10 Tips to Open a Coaching Session
How you open a coaching conversation matters. Really matters. In fact, a strong set up and a clear goal defined by the coachee is essential in determining the overall success of the coaching engagement. Here are 10 of our favourite tips for opening a coaching conversation.
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Establish a Safe Coaching Environment (everytime)
The beginning of each coaching conversation provides an opportunity to reinforce your safety messaging - to help your coachee feel comfortable and psychologically safe in the coaching session. Even if you have been working with the same client for a long period of time, there are always opportunities to reinforce the purpose, structure and ethics that drive the safety of an effective coaching engagement. Here are some example scripts for reinforcing the essence of coaching and creating a safe coaching environment:
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Thanks for being here today. I really want to acknowledge you for investing the time in yourself and for your willingness to commit to change. Good on you for saying ‘yes’ to you.
I want to remind you that, as always, our coaching sessions are confidential and take place in a judgement free zone.
In our sessions there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, simply what is true for you. Is this ok with you?
Support Your Coachee to Create Space
Your coachee may have created the physical space in their calendar for the coaching session, but have they created the mental space? This one is particularly important for coaching online, where it is often harder to ensure distractions are minimised on screen. One technique, is to ask short, sharp questions that encourage your coachee to say ‘yes’ to themselves and the space they are creating. At a neurological level this helps reinforce, to their unconscious mind, the importance of staying present and creating space during the session. Here are some example questions you might ask to get your three ‘yes’s’.
Are you ready for your coaching session today?
Do you have a quiet space free from interruptions?
Are you ready to begin?
Create Continuity to Honour the Time Between Sessions
Creating continuity between coaching sessions helps establish flow and creates a conscious reminder of the change that is taking place as a result of your coachee's journey.
Referencing the previous coaching session, and the commitments made at that time, also helps create accountability. If your coachee has not followed through on their commitments, then there is an equally important conversation to have as to what has got in the way. Some questions might include:
How have you progressed your commitment since our last coaching session?
What did you notice that surprised you?
What did you learn about yourself?
Introduce Box Breathing as a Grounding Technique
As you start your coaching session, you might also choose to introduce a grounding exercise such as box breathing. Box breathing, or square breathing, is a great technique to start a session - particularly where coachees need to let go of their busy day and become fully present.
The benefits of box breathing include:
Calms the nervous system.
Relieves stress and eases anxiety.
Increases focus of the mind.
And strengthens sustained attention.
The technique has four main parts - inhale <count 2, 3, 4...>, hold <count 2, 3, 4...>, exhale <count 2, 3, 4...>, hold <count 2, 3, 4...>. Each of the four parts should be down while visualising the side of a box. As you move to the next step, you draw the next side of the box in your mind. Download our FREE Box Breathing script to support the process.
Set a Clear Goal for the Coaching Session
A coaching session is generally made up of five parts
The welcome or set up of the session (tips 1-4 in this blog post)
Setting a clear goal for the coaching session
Discussing the reality of what’s happening now
Exploring options for a new way of doing, or thinking, about the situation
Setting clear action steps to move the challenge forward
The GROW Coaching Model is a world-wide favourite way to help you with this structure. Here are some of our favourite Goal (G) questions:
What do you want to achieve from this coaching session?
What sits at the core of this goal?
How will you know if this session has been successful?
Chunk Up to Achieve Motivation and Agreement
'Chunking' refers to taking individual pieces of information and grouping them into larger (chunking up), or more specific (chunking down), concepts. Ultimately, chunking is a simple technique to use during questioning to help vary the level of detail your coachee is focusing on. While 'chunking down' gets to the heart of specifics, 'chunking up' helps to reinforce the higher motivational driver of what it is your coachee wants to achieve.
'Chunking up' helps your coachee connect to the big picture or the higher intent and purpose of what they want to achieve. Some questions to help you chunk up are:
What will achieving this goal mean to you?
If you were to zoom out and look at the full bigger picture, what would you see?
What does this big picture mean to you?
Chunk Down to Get to the Heart of the Coaching Challenge
'Chunking down' at the start of a coaching session can help create clarity on exactly what the challenge is - rather than trying to coach everything first presented. The questions below are designed to help you define the specific focus of the session, to get clear on the exact details.
What is the challenge you are hoping to solve in today's coaching session?
How specifically is this a problem for you right now?
Which part do we need to focus on in this coaching session?
You can use a combination of both chunking up and chunking down as you navigate the start of your coaching conversation. For example:
Start at a higher level of chunking to find the initial problem.
Chunk down to find the more specific session focus.
Chunk up to review and agree the focus and to build motivation.
Define the Bridge to be Built
As a coach, your job is to help build the bridge that helps connect your coaches current reality, and where they want to be. The bridge is then the journey of the coaching session, helping define how they get from A to B.
What’s missing between the way the situation is, and how you would like it to be?
Is this about perception (the way you need to think about it differently) or procedure (the way you need to do it differently)? Or both?
What is the bridge we need to build in today's coaching session?
Paint a Picture Outcome
Visualisation is a powerful technique to bring your coachee's outcome to life. For those who are more comfortable accessing the rational part of their brain, this technique can help access new thinking through the visual and creative networks. As a coach, trust that whatever outcome or image comes up for your coachee, is exactly as it needs to be. Some questions to get you started:
If you had a blank canvas and I asked you to paint a picture of the desired outcome that you most want from our session here today, what would you paint?
What colours would you use?
What do you make these colours mean about you?
Set a Scale of Commitment
A scale of commitment, where 10 is the highest, is a great tool to measure both your coachee's commitment to the coaching session and the current status of where they are at with their challenge right now.
How committed are you, on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is the highest, to achieving this goal?
Note, if your coachee is not 10/10 in commitment to change, this prompts the opportunity to explore why not – the ‘not committed’ scale figure is keeping them safe from something (secondary gain).
What is the part that is keeping you safe and stopping you from being completely committed to getting the results you desire right now?
Download Your Quick-Reference Guide:
10 Techniques to Open a Coaching Session
If you’ve found this blog helpful, then check out our Quick-Reference Guide - with all 10 techniques included in detail plus additional scripts and more than 100 supporting coaching questions. If you’ve ever wanted to quickly review your coaching materials and best-loved coaching questions prior to your session - without trawling through towers of notes or online files, then this guide is a great ‘print-and-go’ option to help harness your effectiveness in how you open your coaching sessions.
What we love about this guide:
Effective tips and tools for new coaches and people leaders.
Introduction copy helps you understand the context of each tool and technique.
Questions and scripts can be scanned as a quick-reference, or read the questions directly from the guide if coaching virtually.
The design of the tools help set up an effective opening of your coaching session.
Plus we’ve created a complimentary guide for 10 Techniques to Close a Coaching Session - must-have back-pocket resources for coaches
Enjoy,
