The following chapter is an excerpt from the book “Coaching und seine Wurzeln” (Coaching and its Roots)
Coaching in practice: proven models
Both in business coaching and in life coaching it has proven to be a good idea to embed the confidential work undertaken between a coach and their client in a methodology that gives the coaching process a logical structure and a framework in terms of content and time. In this chapter two such methodologies are presented that also describe two evolutionary steps in coaching.
At the beginning of everything was: GROW
GROW was the first coaching model developed around 1979 in Europe, more precisely in the United Kingdom, for work with executives. It was derived from the ideas and insights of the American tennis instructor Timothy Gallwey, which he first described in 1974 in “The Inner Game of Tennis”. There are several parties claiming authorship of the GROW model. What is certain is that both the British ex-IBM manager Graham Alexander and the British ex-racing driver John Whitmore, among others, played a considerable role in the early beginnings of the model and its popularisation.
The GROW model offers a process that supports clients in defining their goals and in achieving them. GROW is also used to develop an effective strategy for solving the client’s challenges, since it is also about articulating a goal and identifying obstacles to overcoming them. GROW was extremely successful in the 1980s and 1990s. This can certainly be attributed to popularity of the name but also, and primarily, to the fact that the methodology is catchy and easy to understand for the client, while for the coach it offers intuitive applicability and considerable flexibility in depth of use, i.e. from the superficial to the profound. GROW is made up of the initial letters of the following terms: Goal, Reality, Options / Obstacles and Will. The individual terms in the model have the following meaning:
1. Goal
“Goal” stands for the client’s goal, i.e. what they want to have achieved by the end of the coaching session. It is important to choose a goal that can be realistically achievable by the client and to formulate it specifically enough so that the client can clearly determine whether or not they have achieved their goal. In 1983, the American management author Ken Blanchard introduced the acronym SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound) in his book “The One Minute Manager" for this ‘elegant’ way of defining goals.
2. Reality
This refers to how the client stands in terms of their goals right now − their status quo. Again, it is vital for the process that the status quo be defined as specifically and tangibly as possible.
3. Obstacles
This is about identifying obstacles that prevent the client from achieving their goal. If these obstacles did not exist, the client would not need coaching to achieve their goals. This refers to obstacles on the outside, in the broadest sense
meaning the circumstances of the client’s life, as well as internal, psychological obstacles, such as their limiting beliefs.
4. Options
Once the obstacles have been identified, it is a matter of working out different options and alternative ways of seeing and acting that will help the client to deal more constructively with their external and internal obstacles.
5. Will
The last step concerns the will for concrete change. Here, practical measures are developed and agreed upon which the client is to implement until the next coaching session in order to achieve their goal or to get closer to achieving it.
At every step of the process, the duty and art of coaching involves asking the kinds of questions that help the client to identify potential problems and to come up with possible solutions themselves – this is probably one of the most important insights Timothy Gallwey described in “The Inner Game of Tennis”. The development of the GROW model is a good illustration of how the ‘eclectic core’ works. At the time of its creation, the model quickly became popular as the first of its kind, as it offered consultants − trained coaches did not yet exist − a good structure for guiding the client by means of questions towards the goal they were striving for. At that time, the British coaching scene was still dominated by performance-oriented coaching, which continued to be very much geared towards competitive sports. Targets were therefore still kept rather simple and one-dimensional. Today, the GROW model has become an intervention method
used in the ‘eclectic core’. It is used to define short-term goals in coaching and to work on their implementation, for example to “do more sport”. Especially in the business context, the GROW model does not reflect the prevailing complexity in which managers have to function and perform. Over the last 20 years, many new coaching models
have been developed to meet these changing requirements. And, of course, these models serve also as marketing instruments to demonstrate professionalism, experience and certainty of success to corporate clients on the basis that their working methods are grounded on an empirical foundation. This is also one of the reasons why there are many different models with creative names around today, such as the “Co-Active Model” of the Coach Training Institute (CTI) or the “R-ACS-R Model” of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). These models are all well suited to
today’s working environment and differ only in terms of their focus and emphasis. They are not magic bullets, however. A profound and well thought-out coaching model does not turn an inexperienced or poorly qualified coach into a super-coach. A good, experienced coach, on the other hand, can still offer valuable support to their clients with a GROW model that is more than 30 years old. But having one’s own coaching model with time andeffort invested in its development is certain to be a flagship in the form of “intellectual property” for corporate clients. It conveys the statement “We are serious about what we do. We can be trusted”. And a well-trained, experienced coach will definitely be a tad more effective with a good methodology.
One of these contemporary models is Leadership Choices, which was developed in 2008 by Manfred Barth, founder of the eponymous coaching company and former Accenture partner, together with a number of colleagues. The name is not an acronym as in GROW but encapsulates the fact thatleadership has a lot to do with conscious decisions (“choices”). The model consists of five logical elements that build on each other and are based on a common foundation of professionalism and attitude.
Professionalism as a basis
What does this entail? This element makes a statement about the professional ethics and the understanding of professionalism of the coaches who work with this model. This includes, for example, the coach’s discretion with regard to the coaching content, their loyalty towards the client and commissioning party, and the complete transparency and authenticity in their behaviour.
Attitude
This describes the basic attitude from which a coach working with this methodology interacts with their client. This also includes the coach’s convictions about factors that promote human growth, as well as their perception of the world and of human beings. Such a perception would, for instance, view the client as the expert on their own life and also on their difficulties. Its focus is on the client’s competencies and resources as well as the coach’s efforts to encourage the client to be behave more authentically.
Elements
The coach goes through the five different phases of this coaching model with the client at the ‘micro’ and at ‘macro’ level, i.e. they are valid for the entire coaching process as well as for each individual coaching session. Here is a brief overview of the significance of the different phases in ‘macro mode’, i.e. in relation to the entire coaching process, which typically lasts between six and 12 months.
Macro Awareness
What does this entail? In the initial phase the coach begins by inquiring about the client’s starting situation. First of all, the coach compiles a biography of the client, in which far-reaching life topics and decision-making patterns become
readily apparent. This also includes the client’spersonality profile and behavioural preferences, which are determined with the help of structured interviews and, if necessary, by means of psychological instruments and appraisal methods. With the help of existing performance appraisals, 360° feedback and “work shadowing”, in which the coach observes the client in their everyday work, a profile of the client’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to their leadership qualities is drawn up. A further element involves identifying the client’s goals, values and convictions. The client’s resources and perhaps their life vision are also determined.
Macro Plan
In addition to defining the client’s initial situation, a working alliance is formed between coach and client and the mode of cooperation is agreed upon. This alliance includes, for example, the clarification of the assignment that the client has set for the coach. Since the commissioning client is usually not the client of the coaching programme, but a superior acting as a company representative, it is also necessary to clarify what expectations the company has of the coaching process. Furthermore, the alliance incorporates the coach’s expectations of the client, e.g. the promise of willingness to change and a commitment to the process, without which the coaching process would not make much sense. Altogether, this forms the mandate or the psychological consulting assignment. This element also involves determining the target scenario to be achieved with the help of the coaching process. This is usually a target behaviour such as “showing more empathy when dealing with employees”, or a target feeling such as “being able to relax in the evenings and on weekends despite conflicts among the board members”. But it can also be about helping the client to
achieve an external goal, such as “being appointed to the board of management” or “taking a new direction in my field of responsibility”. Usually the target scenario is a combination of the target behaviour and a sense of purpose, together with the achievement of certain external goals. How the client is to determine whether or not the goals have
been achieved must also be precisely defined. The nature of coaching means that this mandate may evolve in the course of the process. It is in the hands of the coach to make the client aware of these changes and, if necessary, to adapt the mandate together with the client or to realign the coaching work accordingly.
