The Excellerate guide to Directive Coaching
Why "Directive Coaching"?
It’s a good question, and one which coaches shouldn’t ask, so you should be ashamed of yourself.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. No, not a nut as you would normally find in a nutshell, but that first paragraph. You see, it’s full of rules and shoulds.
Over the past few years, I have met literally many coaches who have trained with the popular life coaching schools, as well as some unpopular ones. And they all say the same thing – that they feel restricted by the rules they have to follow, particularly the one that says they must be non-directive.
Just in case you missed it, I’ll point out that joke again – they must be non-directive.
The coaching schools are selling the dream. They even have pictures of coaches standing in front of boats and villas in
I saw an advert in our local newspaper for life coaching at £5 an hour. Next to it was an advert for office cleaners, paying £5.90 an hour. Do you see the problem? The people who are really making money out of life coaching are the people who are training the coaches. And as if in response to these very words, one of the most well known companies is now offering their brand new training program where you can become accredited to train coaches, not just to be a coach. I guess their students’ bank accounts had recovered sufficiently from their original coach training.
And so the people who really do have what it takes to be successful in their new career are finding that the rules of their training are too restrictive. They’re not allowed to direct. They’re not allowed to ask closed questions. They’re not allowed to take the credit for the client’s progress. Where do these strange rules from?
When you look at the way that the coach training companies have marketed themselves, it is very similar to the multi level marketing strategies used for household products in that they promise amazing lifestyles for a small investment in time and money. All you have to do is sign up all your friends and neighbours and you’ll be able to work from home, retire from your mundane nine to five job and be your own boss. For anyone stuck in an unfulfilling job, it’s perfect.
But! Don’t I need relevant experience to be a coach? I mean, anyone can sell cleaning products to their neighbours, I don’t need any qualifications for that. If I’m coaching a businessman, don’t I need to know about business? If I’m coaching a saleswoman, don’t I need to know about sales?
The coaching schools say no, because coaching is content free, and it’s about the process which is perfect, and it’s non directive so you can coach anyone about anything and they need never know that you haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.
Now let me just clear one thing up – in principle I agree with this, what I don’t agree with is the way it’s been presented in tablets of stone by the coaching schools as a way of overcoming that obvious sales objection. If I’m going to part with several months’ worth of my hard earned salary, I want to be reassured that I can really make a living as a coach, and my number one concern is credibility. Well if a guy with a suntan standing in front of a boat says I don’t need it then that’s good enough for me!
So the coaching schools take people who only want to work for themselves, from home and be their own bosses and take their hard earned cash, and in return they get training in a prescriptive process and a nice certificate with a gold sticker on it.
With this as their start point, there’s no way that the coaching schools can have any influence over their students’ ability to get results, so instead they dictate the process. After all, if you don’t trust someone to do something properly using their own initiative, what do you do? Give them very… clear… step… by… step… instructions… slowly… and… in… big… writing… with… pictures.
So there we go. Take in anyone off the street who wants to pay to be trained and give them a coaching process to follow that is so simple that even they can’t go wrong.
Except go wrong they do.
Not because there’s anything wrong with the coaches, not because they don’t try hard enough, not because they don’t do it properly and not because they don’t know what they’re doing, and certainly not because they don’t have enough certificates.
It goes wrong because clients are unfortunately a little more complex and varied than the simple coaching model. Therefore, anyone who coaches seriously for any length of time begins to discover that they reach a wall, a barrier beyond which they cannot reach with their checklists and wheels of life.
They haven’t reached the limits of their capability; they have reached the limits of any prescriptive model to break through the barriers that really hold back their clients; fear, doubt and disbelief.
Let’s face it; no-one ever failed at anything important because they didn’t have their wheel of life filled in properly.
At this point I would like to take pause for our more sensitive readers. You see, if directive coaching is really for you then you agree with or at least understand what I have said here. If these words anger you, if this philosophy grates against your fundamental beliefs then put this down now and go watch Bambi. It’s not safe out here! It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it’s not for the timid.
If you want to carry on the way you are, go do it. If you’re ready to step up a gear, if you’re ready for the challenges that lie ahead, if you’re ready to genuinely touch your clients’ lives in ways that you had never imagined, then read on.
Some coaches turn to studies such as NLP to find new tools that will help their clients to make breakthroughs. NLP is highly directive, as is Ericksonian hypnosis. Milton Erickson was certainly not a fluffy kitten.
So to answer the question posed at the start of this post, the answer is this: because it’s what any coach worth his or her salt needs, and it’s what anyone serious about coaching is asking for.
Many people come to coaching to make a difference in their clients’ lives and in doing so, they make a difference in their own lives. We help ourselves by helping others.
For us, coaching is about getting results. It’s about helping a client who knows the ‘what’ and helping them figure out the ‘how’. And it’s about getting clients past their own self imposed barriers of fear and self doubt in order to achieve their wildest dreams.
So why "directive coaching"?
Because it’s there.
posted by Peter Freeth at 23:28
5 Comments:
I wanted to post a reference to this on a life coaching forum - but no permalink that I can see! Seriously, the blog could do with permalinks...
At last someone who says how it is about training schools - they lay down the rules and tell you to get on with it! As Peter says, it doesn'nt work that way.
Denise Vogel
wwww.denisevogel-lifecoach.co.uk
You can pick up the URLs for each story from the archive list at the top right of the page, so this post's URL is http://www.excellerate.org/blog/2007/09/excellerate-guide-to-directive-coaching.html
As someone who's made a decent living from coaching for 8 years (now an MCC), I'd agree with much of what Peter's written here. Some coach training schools still really do promise you £500 per hour! Sad that people get duped but caveat emptor too.
On the question of being directive, I'd ask for a definition of "directive". No one is going to benefit from superficial coaching that just tells them what to do. However,firm encouragement to help a client push past their resistance and break an old pattern may also seem directive and often leads to a breakthrough. And, in certain circumstances, there may even be a case for telling a client what to do: as Dave Buck, head of Coachville, put it (I paraphrase): when clients are overwhelmed, the most useful thing a coach can do may be to direct them.
Define 'directive' - good question. In my opinion, coaches who have the 'non directive' mantra drummed into them are afraid to make suggestions for fear of leading the client. So they fall back on GROW and keep asking the client for more options. Well, if the client knew what to do they would already be doing it. So I would suggest that directive means the coach isn't afraid to lead the client or tell them what to do, because the client can always say no! By the way, I usually make deliberately wrong or outlandish suggestions to get the client to at least move somewhere other than the 'I don't know' space. And sometimes I'll cold read and play back the client's own thoughts. And sometimes I'll tell the client what's goint go happen just to provoke them into doing something different. So by directive I think I mean anything other than waiting for the client to come up with all the answers.
Post a Comment