Ten ways to be a coach every day in 2015

Most of the students who graduate from our Postgraduate programmes in coaching say that they use the coaching skills in their daily lives – with their partners, children and friends as well as in the workplace.

Here are our top tips for being a coach every day – at work, rest and play:

1. Listen. Listen for longer than you think you need to. Listen with total attention and care. Listen without formulating answers or solutions. Listen until the other person has really said all they want to say.
2. If you have a burning desire to interject, ask yourself the WAIT question (“Why Am I Talking?”)
3. Be curious and interested in how wonderfully unique and surprising people are.
4. Ask open questions which demonstrate your fascination and interest and which will evoke discovery, self-awareness and new learning for the other person.
5. Take opportunities to praise, champion and celebrate the successes of others in your life.
6. Be comfortable with appropriate challenge and gentle provocation to cause gain, not pain. Become an empathetic provocateur.
7. Listen to your inner voice and develop your intuition to enable you to express your insights in ways that are useful to others.
8. Be comfortable “staying with the not knowing”. Give up the need to have answers or to rescue others or solve their problems. Let go of certainty and embrace ambiguity.
9. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Keep promises if you make them. Demonstrate comfort with your own personal boundaries.
10. Know thyself!

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” – Lao Tzu