Macro Choicepoints
This step is about identifying which of the client’s patterns of behaviour can be optimised, or to find out which patterns of communication and action stand in the way of the client achieving their goals. Of particular interest here are situations in which the client has the sense of operating on autopilot, i.e. that they have no perceived choice in their
conduct. In general, coaching is based on the principle that it is better for the client to be able to consciously draw on a wide range of alternative behavioural patterns than to have only a few options in their repertoire of actions and thus find themselves unable to respond to the changes in their environment. For this reason, coaching also
sheds light on the client’s deep-seated preferences and convictions that impede the consideration of alternatives. In addition, coaching concerns itself with concrete techniques and strategies that can practically assist the client in creating space to make conscious decisions in stressful situations. These are also known as “separators”. Coaching
work is therefore deliberately not about eliminating existing patterns, because every behaviour serves a purpose and is meaningful in a given context. The goal of the joint work is rather the creation of new perspectives and behavioural variants that are in harmony with the client’s value system and can therefore be implemented authentically by the client.
Macro Integration
In this phase, the views acquired are transferred to the client’s field of action and the newly developed alternatives for action are actively incorporated into the client’s behavioural repertoire. With this goal in mind, the coach works together with the client to ascertain the probable reactions of the people in the client’s immediate environment to their changed behaviour and how to deal with those reactions. In addition to this, the coach develops distinctions with the client, which enable the client to observe the people in their immediate environment and the reactions they experience more closely. In the interval between the coaching sessions, the client then tries out new forms of communication and interaction with those people and then reflects with the coach on the experiences had in the next session. If necessary, the coach will also support the client by drawing on their own professional and life experience, but will always keep transparency in mind, whether this is in a coaching or in an advisory role. This way, as a kind of fine-tuning, the factors can be identified which make it easier or more difficult for the client to implement their newly acquired behaviour and thus have greater flexibility in their actions. Frequently, inner impulses also emerge in the client, which manifest themselves in the form of resistance to new forms of behaviour. These are called “saboteurs”. In order to ensure the permanence of the behavioural changes, these ‘saboteurs’ and the hidden ‘benefit’ the client gains from them are closely examined and questioned in the coaching process.
Macro Results
The aim of the cooperation between coach and client is to achieve the client’s goals. This phase therefore focuses all coaching interventions on the results, knowing that the client is the one who decides which steps may be helpful in achieving the set goal. The coach, for instance, documents the client’s main conclusions in “coaching notes”which are then made available to the client along with their reflections on the session. The client, too, documents their own reflections after the session and sends them to the coach. The “results” phase includes flanking interventions that support the client in maintaining their target focus. Once again, this involves the coach accompanying the client in his everyday work ("work shadowing") and the carrying out of targeted, anonymous interviews with people in the client’s immediate environment to find out whether there have been any improvements in certain problematic aspects
of the client’s behaviour. Lastly, there is a final discussion between the coach,the client and their supervisor to confirm whether the set goals have been achieved. The methodology described above is a guideline for structuring a coaching processin a professional context. In addition to the “macro mode” described above, the Leadership Choices model also
implements a so-called “micro mode” during each individual coaching session in the form of guiding questions, which are outlined in the following overview.
Micro Awareness
• How does the client present themselves in the meeting today?
• Were there any new developments in the client’s immediate environment since the last session?
• How did the client experience trying out new forms of behaviour?
• What resistance or setbacks did the client have to deal with?
Micro Plan
• What does the client want to achieve in today’s coaching session?
• What should be different at the end of the coaching session than before?
• How does the client’s work assignment relate to the coaching mandate?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, where does the client rate themselves today in terms of achieving the coaching goal?
Micro Choicepoints
• Which observations can the coach offer the client in the form of feedback?
• What decisions does the client have to make today in order to make a new way of seeing or behaving possible?
• How can experiences that the client has had while trying out a new form of behaviour help them to perform even better in future?
• What alternative views of the client’s current situation are there?
Micro Integration
• What insights has the client gained during the coaching session?
• What new or different behaviour will the client try out over the next few days to bring achievement of their goal closer?
• What kind of home assignments would offer the client a good support structure in taking further steps towards his or her goal?
Micro Results
• How will the coach know that the client has carried out their home assignments?
• What insights has the client gained during the actual coaching session and in their subsequent reflection?
