Starting up as a coach and getting ready for your first session? Here are a few tips to get you started
Create a “questionnaire” for yourself
As you are adapting to the individual, you could create a simple “questionnaire” that you use for your first interactions. You don’t need to share it necessarily with the other person but at least you have a thread of questions to follow and you are asking the same set of questions each time. That gives you data to work on.
Why don’t you go ahead and share what’s in your personal questionnaire on this post?
The first session must include setting up a goal that the person wants to achieve
Your first coaching session must tackle in some way share or form What the student wants to achieve. Spend as much time as needed to get a clear description of their goals, that it is measurable, time-bounded, and that they feel super excited about achieving that goal.
Make sure that the person commits to doing something following your session
Then there should be a part around commitment: find a way for your people to commit to doing something: an exercise, to send you an update, to think about something, but they need to have some clear action to focus on after your session, it keeps them going.
Structure: the GROW model
A model you can use for all that is called “GROW”
- Goal
- Reality
- Options
- Work / Actions
I encourage you to look it up on the web, there is a wide variety of descriptions to help you, and it’s much better explained than what I can do here.
Create your personal checklist
The other thing I would encourage you to create is a small checklist of all the things YOU want to accomplish by the end of the first session:
- what topics will you cover with the person?
- what messages do you want to send across?
- what information do you want to share?
- how do you want to behave?
- what actions and techniques do you want to use to build rapport?
Manage your time
Finally, a critical point is the management of time for your session. It may feel generous to spend more time in a session, but it’s not sustainable for either party, so make sure you stay within a time range that you decide for yourself. During the session, find a non-disruptive way for you to track time and if you know that you have a tendency to lose track of time, set yourself some quiet reminders.