 Coaching is facilitating the learning of others to help them reach their unique potential. A coach should consider the effective management of the coaching process to reach session goals as effectively and as focused as possible. Alec McPhedran explains the simple to use but highly effective GENIUS coaching framework for creative talent coaching sessions.
In essence, coaching is a simple process. However, we must make sure we do simple well. At its heart lies good questioning, listening and the ability to summarise. The challenges are building trust and maintaining a positive working and open relationship in which the coachee feels they are the focus of attention and that they are being helped to work on their ideas. The additional skill is managing the process of the coaching session. This has to be timely as well as facilitating the individual to move forward. In the creative industries in which I mainly work, it is critical ideas and solutions came from the individual being coached. That’s really hard when you believe you know what the solution is. But surely that’s one of the issues of coaching, “What you believe the solution is.” Great coaching is about working the individual. It’s their imagination and their aspiration. Our job is to help turn these into a reality. Not the coach’s reality. It has to be owned by the coachee. As a coach, your inputs have to be really relevant, valid and appropriate, if and when invited to do so. You, the coach, act as the conductor. The individual has the talent. The coach’s role is to get the best out of the talent. Like most coaches, I have come across a number of really useful coaching models, including the simple but effective GROW model. The common view is that the GROW model derived from Performance Coaching by John Whitmore. GROW is used to structure the coaching session; Goals, Realities, Options and Will, as in “What will you do?” This is pretty good, particularly for offering line managers a coaching tool but for professional coaches it sometimes might need a bit more. Another useful model is CLEAR, developed by Peter Hawkins. CLEAR concentrates on Contracting, Listening, Exploring, Action and Review. Working in the creative industries often has me having to work with additional technique in the coaching session. Creativity, innovation, exciting aspirations and ideas that need turning into a reality. That’s the amazing and exciting challenge in media with creative coaching. For me, a new approach was needed to help inspire and push my clients. GENIUS GENIUS coaching developed following a chat with a pretty cynical script-writing friend. She felt coaching had its place but most definitely not in the world of ‘creative people’. Her previous experience of being coached at a leading broadcaster had been helpful but only in career progression and not on her desire to be the best in her field of telling stories. A number of coaches had not been able to really meet her creative aspiration. This made me think about myself, my own ability to go further than I had been before with people and therefore how could I meet her challenge? Yes, we do offer stretching objectives. Yes there are excellent coaches who are very focussed on pushing people but are we held back with the SMART objective format? Are we sometimes held back by our own feelings if moving out of our own comfort level? Her point was do we really push people past the boundaries? Was I really helping by agreeing to clients initial objectives or was I really stretching them, taking them to new and exciting places, sometimes scary, in their ambition? Over the following months I revisited my sessions, the processes I was using and depending on subjects, the results we were getting. Goals were being achieved but I was wondering could it have been wider, more challenging – truly daring to be different. The GENIUS model of coaching evolved after testing it out on some knowing victims with mixed success. I was particularly influenced by Jenny Rogers, author of Coaching Skills, a handbook. Jenny mixes coaching fantastically well with Neuro Linguistic Programming. Thinking of end goals, care with language and energy to achieve things. People who were really up for a new adventure opened their mind to great new ideas, concepts and opportunities that truly seemed off the wall. With others, it made them feel uncomfortable and my learning was that you had to work with the aspiration and the reality of their ambition in their style. Again, not my ambition or my preferred coaching or creative thinking techniques. Eventually the GENIUS model came out, probably the result of a fire, aim ready strategy. It’s now one of my favourite models, particularly when working with exciting creative talent. GENIUS coaching is simple. GENIUS is a guide to running a coaching session. It’s yet another useful model for coaches for their toolkit. It does draw its inspiration from the likes of GROW, OSKAR and other useful coaching models. Simple is good but the skills is in doing simple well. Goals The first step of GENIUS is to set the GOALS, a rather obvious starting point. We know the goal, purpose or aim is critical for a number of reasons but primarily it provides us with the reminder of what it is we are working on, what needs to be achieved. It makes sure all future conversation is relevant to achieving the goal. With GENIUS coaching, there are three types of goals to set.
Energy Once the aspirational goal and the session goal (or goals) has been set, the next part of GENIUS coaching is to look at the ENERGY of the coachee. They may want to achieve something that is far reaching for them but do they really have the energy? The desire to achieve and the energy to do something can sometimes be poles apart. Get the client to rate their energy levels to make this work, perhaps by giving a score out of 10. Without the genuine energy to achieve the goal, is the goal the right one in the first place? Another useful tool to use here, again thanks to Jenny Rogers, is to ask how motivated they are about achieving the goals. A rating of 1 to 10 equally helps give some indication of possible investigation. Nurture Once goals have been established and the energy levels checked to achieve them, you then need to NURTURE the range of opportunities and options. This is very much the Options stage of GROW. This again is where the questioning, listening, summarising and creative thinking skills of the coach come into play. Your ability to brainstorm, encourage creative thinking; thinking of things that are really off the wall, never been done before are absolutely critical. When nurturing ideas, this ideally should be treated in the same way as a pure brainstorming session. Pull out the ideas, don’t critique to early, set the parameters linked to the objectives and work through some of the ideas. This is also a great time to use challenging and creative thinking tools such as de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats (data, emotion, negativity, positiveness, feel good, innovative thinking and process). Once you have looked at each idea, work through and prioritise the key actions that came out of the nurturing process. Priority action one is the way forward. Options two, three and four – potential back up ideas. From the Six Thinking Hats model you will then be able to move into the next stage of GENIUS coaching thanks to the identifying emotions and negatives from the red and black hat discussions. Inhibitors That’s because you need to revisit the agreed priority actions from the nurturing stage and identify the INHIBITORS. That is, what is going to stop the ideas from working? This is really powerful as you seek out the negatives. It’s those negatives that you then address with the client to establish how they will be tackled should they arise. I guess the development of the cunning Plan B scenario. We are great at planning the perfect life with Plan A. Unfortunately life’s not perfect. Therefore it makes sense to anticipate inhibitors. Manage them into positives. It’s worthwhile at this point revisiting your nurtured actions to see if they need revising to reflect the points identified in the inhibitors stage of the session. Utopia So, we now know what we want, how much energy the client has to achieve their goal, we’ve generated some great ideas and have identified the potential problems and the likely responses. If all works fantastically well then… UTOPIA; an imagined perfect place or state of things. This is where the coaches Neuro Linguistic Programming knowledge comes more into play. Can you get the individual to visually, auditory and kinaesthetically imagine their Utopia once the goals will be achieved? This is a powerful tool to make the end result of a coaching session feel real. It’s what turns that aspiration into the reality. Visioning, recording or feeling that end goal gives the goal life. It puts Utopia in the mind of the individual. I have even gone so far as to encourage clients to make that picture real – getting or drawing a close or true to life image and then placing it in eye sight at their desk. Weird I know but it definitely works. For the auditory types, a written statement always at hand seems to have the same effect. We’re back to the immense importance of goals. Once they look and feel real, once we are emotionally attached to them, they will become real. Developing, writing down and imagining goals is an essential role of the coach to get the client to understand this. Steps Finally, the coaching session is rounded off by summarising the STEPS to be taken by the coachee. What will they do between now and the next session? These are developed by writing SMART (specific, measurable, realistic, agreed and timed) Action Goals and clarifying the actual steps to take to achieve the Action Goals. I guess in the good old day that was called action planning. So there you have it. Yet another wonderful tool for coaching. The very simple GENIUS coaching model. It’s about pushing ambition and creativity further for creative people, exploring amazing and varied opportunities and imagining the realities of what success will look, feel or sound like. Obviously I know this model may not be perfect for some, that’s the beauty of the business we’re in. If we were all perfect then we wouldn’t have anybody to coach. G – Goals to be achieved E – Energy to achieve the goals N – Nurturing and exploring options to achieve the goals I – Inhibitors that may arise on the way to achieving goals U – Utopia when the goals will be achieved S – Steps to be taken to achieve the goals GENIUS coaching has been developed by Alec McPhedran Chartered FCIPD, Chartered Mngr, MAC, MCMI as a tool for people who coach; to guide them through an inspirational and wide reaching coaching session for talented creative people. Alec is the managing director of Skills Channel TV, the training company for busy creative people. He specialises in one to one coaching, facilitated learning, media training and team development. For further information, contact 0121 366 87 99 or visit www.skillschannel.tv. Copyright © 2006 Alec McPhedran. All rights reserved.
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 Thoughts on Development Approaches As a professional trainer, of course training works. It is the magic one size fits all Utopia to sort out problem staff. In reality, training perhaps only instructs. It informs people of things they probably already know. So, what do we need to do about it? This article outlines some of the main themes trainer and coach Alec McPhedran covers when supporting managers in understanding people development. There are still a number of people who feel that training is development. Of course, it is part of it but the key focus should be on development. What new knowledge or skills do people need and how can this be achieved? If we think about development in this context, it opens the door to a wide range of development opportunities. This could include shadowing, secondments, coaching, mentoring, buddying and of course, training if appropriate. To explain this, I designed and use the Development Approaches model by way of example. Of course it’s not perfect. It is simply to make a point of considering the most appropriate development approach specific to an individual or teams needs. It does draw from a range of similar concepts such as Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership or Heron’s Coaching Interventions The model works on two aspects. The first is on how much of the facilitator of the learning tells the individual what to do through to asking them what they think they should do. The second is based on the ability, experience or competence of the individual or team. By thinking about these two aspects, it can contribute to shaping the appropriate development approach. Instruct There are many definitions for instruct but essentially, in the field of learning and development, it is one person telling another through the imparting of their knowledge and experience, hence instruct. Train Training is mainly seen as the organised activity or set of activities aimed at imparting information and/or instruction to improve an individual’s performance or to help them attain a required level of knowledge or skill. It involves a mix of tell and ask and is typically used in introducing new information or skills to a person. Coach Coaching is facilitating the learning of another to help them reach their unique potential. It is guiding the new knowledge and skills through asking questions. This helps the individual explore self-learning under the guidance of another. Delegate Delegation occurs with the assignment of responsibility and authority to a team or team member the power to do a specific activity, project or task with the ultimate responsibility for task completion remaining with the delegator. Within development, this acknowledges their potential or capability and we can explore their approach and thinking through questioning. Mentor Mentoring is a personal developmental relationship in which an experienced person guides, advises and challenges another to discover more about themselves, their capability and their potential. It tends to be more about the person rather than just the knowledge and skills needed for their role. Feedback Feedback is structured information that one person offers to another about the impact of their actions or behaviour. Feedback should ideally be factually based and the person giving the feedback needs to ne clear in what it is they are feeding back on and why. Feedback should be given for positive reasons as well as performance improvement needs. The more able a person, the more they will benefit from honest and factual feedback. The Development Approaches model is simply a discussion tool to explain firstly what development is and secondly, the range of approaches and options available. The Development Approaches Model has been developed by Alec McPhedran Chtd Fellow CIPD, Chtd Mngr CMI, MAC, MCMI as a tool for people who coach or train others; to help understand the range of development opportunities available. Alec is the managing director of Skills Channel TV, the training company for busy creative people. He specialises in one to one coaching, facilitated learning, media training and team development. For further information, contact 0121 366 87 99 or visit www.skillschannel.tv. Copyright © Alec McPhedran 2019    Thoughts on Development Approaches
As a professional trainer, of course training works. It is the magic one size fits all Utopia to sort out problem staff. In reality, training really instructs. It informs people of things they probably already know. So, what do we need to do about it? This article outlines some of the main themes trainer and coach Alec McPhedran covers when supporting managers in understanding people development. There are still a number of people who feel that training is development. Of course, it is part of it but the key focus should be on development. What new knowledge or skills do people need and how can this be achieved? If we think about development in this context, it opens the door to a wide range of development opportunities. This could include shadowing, secondments, coaching, mentoring, buddying and of course, training if appropriate. To explain this, I designed and use the Development Approaches model by way of example. Of course it’s not perfect. It is simply to make a point of considering the most appropriate development approach specific to an individual or teams needs. It does draw from a range of similar concepts such as Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership or Heron’s Coaching Interventions The model works on two aspects. The first is on how much of the facilitator of the learning tells the individual what to do through to asking them what they think they should do. The second is based on the ability, experience or competence of the individual or team. By thinking about these two aspects, it can contribute to shaping the appropriate development approach. Instruct There are many definitions for instruct but essentially, in the field of learning and development, it is one person telling another through the imparting of their knowledge and experience, hence instruct. Train Training is mainly seen as the organised activity or set of activities aimed at imparting information and/or instruction to improve an individual’s performance or to help them attain a required level of knowledge or skill. It involves a mix of tell and ask and is typically used in introducing new information or skills to a person. Coach Coaching is facilitating the learning of another to help them reach their unique potential. It is guiding the new knowledge and skills through asking questions. This helps the individual explore self-learning under the guidance of another. Delegate Delegation occurs with the assignment of responsibility and authority to a team or team member the power to do a specific activity, project or task with the ultimate responsibility for task completion remaining with the delegator. Within development, this acknowledges their potential or capability and we can explore their approach and thinking through questioning. Mentor Mentoring is a personal developmental relationship in which an experienced person guides, advises and challenges another to discover more about themselves, their capability and their potential. It tends to be more about the person rather than just the knowledge and skills needed for their role. Feedback Feedback is structured information that one person offers to another about the impact of their actions or behaviour. Feedback should ideally be factually based and the person giving the feedback needs to ne clear in what it is they are feeding back on and why. Feedback should be given for positive reasons as well as performance improvement needs. The more able a person, the more they will benefit from honest and factual feedback. The Development Approaches model is simply a discussion tool to explain firstly what development is and secondly, the range of approaches and options available. The Development Approaches Model has been developed by Alec McPhedran Chtd Fellow CIPD, Chtd Mngr CMI, MAC, MCMI as a tool for people who coach or train others; to help understand the range of development opportunities available. Alec is the managing director of Skills Channel TV, the training company for busy creative people. He specialises in one to one coaching, facilitated learning, media training and team development. For further information, contact 0121 366 87 99 or visit www.skillschannel.tv. Copyright © Alec McPhedran 2019  The Coaching Conversation Model is a tool to explain the way a coaching conversation may at times flex into training, teaching or mentoring mode as well as working towards the ideal coaching approach. Here leading creative sector coach Alec McPhedran of Skills Channel TV, explains the model to help new coaches appreciate the skill in flexing coaching conversations.
When I was being trained to become a coach, much of the advice was to mainly use open-ended questions such as who, what, why, where, when and how. Equally to make use of TED, tell me about, explain to me or describe to me, which are of course powerful open-ended questions. The aim therefore was to ensure that I the coach contributed very little by way of advice or influence to the coachee and that the answer sits within them. This of course is true in one sense. Indeed, that would be the perfect coaching session – I ask profound questions, the you answer them, sort yourself out, you leave happy and I send my invoice. What a life. As we develop out coaching understanding, we recognise that the perfect approach to coaching conversation doesn’t always happen. Sometimes we need to use and trust our experience and step back a bit into training mode to explain a concept and then return to coaching on how they can use that concept to develop their ideas. We may well also throw in some personal experience by way of example, which in turn means I may well be in mentoring mode. To me coaching is facilitating the learning of others to help them reach their unique potential. So, if part of coaching is facilitating, then we need to be able to flex and react accordingly for the benefit of the coachee. When I deliver workshops on coaching to managers, the sessions on managing coaching conversations can come over a bit contradictory or confusing. On that basis, and being a visual type, I developed the Coaching Conversation Model as a discussion tool to explore the range of approaches to coaching conversations. This has evolved over a number of years but what is great about the model is that it helps to initiate valuable discussions on the flexibility needed in coaching conversations. Directive to Facilitative Coaching The more we instruct or influence the conversation, the less the coachee contributes to the conversation. That is directive coaching. If for example, I am trying to help a manager work through giving feedback on a colleague’s behaviour, I tend to see how they would approach it and what the likely outcomes would be based on that approach. If we agreed that it might not be the most appropriate approach or the manager was not familiar with feedback theory, I could offer some ideas on feedback theory to help move the situation forward. A typical model I use, because of its simplicity and usefulness, is the AID feedback model. That is A for action or actions I have seen, heard or felt. I is for the impact of those actions and the likely