Precisely discovering the agenda of your coaching client’s heart brings a great increase of peace and efficiency to your efforts as a coach. “Finding the agenda” sounds like basic coaching 101—and it is. However the way I have seen this work sometimes among coaches is that a well trained coach will ask his client, “What is it you would like to talk about today?” or some variation of that question. The client will respond with their thoughts on the agenda, but often won’t really give the bulls-eye topic of their heart. This puts more work on the coach, who mush utilize discernment and ask questions to narrow the agenda. This can take ten minutes or more because a good coach fully understands the need to get a specific agenda.
Actually, this is the antithesis of true coaching values because this puts the responsibility to clarify the agenda on the coach instead of the client. Yet the client knows their life and issues and is, by far, the most qualified to nail this down.
In my effort to become ICF certified, I hired a professionally certified coach in Chicago, Julie Colbrese, (PCC), to mentor me in my coaching, which is a requirement for the certification. She is also an executive coach for Vistage Worldwide, the world’s leading peer advisory group. She taught me a simple technique that is used by Vistage and I have been using it for the last 4-5 months in my coaching. I have seen stunning results with this tool. Ask the client to fill in the blank on this short sentence regarding their topic: “How do I___________?” Sometimes the client may feel a little awkward using this exact structure because it is unfamiliar phraseology. And often they pause to reflect on the answer, which is them doing the clarifying work needed. When I first began to use this tool I was a little reticent in its use because of the unusual effort I was seeing as the client filled in the blank. In sticking with it I found the benefits to be outstanding, especially in seeing the client step up in an ownership perspective with the challenge or opportunity that they were facing. The “I” in the phrase focuses this issue toward forward action by the client. It is one of the very few exceptions to “using the client’s own words”. I love the fact that the coach just chooses three framing words and the blank is left to the client.
Sometimes getting this question answered is not done easily. The client may fill in the blank with three long sentences, or with general statements and a variety of related topics. So we challenge the client to make it concise, focused and truly authentic. We politely ask them to redo the exercise using a short phrase. “The hard part, for many coaches, is staying silent while the client finds their own words.”* Getting this concise agenda brings so much clarity of orientation in your coaching. It is like finding the point of the map you are sailing to, which makes rudder control so much easier. Why not make it easier to coach?
Since guiding the conversation is the coach’s responsibility, it makes sense to be quick and precise about where your client really wants to go as soon as possible in the coaching session. And when you find the bulls-eye, stay true to it as you serve your client.
Martin Flack
Vistage Chair
Riverstone Coaching & Consulting
Riverstonecoaching.com
- Julie Colbrese, PCC, HotCoffeeCoaching.com