Tips on coaching may not seem a particularly likely focus for quality control, but you want to be the most effective coach you can be, right?  So you need to find a way to know if you are being your most effective.  If you have a transformative session with your client and the results are obvious, you are clearly being highly effective.  But what if that isn’t your experience every time you coach?  What are some of the factors you can actually look at objectively to see if you are working at the highest possible level?

Tips on coaching: Be sure you are client centered every time

As a coach, you know how important it is to develop and maintain rapport with your clients and you are probably always on the lookout for great tips on coaching.  During my coaching training, one of the factors I was evaluated on was rapport and charisma.  Now, I’m pretty likable.  I get along well with people on the phone and I routinely got full marks on rapport and charisma, except for once.  What a shock!  But I learned two extremely important tips on coaching from that experience, and they are both about staying client centered and staying in rapport.

Staying in rapport isn’t a given

It’s critical that tips on coaching include tips on maintaining rapport, since without it, you have no chance of making a difference for your client.  But if you think rapport is just about being likable, think again.  The first tip is that no matter how likable you are, rapport drains away down the phone line if you are working toward an endpoint that your client isn’t interested in right then.  Even with the best of intentions, what you think is important may have nothing to do with what your client thinks is important.  If you try to pull him in a direction he’s not ready to go, not only will you not help him, but you may lose rapport and distance him from you–possibly even lose him as a client.  Find out what result he wants, and give him that result, even if it’s not what you had in mind.

Keep your antennae out

The second of the tips on coaching is to be sensitive to the feel of the conversation.  In other words, stay in sync with your client.   This isn’t about some woo-woo stuff.  As a good coach, you use the same faculties you use as a good friend.  If you are having a conversation with a friend, you know by tonality, by the silences, by paying really close attention to the “vibes”, if you are off track.  You know if you’ve hit a nerve and you need to back off or come from a different direction.  It’s the same in coaching.  Pay attention to the nuances and if you feel your client isn’t involved in the process, back up, figure out where you went wrong and change so you are going in the same direction as your client.

Tips on maintaining rapport are some of the most valuable tips on coaching.  Use these to do your own quality control after each coaching session and you will soon find your rapport skills to be huge allies in producing great coaching results.

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Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach