Barnabas File

Looking for a master class in coaching?  Check out  Breakthrough Coaching: Creating Lightbulb Moments in Your Coaching Conversations  by Marcia Reynolds, a masterful coach.  The book is a fresh look at the basics of coaching written to encourage and challenge the practitioner.   Key topics are: ·        How to Embody a Coaching Mindset ·        Maintaining a Client-Centered Focus ·        What Is Their Desired Outcome Really? ·        Debugging the Operating System ·        Turning Insights into Commitments   An example of her approach is the way that she addresses empathy.     She explains,   “ Empathy doesn’t mean getting caught up in people’s emotions and dramas. There is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is absorbing another’s emotions.  . ..  Empat...

At some point, I discovered that you learn more by teaching than by being a student in a course.  For three years, colleague Beth Kennett and I have taught an Introduction to Coaching class as part of Summit Coach Training from Pinnacle.   In teaching, I have rediscovered at least ten concepts that I think every coach should remember.    The client is central.  Coaching is really all about the client. The client sets the agenda, and the coach provides the process.  If you have any concerns about what to ask or how to proceed, ask yourself, “Does this serve the client?” Coaching is really a partnership.  It is a collaborative activity.  Bob Dale spoke about coach and client as “thought partners.”  It is a partnership that fosters creativity on the part of client and learning on the part of the coach. You are not a “fixer.”  Many of us who are coaches come from backgrounds where we were problem-solve...

In her very helpful book   Coach the Person, Not the Problem: A Guide to Using Reflective Inquiry , Marcia Reynolds makes this powerful statement: “There is a difference between  doing  coaching and  being  a coach.”  She shares how her practice of coaching changed her perspective and the way she related to people including close friends. To take this a step further, she writes, “When you are being a coach, people feel seen, heard, and valued.  Acknowledge your impact so it becomes part of your identity.”  I have found that many people who becomes coaches--and I am talking here about life, leadership, executive, health, etc., coaches--were already oriented to be encouragers in their relationships with others, but training as a coach deepened those inclinations as new skills were acquired and practiced. Reynolds’ book reminded me that coaching is a dance between client and coach, but one in which the coach does not always le...

The best coaches are really teachers.     Marcia Reynolds writes, “The best coaches make us recognize we have gaps in our reasoning.     The moment we become unsure of what we know learning happens.    This is good coaching.” Reynolds is a good coach.  In Coach the Person Not the Problem:  A Guide to Using Reflective Inquiry, she draws on learning theory, neuroscience, and her considerable experience in coaching to provide a practical and productive model for coaching--The Five Essential Coaching Practices. She provides some interesting insights.  For example, she writes, “Thinking is the enemy of the coach.”  The work of analyzing the client’s story belongs to the client, not the coach. The role of the coach is to help the client revisit, review, and reframe the narrative in order to generate a learning moment and then to act on it. Reynolds uses case studies to illustrate her observations and each ch...