Characteristics of Effective Coaching

Coaching is a vehicle for helping you learn a specific skill or achieve your goals in a specific area of life.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player. We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve. – Bill Gates

There are many different types of coaches to choose from such as lifestyle coach, career coach, spiritual coach, relationship coach, leadership coach, financial coach, health and wellness coach, or sports coach, to name a few.

Your coach serves as a guide, rather than an advisor, drawing on his or her expertise to lead you through the process of setting and reaching goals, developing your skills and abilities in a specific area, enhancing your performance, broadening your thinking, building confidence, and achieving your full potential.

Effective coaching involves structured interactions and appropriate strategies, with the primary objective being your success in the endeavor.

Characteristics of Effective Coaching

Whether you are being coached individually, in the workplace, or as part of a sports team, certain common elements are key to effective coaching. A good coach is positive, enthusiastic, supportive, focused, goal-oriented, knowledgeable, observant, patient, motivating, and a clear communicator. He or she…

• Establishes rapport and builds trust and a personal connection with the client.
• Provides clear instructions, feedback, and guidance.
• Is fully present and focused.
• Listens carefully and thoughtfully and looks to understand rather than judge.
• Brings out the best in the client by being supportive and radiating positive energy.
• Asks open-ended questions to encourage self-reflection and self-awareness, and helps client look for alternative solutions to problems.
• Asks relevant, probing questions to help the client think through a problem or situation, draw his or her conclusions, and find the answer him or herself.
• Has strong assessment, reflection, and clarification skills, and provides constructive feedback to help the client gain insight on behaviors that need to be changed or aimed for gaps or inconsistencies, and current performance versus desired performance.
• Inspires action by helping the client create clear objectives, identify steps needed to meet them, and write out an action plan with specific, measurable, achievable goals and a timeline for achieving them.
• Drives results by breaking down the coaching process into small objectives that can be strategically sequenced to make sure no stage is skipped or bypassed.
• Keeps the client on track and motivated by recognizing efforts, praising accomplishments no matter how small, and celebrating milestones.
• Tracks attention and engagement during coaching sessions and makes adjustments if the client’s attention starts to wane.
• Instead of criticism or negative feedback, keeps the tone of the coaching session positive, solution-focused, and action-oriented.
• Follows up between sessions to evaluate the effectiveness of the coaching process and provide accountability.
• Helps the client maximize his or her full potential, overcome hurdles, and achieve success by guiding him or her through the process needed to bring about the transformation.

If you are interested in pursuing coaching or learning more about it, please give us a call at Orange County Christian Counseling. We would be happy to answer your questions or set up an appointment for you to meet with one of the faith-based counselors in our online directory.