The connection between psychotherapy and coaching
While the individual interventions used in Leadership Choices may vary, attitude and professionalism are the firm foundations of this model. They are the result of numerous approaches and concepts of self from schools of thought in psychotherapy. Specifically, from today’s perspective, they have been shaped by the following influences:
Fundamentals: The coach’s attitude
Over the years, the individual influences and established components of the different schools of thought have developed into a consistent approach in the practical work with executives, which can be regarded in terms of the following three dimensions:
• the coach’s attitude towards the client
• the coach’s attitude towards the coach-clientrelationship
• the coach’s attitude towards themselves
Attitude towards the client
The client is competent, creative and has a wealth of resources. Based on this conviction, it is the coach’s task to work with the client and to help them to become more aware of these qualities in themselves.
Unconditional positive regard, empathy & selective authenticity
The coach treats the client with unconditional positive regard and empathy. The coach is genuine and authentic in their behaviour towards the client, aware of the fact that the client cannot always constructively accept everything the coach perceives at any given time. Therefore, the coach is attentive to the client’s state of mind and to their ability to receive constructive feedback when communicating their perceptions.
Respect & disregard
The coach has respect for the client, their social environment, values and resources and also for their issues. The coach pays no heed to the client’s limiting beliefs and any dysfunctional behaviour patterns.
Not-knowing & curiosity
The coach assumes an attitude of not-knowing and genuine curiosity towards the client. Like a child seeing everything for the first time, the coach questions the beliefs and ideas of the client without assuming to“know any better” and without having any concept of “right” or “wrong”. With this disarming lack of knowledge and curiosity, the coach playfully gets the client to reconsider the coherence of their own world view. Putting oneself in the client’s shoes
There is no such thing as an objective reality, only individual images of it perceived by each person that are shaped by their own experiences and beliefs. This applies both to the client’s world view and to the coach’s world view. The coach explores the client’s ‘world map’ in order to understand their view of things and to be able to see the world through the client’s eyes.
From the victim to the agent
Sometimes it is the principal task of the coach to help the client to abandon their innocent, suffering victim role in favour of taking on a more handson and responsible role as the agent. People always make the best possible decision
In accordance with the alternatives for action available to them and based on their own individual makeup, each person will tend to choose the solution which, in their view, appears most suitable. The purpose of coaching is to increase the
number of options that are available to them.
Each behaviour has a meaning
Some forms of behaviour may be difficult to understand. Nevertheless, once in a while an action has a hidden meaning or benefit that needs to be discovered.
Body awareness & intuition
The coach encourages the client − in a holistic sense − to perceive their own state, energy levels as well as any signs from their body, and to attach adequate importance to them. The coach also supports the client in paying more attention to their gut feeling or intuition.
Comfort zone & new terrain
The client has an abundance of experience, competence and resources that they can access when they are in their comfort zone. The learning of new behaviour patternstakes place mostly outside this comfort zone, in new terrain. The task of the coach is to support the client in developing this new terrain by working with them on new resources.
Cooperative attitude towards one another
Good relationships facilitate personal development
Permanent changes in the client’s patterns of behaviour and communication can only occur if there is a sound working relationship between the coach and the client characterised by mutual trust. It is the coach’s task to build and deepen this relationship. This requires the coach to connect at an emotional and social level with the client.
Shaping the alliance
Coaching is a cooperative effort built on trust between coach and client for a fixed period of time. It is up to the coach to make the unwritten rules and mutual expectations of this cooperation explicit.
Being on equal footing and assuming responsibility
The coach and the client work at eye level. The client is an expert on their own life, social environment and problems, and bears full responsibility for them at all times. The coach is an expert in helping the client to develop alternative views and behaviour patterns. The coach is responsible for shaping the cooperation.
The potential within the client is the subject of the coaching
The coach sees themselves as an advocate of the client’s potential. Their actions will be based on what is most conducive to the client’s potential and growth in order to fully realise this potential in everyday life.
Confrontation, provocation & agitation
If based on goodwill and respect and in the interests of furthering the client’s potential, the confrontation, provocation and distraction of the client can be useful in cultivating new patterns of behaviour.
The real work is done between the sessions
Conversations with the coach can be very intensive, but the actual work takes place between the sessions: both through the client’s conscious reflection and also by means of subconscious processes. Together with the client, the coach also addresses challenging tasks in the form of behavioural experiments which the client has to complete by the next session.
