Working with Your Coach

Get started by discussing ground rules for the coaching relationship. Once you have chosen a coach to work with, you will need to discuss ground rules for your working relationship.  Most likely your coach will explain the policies and ground rules they normally follow in their coaching practice.  Most coaches are flexible in how they work, so it is your responsibility to understand the guidelines the coach suggests and to ask for anything you think will be most helpful to you.

Your coach will challenge you to move out of your comfort zone.  Effective developmental coaching is designed around providing you with the skills for assessment of your situation, challenge to try new ways of managing yourself in the situation and support as you go about the work of going beyond your previous limitations.  Prepare to be encouraged to challenge yourself with new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Coaching is all about change.  Working with a coach will help you learn to establish goals and develop strategies for developing your effectiveness. 
Usually the success of executive coaching is measured by sustainable behavioral change by the person being coached.

Understand that when working with a coach, it is the work you do between coaching meetings that is most important.  You are the only one who can learn to think, feel and behave differently in your real-time situations. 

The coaching meetings are for planning what to do, how to do it, and reflecting upon your experience so that you can learn from it.  
Meetings and discussions with your coach may include benefits such as:

• Creating space to reflect upon your experiences from a more objective perspective;

• Having a professional thinking partner who can ask probing questions to facilitate your most resourceful thinking;

• Increasing awareness of your personal patterns of behavior - what works well for you and what may need to change.

• Increasing awareness of your previous blind spots, generally and in specific situations;

• Developing new strategies to achieve your goals and new skills to implement those strategies;

• Identification of additional resources to support you in the achievement of your developmental goals.

It is critical for you to capture and remember the lessons from your experience by taking the time to do so, usually in writing in your journal.  Only by being willing to reflect and learn what works best for you, will you be able to achieve the results you want.