Like many professional practices, coaching is one that takes energy, time and focus. And in order to do a good job, we need to be as prepared as possible for our upcoming session.
This article shares some ideas about how to be prepared for coaching sessions, to give you and your coachee the best chance of having a positive experience. These are personal reflections, plus ideas from fellow coaches. You may have other ideas and approaches that work well, and if so, do follow them too – and feel free to share them with us!
Understand yourself and your tendencies
When Socrates said “know thyself” he probably wasn’t thinking about preparing for coaching sessions (or perhaps he was!). We all have default behaviours, some of which are useful and some of which are less so! For example, if our tendency is to cram our diaries full, then this is unhelpful for preparing for a coaching session. If we know that we worry if we aren’t fully prepared, then this is useful to know and to reflect on.
Ask yourself questions, including:
- What tendencies do I have that will help me to feel relaxed and prepared?
- What tendencies do I have that may do the opposite?!
- What do I notice about myself if I feel under prepared?
- What gets in the way of being and feeling fully prepared?
When you have answered these questions, make some notes as to actions that you may want to take on a regular basis, to help you be and feel fully prepared.
And before each coaching session, ask further questions including
- How do I feel at the moment?
- How focussed am I?
- What do I need now?
- How prepared am I for coaching today?
Trust your memory, and do some checking
Prior to starting a follow-up coaching session, there is a temptation to review your notes from previous sessions, perhaps even listen to the audio of the session again. This is a good idea, and can be very useful.
BUT… before reviewing any written information, try simply recalling the last session. Sit for a moment and see what comes to mind. Do you remember.
- The main topic or theme discuss
- The actions that the coachee left with
- Significant moments or milestones within the session
- Any significant sharing that your coachee did
- Your own feelings that you were having during the session
- Even procedural things like what each of you were wearing, what the weather was like, what time of day you met
It doesn’t matter how much or how little you recall. Trying to do some recalling gives us opportunities to see what comes from our memories. And after we have done this recall exercise, we can then review our notes and see what we wrote down.
To find out more about memory techniques that can help with this, you can read this blog post I wrote on memory skills for coaches.
Ringfence the time prior to the session
Whether it is 15 minutes or an hour (fat chance!), it is incredibly useful to sit and take a few moments before the coaching session, to centre yourself and be clear of distractions of incoming information. There isn’t one single thing that is better to do than another. Many people like to do deep breathing, a little meditation, a walk round the block or just sit quietly. Others like to write notes, read their previous notes, do active planning. Whatever your approach, it’s up to you. But do know there is a risk of not ringfencing the time, of bringing in your energy from the rest of the day into the coaching session.
Check in with yourself
Have you ever noticed times when you are “not quite yourself”? Perhaps you were being a bit frantic, distracted or struggling to concentrate. This can happen with any number of triggers, or even with no trigger.
It’s really useful to check in, to notice how you are feeling, and to make sure that unhelpful behaviours haven’t crept in. I have often caught myself being a bit frantic, especially before a training session. And there have been times when I haven’t noticed this, because I haven’t checked in.
It’s not easy to be our own observer, but it is incredibly useful. If we notice that we are being a certain way that isn’t helpful, that’s half the battle. It gives us a chance to make some changes, adjust our behaviours and re-centre ourselves
Have your ritual, but be adaptable
The idea of having a ritual of things that we do can be very important. We can go onto automatic pilot for the few minutes before our coaching sessions, and do our breathing, study our notes or go for our walk. Having this ritual or routine well established is really useful, as it gives us ownership of our behaviours. Of course, we may adjust our
routines, but it’s probably better to not do this too frequently. There will always be new things to do or to try, and if we are incessantly looking for the new activity for the ritual, it’s hard to settle into something useful.
Being adaptable is also important. If we tell ourselves that we “need” our ritual, then we may be unsettled if external circumstances means that we can’t do our ritual. An unexpected phone call, an interruption, a tech problem all may mean that we can’t follow our ritual. And if this happens, we need to be ok with going into a session in less than ideal circumstances. Believing that we can bring ourselves to a good and clear place very quickly, under less than perfect circumstances, is really helpful.
And of course, after the session has ended
The temptation for busy people is to rush onto the next thing after a coaching session has finished. Especially if it is squeezed into a busy day, between meetings, before school pick up, or other commitments.
It is well, well worth giving yourself a few minutes straight after each coaching session to reflect, write our summary notes (both our client notes and our reflective journals), and to embed any learning. Coaches in training may be tempted to do nothing at the end of the session, and to wait until you have enough time to listen to the audio and write up detailed notes. This kind of reflection is also something to bring to coaching supervision. I suggest that, even if you plan on doing deep reflection later, still give yourself a few minutes straight after every session. That way, your immediate thoughts will be recorded and consolidated.
Last thoughts on this topic
Many coaches will be following plenty of the guidance from this article. And many more may not, because of the pressures of busy lives, or because of not having worked out a system. My encouragement is that you take action in this area, as a gesture of empowerment for both you and your coachee. There is nothing (apart from some time!) to lose.
I hope that some of these ideas work well for you and that they have a good impact. And if you have any other ideas of ways to prepare, then do share them with me, and I’ll include them in a future article.
Happy preparing, and happy coaching.
Charlie