Prepared to stop at any moment
The coaching relationship requires a mutual commitment to the process and to the client’s (personal) development. If the client is not willing or able to commit, the coach’s most effective intervention might sometimes be to end the coaching relationship and awareness of this possible outcome should be part of the work with the client.
The issue put forward is not the real issue
The client seeks the cooperation of a coach to work with them on a specific topic or issue. As a general rule, the topic of concern is merely the problem on the surface which conceals the actual underlying problem. This is really what coaching is all about. It is this actual issue which needs to be identified. You can only work with what you see
Even if the work assignment and the coaching mandate are clear, it is possible that crises, conflicts, or disruptions may occur in the life of the client. Under these circumstances, the coach’s first priority must be to ensure that the client is able to work. This may also mean spending a certain period of time working on a topic that has nothing to do with the actual coaching mandate.
Keeping the system in view
The coach never works with a client in isolation, but rather with a whole system with which the client interacts and relates to. Therefore, the coach must always be mindful of the system in terms of its effects on the client’s changed behaviour.
Adopting a meta-perspective when things do not flow
Sometimes the energy simply does not flow between coach and client in terms of the cooperation; the shared process, which otherwise runs effortlessly, comes to a standstill. In these cases it makes sense to take a meta-perspective and to examine together with the client whether there is a point of disturbance in the relationship.
Transference & countertransference
Coach and client subconsciously transfer emotional attributions to one another, which are based on associations and memories of the person transferring them. This cannot be prevented in an intensive form of cooperation. If this subconscious transference involves the client projecting emotions or attributes onto the coach, it may be worth
addressing this with the help of the meta-perspective. If, on the other hand, the coach notices that countertransference is occurring with emotional attributions towards the client, the coach should clarify this outside the coaching relationship within the scope of their supervision. If the transference is occurring subconsciously between both
the coach and the client, this is also called “collusion”. In this case further cooperation is most likely not in the client’s interests.
Failure & feedback
The purpose of experimenting is to make mistakes and to learn from them. From this perspective there is no failure, everything is feedback for the learning process. This applies equally to both client and coach.
Attitude towards yourself
Levels of listening
The coach can listen to the client on three different levels, but they are not all equally appropriate to the client’s needs and interests:
1.Listening to yourself
The coach’s attention is primarily focused on their own story, not on that of the client.
2.Focussed listening
The coach listens attentively to the client’s story.
3.Active listening
The coach picks up on both verbal and non-verbal cues from the client’s story. For the client, it is more beneficial if the coach listens as often as possible to him or her at levels two or three.
Powerful questions & suggestions
The coach is an expert in the art of asking questions. Their questions stimulate thought processes and open up new possibilities and perspectives for the client. Speech is silver, but silence is golden Powerful questions followed by the relaxed, wait and-see silence of the coach are helpful for the client. The coach must resist the tendency to bombard the client with interventions and questions in an attempt to offer the client his or her money’s worth.
Insights & advice
Insights that the client gains about themselves are a thousand times more effective and therefore worth more than any advice a coach could dispense. The coach supports the client by asking powerful questions.
Making advice more transparent
Sometimes it can be useful in a session and also in terms of the client’s own development for the coach to give advice based on their own life experience. In this case it is important to make it transparent that one is acting not in one’s role as a coach but as an experienced executive. This can be done verbally or by sitting in a different chair.
Interventions can be crutches
The point of coaching is to serve the client in his or her development. Interventions are a possible means to this end, but are not an end in themselves.
Self-perception & intuition
The coach pays attention to their own energy level and inner state. They listen to theirinner voice and intuition.
Self-perception
It is the coach’s task to ensure their own ability to perform for the benefit of the client, because an intervention is only as good as their own inner state. Therefore, being able to self-manage one’s own emotions, inner state and energy level is an important skill for a coach to have.
Comfort zone & new terrain
Even the coach leaves his or her comfort zone and enters new terrain with their work. Their task is then to carefully assess, in the client’s interest, whether they have the will and ability to deal with this amount of uncharted territory.
