The subject of how coaching and mentoring (CAM) relationships end cropped up during a recent group supervision session, and proved to be, to the surprise of all of us, a remarkably productive discussion. We reflected that a lot is said about how CAM relationships start; including contracting, the first session, establishing trust and building rapport. But we had never come across very much about how they might end, beyond a vague idea around the contract being fulfilled.

What this article is about is ‘approaches to coaching’, with the big exception that you don’t have to part with any money. On the other hand, you may have to pay in another currency; the effort of hard thinking and coming up with your own answers. I hope that is an acceptable compromise. I explored in part 1 the various approaches a coach can learn their craft and journey so far, and in part 2, as a reflexive practitioner I attempt to articulate my personal model of coaching that generates the results that my clients find most beneficial to them.

What this article is about is ‘approaches to coaching’, with the big exception that you don’t have to part with any money. On the other hand, you may have to pay in another currency; the effort of hard thinking and coming up with your own answers. I hope that is an acceptable compromise. Part 1: Explores the various approach a coach can learn their craft.

In part 3 I will examine how trustworthy our self-awareness is, and how knowing that might lead to greater confidence for both coach and client, in three key lessons;

1.   Metacognition can be misleading

2. Self-awareness is less common than we think

3. Metacognition has causal power.

In Part 1 I examined the underlying mechanisms that lead to the external manifestation of confidence in someone, as seen by others AND the internal realisation that I have confidence in what I am doing. In Part 2 I will build on Part 1 and examine how we might use the knowledge from Part 1 to help us become better coaches.

I remember when I first discovered that I had been accidentally coaching. I had been mentoring people, and often used a technique that I had used as a teacher; asking questions to get my student to think for themselves and reach their own conclusions. I knew this worked, from practical experience, but did not know that this technique was central to coaching. I was confident in my approach, knowing how and when to use it.

In part one I described how it came to be (add link) and explored the similarities of the framework and mindset a coach and an author (the ‘being’), looking at Contracting and Researching, and Show don’t tell. The final three of the five things that the practice of coaching and the practice of novel writing have in common are;· Getting the reader/client to do the work; Having patience with the unfolding story; Flow state; being ‘in the zone’. I will describe what they feel like for both my coaching practice and my creative novel writing and focus on the internal and external processes for coaching-writing (the ‘doing’).

This blog looks at some similarities I have seen between coaching and novel writing, as my experience in these two activities has grown over the last six years. It’s such a strange idea that I feel I must describe how it came to be, so that you can make sense of it.

My ultimate aim as a coach is to help my clients develop so that they become able to a) Address their issues by themselves, and b) Reflect on what they do by understanding themselves better.

What does a coach DO? Not the detailed, minute-by-minute activity that happens during a coaching session, but the big ‘what am I working for my client to achieve’ picture.

But what I have not come across in the written literature, is anything that examines the practical details of what a coach actually does during a coaching session.

And by that I mean, what is going on inside the coach’s head?

I cannot remember a time when asking questions was not at the heart of my work. Whether as a trainee, as an investigator, as a team leader or as a manager.

This article builds on the ideas I examined in my ’Coaching as a manager’ where I concluded that a manager could not truly be a coach to someone they manage, regardless of the fact that they can use coaching techniques to help them. Let’s look wider than the manager/coach relationship and examine the organisational situation they work in.

Can a manager ever be a coach to someone they manage? This question is the subject of chapter 18 in ‘The Complete Handbook of Coaching’. And it is something I have been thinking about for a while now. Managers are encouraged to adopt a ‘coaching style’ and Civil Service Learning offer a programme of self-study with videos, reading material and a three-hour face-to-face workshop to do just that.

I’ve always believed that somewhere in a person’s experience there is something that they can use to look at a current problem and use their experience to solve that problem. And my experience shows me that, very often, that person has forgotten or discounted their experience and have built up the issue they face into a problem in their mind.

Service - helping others.  There, I’ve said it. After much reflection and rummaging in my memory I’d sum up my approach to coaching with that one word.  Jeremy Bentham wrote, “Create all the happiness you are able to create.  Remove all the misery you are able to remove.”  And coaching is a powerful way of doing that.