A Case Study By Julia George, Moms/Parent Coach, UNITED STATES
Study – Julia Hazlett
- Who are the main players in this case study
Julia – I as the coach to a peer client in the ICA program
Lauren – my client for seven coaching sessions
- What is the core problem or challenge you applied your coaching skills to?
The Issue: My client and I are very different, and it was hard for me to know how to coach her.
I am a very linear action-oriented thinking individual. When I coach I tend to stay on what the client brought to the table and help them to create actions to help complete their goal.
Lauren is a very circular-thinking person and jumps in many different directions at once.
When we started coaching, I had quite a few rough sessions with Lauren. She would bring something to the table and we would get started on the session. Within just a few minutes she would bring something else to the table as she explored many different avenues all at once. It took us all seven sessions before I knew how to address this issue, and I could still use some work, on helping a client so different from me.
- What specific coaching skills or approaches did you use in this case?
Throughout our time together I learned some valuable skills in coaching among which were:
- Active Listening
- Asking Powerful Questions
- Establishing the Coaching Agreement
Client And Coach With Different Personalities
- Explain your process in detail
I first started just trying my best to be an active listener. It helped some as I was able to stay with my client who jumped in many different directions. Active listening didn’t help as much as I had hoped because I ended up going in all those different directions with my client and we never seemed to get ahead in any specific direction.
I then added to my skills by asking powerful questions. I pulled myself out of the story of my client and started asking powerful open-ended questions. This helped us to have a little more direction rather than the coaching session being all over the place. My client was able to explore things that she hadn’t been thinking about and look at her topics for the sessions in a new light. But once again our sessions still seemed to go only a little in the direction of being able to work towards the client’s outcome for the session.
As we went on I realized that I needed to work on establishing the coaching agreement for the session. (Side note: I am looking forward to the new module that will address this as it is powerful in coaching.) I started asking the client questions at the beginning of the session like, “Why is this topic important to you?”, “What about this topic is most important to explore in our session today?”, and “What is the outcome that you would like for this session?”, we were then able to know what truly was important to explore in the session. I also then checked back in with my client throughout the session to see if we were staying with the outcome she wanted or if we needed to explore something different. This was the most valuable coach skill in this situation as it helped both the client and me accomplish what the client wanted during the session.
- What were the results of your process? Was your coaching/program effective?
I was able to by the end of our time together start being able to have good sessions with Lauren. The active listening and powerful questions were helpful in some ways, but in this case, establishing the coaching agreement was the most important. It helped the client to not jump so much all over the place and it helped me first to know what was important in the session for the client and helped me to check back in with her to make sure we were going in the direction she wanted or if we needed to adjust our course.
- If you could approach this problem again, what would you do differently?
Coach Skills Course Outcome
I would start with the coaching agreement. I think no matter how different my client and I are we both benefit, and the sessions go way better if we have that established first and foremost.
- What are the top 3 things you learned from this experience?
- Start with the coaching agreement! 2. Check back in with the client on that agreement. 3. Actively listen to who the client is and not the story and ask open-ended powerful questions that go along with that.