If something doesn’t work, try something else
There are no bad clients, only inflexible coaches. , It is therefore always useful if the coach can fall back on different approaches and interventions to be of use to the client.
Fundamentals: the coach’s professionalism
In addition to the coach’s attitude, their understanding of professionalism has also been decisively influenced by insights from various schools of thought in psychotherapy. Here is an overview of the essential elements.
A contract is a contract
The coach and the client together work out the coaching mandate and follow it. Any deviations from the mandate on the part of the client are discussed, especially if they do not serve the development of the client or if they violate the multiple loyalties of the coach.
Confidentiality
The coach must at all times maintain complete confidentiality with respect to the content of thecoaching sessions.
Multiple loyalties
The coach is loyal to different parties: on the one hand to the client themself and their potential for growth. Loyalty is expressed here essentially through the attitude and discretion of the coach. On the other hand, the coach is loyal to the representatives of the commissioning company, such as the client’s superior or the human resources department. Loyalty here consists above all in ensuring that the actual coaching content in line with the client’s agreed coaching objective.
The coach’s three freedoms
1. The freedom not to have to be liked by the client. Sometimes it is important for the client’s development to confront them with unpleasant truths and even to irritate them temporarily with them. In the medium term this is very useful for the client’s development, because the feedback can be absorbed by the client and triggers processes of change.
2. The freedom from the client’s goals and points of view. Sometimes it can happen that the coach adopts the client’s goals and views as their own and takes responsibility for them. By doing so, the coach loses their critical distance and impartiality towards the client and renders them unable to best serve their client’s development. It is therefore important to ensure that the responsibility for achieving the goals is and remains with the client throughout the entire process.
3. Economic freedom: The coach must not be dependent on the income from coaching, otherwise he cannot optimally serve the growth of the client.
Being aware of one’s own limits
Every coach has limits in working with clients, within which they feel competent, secure and comfortable. It is part of the coach’s professionalism to perceive when the needs of the client go beyond these limits and then to act accordingly. For a client who suffers from depression, this might involve a referral to a psychotherapist. In the case of a client who has too many issues at the relationship level, this may mean ending the coaching process or referring them to a different coach.
Openly disclosing conflicts of interest
The coach will always try to disclose any kind of conflict of interest which could jeopardise the relationship of trust with the client. This might be the case, for instance, if the coach is also tasked with coaching a colleague of the client with whom the client has a serious conflict.
Recognition of ethical guidelines
Since coaching is not overseen by a regulatory body, it is part of the coach’s professionalism to join a recognised professional association and to act in accordance with the ethical guidelines defined by it.
Quality assurance
Every coaching process needs to ensure quality of advice. This can be done through so-called “Quality Assurance Calls” − discussions between the client and a neutral third party − or by means of a written evaluation.
Documenting the process
During the coaching process, it is the coach’s task to document the essential findings of each session and the agreed assignments, and to make them swiftly available to the client.
Supervision
It is part of the coach’s professionalism to meet with a supervisor at regular intervals and go through any cases which they feel are problematic in order to clarify any issues inwardly, to develop new perspectives and ideas, and to help overcomeany blocks.
Proper training, certification & further education
Well-founded and recognised training is an absolute prerequisite for working as a professional coach. This also includes certification by a recognised professional association and regularly undergoing further training.
Self-awareness, self-therapy
If a coach wants to be a good mirror for their client, they should make sure that the mirror is flat, i.e. that they have examined their own personal issues and worked through them with a professional.
Clarifying the framework conditions
A coach’s tasks also include the creation of transparent agreements on the organisational framework within which the coaching t akes place. For example, notice requirements for postponing appointments, the availability of the coach between sessions and the invoicing process should be clearly defined.
Support with more complex programmes
In larger coaching programmes involving many clients and several coaches, the expectations of the coaching provider as a company increase. It is then necessary to appoint a central contact person within the coaching company and, together with the client, to define processes for cooperation, e.g. with the matching of client with coach, status
reporting and a form of regular communication, e.g. to deal in a structured way with possible conflicts of interest within the programme.