months. So demonstrating that you are going to be there:

“I'm going to be committed to you.”

“I'm going to be committed to the times that we put in our calendar.”

“ I'm going to turn up, ready to coach you.”

“I'm going to leave everything else out of my mind and focus totally on you.”

So, demonstrating that you're going to turn up and be present sets an expectation for them as well.

3. Set clear expectations.

Coaching is a collaboration -- it's a two-way street. Allowing both parties to set clear expectations of what each other is to bring into the relationship is really important.

Make sure what behaviour is accepted, how you will show up, and what is set in terms of accountability, all those things are really important, so it doesn't become a surprise.

So, setting expectations up front before entering into the relationship helps you refer back to those expectations when things go off the rails.

One of the things I used to use in a lot of my executive coaching was asking my clients this simple question:

“If you stopped doing what you say you're going to do along the journey, what do you want me to do?”

Then they would come back with something like:

“Tell me to stop wasting your time and my money.”

So, setting clear expectations of what's going to happen along the way, setting a clear expectation as to what you will bring as a coach, and setting a clear expectation of what is expected of them as a coachee.

It's just like any other area of working with people, when there's no ambiguity, everybody knows the expected boundaries and behaviours, what will happen moving forward, and the consequences of that not working.

That's what each other needs.

So, make sure the expectations are clear and agree on those before moving forward.

4. Create a plan.

Coaching is a journey, and every journey needs a plan.

I like to use my R4 method, where I look at the results they want to see from the coaching. Bring that back and look at the reality of how that's different right now. Knowing exactly what the roadblocks are stopping them from going from where they are now to where they want to go, and then looking at what resources you need to add to overcome those roadblocks.

Put that in a framework and a calendar, so everybody knows when and where you will meet. And these days, how?

Is it going to be online?

Is it going to be this amount of times each month?

And lock all that in at the start.

Having a plan around what you're going to work on, having a plan around how that's going to be measured, and making sure that there are check-ins and milestones and all the things that we need.

Just like when you are running a project: when there's a plan in place, you can commit to that plan.

And when both the coach and the coachee are committed, you can make slight adjustments as you go along (if needed.)

5. Reflect and Review.

Because you have a plan, you can have an element of flexibility in that; if things happen, you can shift, adjust and tweak as you need to.

What you can also do, even though you’ve set an intention for what the coaching is about, is, as other things come up and as the skills within those particular areas might change, you can shift direction.

However, you do that within the same planned framework that you have. You might continue to meet with the same regularity. However, the length of time within each coaching session might change. That tends to happen with what I'm doing in my executive coaching: I might start with a 45-minute-every-two-weeks coaching, but when I’m two-thirds of the way into it, we might check in, and we're together for nine minutes, but we're inside that framework.

So make sure that you can reflect with forward focus on what's working well, what needs to shift, what results have already been achieved and having an open communication environment that says: If, for some reason, trust is being eroded or there's a change in commitment or any of those things that pop up that safe zone is still there to be able to bring that up and go:

“Hey, I'm not getting what I wanted to get out of this anymore.”

“Things have changed.”

Whatever it is.

So, to be able to speak to the behaviours, not the person, tweak that, adjust it, realign and continue with the coaching.

Establishing the coaching relationship and maintaining that as you build and go through the journey together is critical for any leader and coaching methodology.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue the conversation around coaching and mentoring by putting together a framework for the coaching conversation.

I'll see you then.