Before, During, After: How to Maximize a Coaching Session
Congratulations! You've booked and paid for your coaching package. Now what? How can you maximize your time with your coach? Let’s segment your investment into three buckets: before the session, during the session, and after the session.
Before
The most useful things to have as you enter the coaching conversation is a goal and an open mind. A goal is the thing you’ve engaged the coach to help you achieve. An open mind is the willingness to explore your thoughts, perspective, and behaviours and to be willing to change them. When you have these, you can be coached.
Coaching takes your vision for the future and your desire to do what needs to be done and connects them with tangible steps to get there. Start pondering what they might be for you, so you can bring them to coaching. In other words, have an idea of what you want to talk about. It's something that’s challenging you, an area of dissatisfaction where you’d like to shift your behavior or thinking, where you want to make an improvement or perform better than you currently are. If you don't have the topic and preferred outcome fully articulated yet, that's alright. Sometimes coaching is about getting clear on what outcome you're looking for. The job of coaching is to figure out how to get you from here to there. Before the coaching session, think about where you’d like to go.
While it’s useful to know what you want to get out of the coaching conversation, know that you’re not left all alone in your preparation for the session. I, as a coach, help you get ready for each session by emailing you a check-in questionnaire a day or two before the session. The questions invite you to reflect on what's happened since our last conversation [“our last conversation” meaning either the previous session or the introduction call] and assess how you’re doing. The form asks where you’re at regarding the topic you’ve brought up for coaching, and what you're interested in discussing in our upcoming conversation. By completing the questionnaire, you’re also helping me as your coach have an idea of what we might be talking about, so my mind is equipped to support you. Spend some time reflecting ahead of your session, guided by the questions, so that we can dive right in when we start the conversation.
(Side note: The purpose of the check-in is not to monitor your progress or grade you on a homework assignment like a teacher. The purpose is to aid you in your mental preparation for our time together. Don’t panic or feel the need to wait for the very last moment before answering in case something changes; you’re not bound and committed to the topic you write on the form. If something comes up between you submitting the check-in form and the time we meet, you can still bring that new situation forward. It does help us narrow in our conversation if you’ve shared a bit about it ahead of time. It just saves time for other essential elements of the call. Also, if you’ve not done the action steps from the previous session, that’s okay too. It’s information and we can re-evaluate the situation to learn from it: maybe the action plan wasn’t the right one or a barrier we didn’t anticipate came up. We can figure it out together and use it to move forward.)
If you’re doing the call by phone or video, get your space ready. You want a room that is private and quiet without worry of interruption or anyone overhearing. Silence and put away your phone and smartwatch. Turn off all alerts. Close other tabs and windows on the computer if your session is via Zoom. I like to put my Zoom window into full screen mode and “Hide Self View” to say fully focused on you, the client. You'll be doing most of the talking during the session, so it’s a good idea to have a glass or bottle of water nearby to combat a dry mouth. Another thing to have on hand is paper and pen. When we co-create new insights or design an action plan, or other important thoughts come up during the meeting, you’ll want to capture them to remember later. Paper and pen—instead of digital notetaking—is the quickest and least distracting during the conversation. If you usually keep notes electronically, you can transfer the hard copy notes to your digital records after the call, but you don’t want to get distracted by software during the coaching conversation.
If you’re receiving coaching in-person, prepare your water bottle, notebook and pen to bring with you. You’ll still want to silence and turn off all alerts on your phone and smartwatch and then put them in a pocket or bag to avoid distraction. Out of sight, out of mind is best here.
Ideally, you're ready to log into the call or walk into the meeting space five to ten minutes early. In addition to the typical reasons to being early and punctual, arriving to the coaching space early helps you enter calmly, ready to dive in. However, instead of going into the meeting immediately, use those last few minutes to relax. Some people will meditate or pray, but that’s not for everyone. The intention is to quiet your mind and focus your thoughts, because you want to be fully present during the coaching conversation.
During
You're paying for this time, so maximize the investment by being ready and fully present. During the call you don't need to pay attention to anything but what you're currently saying. My role as coach is to ensure the conversation progresses from the initial discussion to actionable steps. Your role as client is simply to answer my questions with honesty and openness. There may be times when strong emotions come up for you. You benefit most from these emotions by experiencing and noticing them. I will help you do that with gentle, reflective questions. If you need a moment to pause and think, I respect that by sitting with you in the moment and making space in the conversation for whatever is coming up. Often, this means stretches of silence. There are many gifts to be discovered in those moments of silence, and I as coach will protect the silence for you, to give you time to find what is there.
There are many ideas floating around in a coaching conversation. You've come into it with a challenge or area to work on, and I will ensure you move towards the outcome. Use your pen and paper to jot down epiphanies and important steps as they come to you during the conversation. You can ask for a moment to do this, or if I see you writing, I’ll automatically give you a moment before introducing the next question. You might record a mantra, a question, a reminder. Your notes are for you, not me or anyone else, so make them work for you in whatever fashion you need. We’ll also determine any supports you need and anticipate workarounds for obstacles that may come up; you’re welcome to jot them down, too. Capture the most important ideas in your notes and it will help you stay in the conversation.
As we wrap up the conversation, I’ll help you recognize and consolidate what you’ve learned during our time. The coaching conversation has an arc, and the final questions will help close the time out so you can move towards closure on the conversation. There will be opportunity to voice any concluding thoughts, or notice any unanswered questions, toe help us wrap up the conversation.
Be present. Speak truth. Stay open. That's your role during the coaching conversation.
After
You’ll likely walk away from the coaching session with some action items. The nature of these will vary, depending on what you need and what you’re being coached on. They may be one-time actions you’ve been putting off and now have a plan for how to execute them. They may be new or adjusted habits to roll out. They may be questions to ponder about yourself or circumstances or mindset. Whatever actions you’re taking from the session, the point is to act on the commitments and plans you made. Put them in your calendar, leave yourself reminders, make the phone calls, draft the emails, whatever needs to be done to help you make progress towards your bigger goal. Some people like to post notes of insights from the session that they want to remember (for example, “Think like a scientist”) or questions they need to keep asking themselves (“What do I really want?”). If you prefer visuals, you may want to transpose the reminder into an illustration or sketch to hang in a special place.
As mentioned in the side note in the “Before” section, if your take-aways are specific tasks and you don’t make them happen, notice that. Notice what’s getting in your way, what emotions are surfacing, what information might be lacking. You can either use that information to chart a new plan of action to complete or bring the information to your next coaching session to unpack. (Note, it it’s the latter option, write it down in a mindful spot so you do remember to bring it to the next session, whether it's to write it in your check-in form or mention it at the start of the coaching conversation.)
In addition to completing the action items, it’s also important to reflect after a coaching session: if you're into journalling or writing, write about your session. If writing is not your jam, maybe you want to go for a walk/run/cycle/swim/workout in a quiet space, without any audiobooks, podcasts, or music, and simply let your mind replay the session, considering again the coach’s questions and your responses. Truly, this is where most of the coaching magic happens. The value you get from coaching often comes after the session itself, as your mind further chews on the matters and connections of the session. So, plan some quiet time after your session and soak up the benefits, much like doing corpse pose after yoga, or the cool down after a high-intensity workout. Figure out what works best for you in your context. (Determining “what works best for you” might even be the topic you explore in your first session!) Don't deny yourself the benefit of the post-session reflection.
Whether you're doing one, some, many, or years of coaching, when you prepare BEFORE your session, stay present DURING the session, and take time to intentionally reflect AFTER the session, you'll reap the manifold benefits of having a coach help you move through challenges, achieve goals, improve skills, reframe your mindset, or all of the above. There's nothing like the experience of a dedicated person who listens to you actively, who notices and reflects your energy shifts, who helps you unlock new ideas, and who uncovers who you are, what you want, and where you can go.
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