consequences and D for what should they do about it in the future. On that basis, I am in training or teaching mode using my training skills. Once I have put the theory across, we then move back to a coaching approach by getting back to asking them how they could use that model in that particular situation. I am back to facilitating the thinking of the coachee, not contributing ideas but simply coaching. That is facilitative coaching – the main conversation coming from the coachee. Much of this approach has strong links to Heron’s Six Categories of Intervention (1975, in Hawkins & Smith, 2006) offering approaches from an authoritative set of interventions to facilitative interventions. Heron’s models confirm that as a coach, we need to flex our approach as we work with our coachees. Development Through Coaching A frequent misunderstanding I find when coaching managers is their understanding of development. Many people feel that development means training. To me, development is how do we give people new knowledge, skills and behaviours. This widens our options with development opportunities such as coaching, mentoring, teaching, shadowing, secondment and so on. Training may or may not be a part of development. In developing the Coaching Conversations model, and for the sake of simplicity, I have used training, coaching and mentoring by way of example. You can use whatever is appropriate to your learning group with headings such as educating, teaching, facilitating and so on. For me, the basics of training, coaching and mentoring work well. As an introduction to discussing coaching conversations, I run an activity in which the group is normally split in to three. Each group is allocated either training, coaching or mentoring. They then write words on a Post-It that reflects clearly their development option. They then select the top three words and create a simple sentence defining training, coaching or mentoring. During feedback and discussion, we then evolve their work in a way that explains each and differentiates the three. Before the session, they are encouraged to bring along a preferred description on coaching and mentoring. We all have our view on what each development option are but the point of the exercise is to understand those options and develop a way in which to explain them simply and clearly in a coaching session. The value of the exercise is that participants gain a better understanding of each and recognise the differences, especially between mentoring and coaching. I often support this with am anecdote that highlights those differences. From this we can then move on to discussing coaching conversations, and on my events, I tend to use training, coaching and mentoring. To keep it simple, I use the following explanations for training, coaching and mentoring: Training In training mode, we instruct, we tell. Much of the input to the conversation is from the coach. It is explaining ideas, concepts or theories. Coaching When we coach, we facilitate, we ask. This is where the coach concentrates on the objective of the coaching session – be it coachee or jointly identified. This uses questioning, active listening, feedback, problem solving, idea generation and summarising skills to guide the coachee. It’s asking rather than telling. It allows the coachee to develop their thinking capability and self-belief in their capability. The main input on the conversation is ideally from the coachee. Coaching is facilitating the learning of others to help them reach their unique potential. Mentoring A mentor is a more experienced or senior person who offers guidance, support, pastoral care, challenge or wisdom to another in developing them as a person. This is where the coach applies their mentoring skills, jointly contributes to the conversation with the coachee. The mentoring approach allows the coach to offer ideas from their experiences, points out ideas in an appropriate direction and guides based on their wisdom. I’m conscious that my definitions of training, coaching and mentoring will not sit well with others. In fact, when I search on a web browser for ‘definition of coaching’, it tells me if has found 331,000,000 results with thousands of definitions and interpretations of definitions. We all have our own views, beliefs and versions of each based on our unique experiences. The key thing is you have a description in which you feel is right and it helps to explain what it is to a coachee, yet it is simple and easy to understand. I also feel it must clearly differentiate between the three development approaches. The Coaching Conversation Model The purpose of the coaching conversation model is to help a new coach understand that the conversation will flex in to the territory of teaching, training, education or mentoring but with the aim of making sure we focus on and always returning to the coaching approach where appropriate. A pure coaching session is the Utopia but in many cases I have experienced, we do have to flex for the benefit of the coachee and the coaching session or programme goal. The Coaching Conversation Model has been developed by Alec McPhedran Fellow CIPD, Chtd Mngr CMI, MAC, MCMI as a tool for people who coach; to help understand the conversation management of a coaching session. Alec is the managing director of Skills Channel TV, the training company for busy creative people. He specialises in one to one coaching, facilitated learning, media training and team development. He developed the GENIUS Coaching Model, a guide to managing the flow of a coaching conversation. For further information, contact 0121 366 87 99 or visit www.skillschannel.tv. Copyright © Alec McPhedran 2016 |
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