The Mentor as Coach – Practice and Strategies

Mentoring incorporates coaching skills amongst a diverse set of tools.

The process of coaching builds capability with participants to become less mentor dependent and more self-directed over time.

Through purposeful and strategic coaching conversations, agency is built with participants to set and achieve learning, growth and development goals.

This process contributes to developing participant self-efficacy, self-determination and self- regulation.

Coaching also improves:

attitude and motivation
goal directed behaviour
skills and performance
resourcefulness and resilience

Over time, an externally facilitated (mentor-led) coaching process can be internalised by participants to self-coach. Self-coaching encourages metacognition and reflective practice, which further enhances self-efficacy, self-determination and self-regulation. It is demonstrated through self-directed internal conversations, or self-talk.

The metacognitive strategies developed through coaching promote a more considered and strategic approach to addressing opportunity and challenge through creating:

increased self-perception, clarity of thought, purpose and intent
strategy and a commitment to act
reflective practice and accountability.

Coaching Strategies

Good coaching practise is demonstrated through:

being self-aware and attentive
building trust and confidence
being procedural and analytical
promoting clarity and strategy around opportunity
promoting self-reflection and metacognition
promoting resourcefulness and resilience
brokering a commitment to act, and establishing measures of success and accountability.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

A critical component of effective coaching practice is the consistent demonstration of EI. This contributes to creating a safe place for the participant, promotes engagement, and builds trust around the relationship.

EI can be demonstrated non-verbally through the demeanour adopted by the coach – for example, by creating a sense of presence, engagement, consideration and empathy through body language, tone and response to challenge.

Verbally, EI can be demonstrated by the structure and intent of questions that frame coaching conversations.

Active listening

Active listening focuses upon the content of the words being spoken, along with the non- verbal cues that enrich and substantiate the communication process.

It is a respectful, non-intrusive and non-judgmental process that provides the speaker with an opportunity to be heard and acknowledged.

Active listeners demonstrate their engagement by:

using empathic non-verbal cues, including body language
demonstrating patience and not interrupting, even during extended pauses
respectfully searching for clarity and understanding
providing constructive feedback, when

Identifying purpose and creating agency

Application of the coaching process should identify purpose and create agency with the participant to act in ways that deliver upon the identified purpose.

This process clarifies what is important and the benefits of attending to what is important – it is objective, logical and procedural.

Affirming

A positive mindset promotes a person to be more open to opportunity and to be more expansive in their thinking.

A good way to begin a coaching conversation is to identify what is, generally, working well for the participant – it does not have to be directly related to goal attainment.

For example, ‘What has gone really well for you since the last time we spoke?’ or ‘Have you had any great moments since we last caught up?’

By reflecting upon small wins and positive experiences, the coaching conversation can begin with some forward momentum.

A coach can also help to construct a positive mindset through affirming – listening for things that are working, identifying them, acknowledging their positive impact and applying the process to new situations.

For example, ‘It sounds to me like you are taking more responsibility for getting ready for school each day – fantastic! What benefits have you noticed? What other areas could benefit from you being more organised?’

To be effective, an affirmation should be authentic in recognising and building confidence around progress towards goal attainment.

Solutions-focused – strengths-based practice

The solutions-focused process recognises, further develops and applies existing strengths and resources (both internal and external) to create a solution to address an identified challenge.

It shifts attention from a problem to its solution, and from challenge to opportunity. A solutions focus creates a positive approach, which lifts aspirations and energises participants to envision, plan and work towards a preferred outcome.

Envisioning

When a person clearly imagines what is possible, they can develop a sense of how success will look and feel – you can’t be what you can’t see.

Through envisioning, the benefits of achieving a goal can be clearly and resonantly articulated, increasing goal commitment and motivation.

Small steps

Breaking a goal down into what is ‘doable’ is critical to building self-efficacy and agency with the participant. This can be represented through creating a ‘goal ladder’, which participants climb towards achieving their goal.

Trying to do too much in a short time frame is not sustainable, and could result in burnout and feelings of failure. Incremental and steady progress towards a goal promotes self- efficacy, self-determination and self-regulation. This is known as the Progress Principle, championed by Teresa Amabile (http://progressprinciple.com) in relation to workplace engagement, but it is also applicable to learning, growth and development.

Establish tiny habits

In his book Tiny Habits, the founder of the Behaviour Design Lab at Stanford University, BJ Fogg, identifies that small behaviour changes, actioned in response to strategic prompts, empower goal attainment. The regular adoption of small changes in behaviour elicits further positive changes to create momentum towards a goal. The adoption of this practice reduces complexity and assists in simplifying behaviours to a routine of stimulus and response. It mitigates barriers to enacting goal-oriented behaviours and reduces the likelihood of procrastination, which may result in disengagement from a goal.

For example, I have a goal to exercise each morning. As such, when my alarm goes off, I put on my exercise gear, which has been placed in sight of my bed. Initially, I follow a short exercise routine that does not require me to leave my residence, nor rely on the use of specialised equipment. After fifteen minutes of physical activity I enjoy my breakfast.

Once this simple routine has been established, there are opportunities to expand the regime and its benefits in sustainable ways.

Nonetheless, a simple routine has been created to promote a new habit – when I wake up, I exercise.

The miracle question

Where challenge clouds the ability to envision what is possible, the ‘Miracle Question’ may be a useful tool to assist in creating clarity.

It goes something like this: If a miracle were to occur:

what would be different?
how would it be different?
what would have changed?

This process assists in creating the image of a preferred outcome, which can then be deconstructed to establish strategies through which it can be achieved.

Scaling

Scaling is a technique that helps orient a participant to their goal – in this sense, it is a little bit like a GPS.

The participants allocate themselves a score between 1–10, which indicates progress towards attaining a goal (with 10 representing goal attainment).

The score identified by the participant provides a context around which coaching can be facilitated to create a way forward.

For example, let’s say a participant identifies a score of 4:

On a scale of 1–10, where are you now in relation to attaining your goal?
What are you already doing that places you at four on the scale?
What would you notice if you moved two points up the scale?
What could you do to move you two points up the scale?
What else could you do?
What will you do?

What else?

Prompting a participant to dig deep into their thinking can lead to rich rewards. The ‘what else?’ question requires a participant to consider a range of options to promote progress towards goal attainment, before deciding upon what they will do.

This process tests the resourcefulness of a participant to identify the best options available to them to attain their goal.

Bridging the Void

At times, a participant may have trouble identifying strategies to achieve a goal – their mind simply draws a blank.

Strategies to bridge this void include requesting the participant to identify a time:

When they were in a similar situation and ask:
What worked for you then?
What did you learn from the situation that could be useful to you now?
When they noticed somebody else in a similar situation and ask:
What worked for them?
What did they do that could be useful to you?

Another strategy is to create a different perspective by asking ‘If somebody else was in your situation, what advice would you give them?’

Alternatively, you could prompt the participant to identify possible resources from which they could draw, by asking:

Who may be able to assist you?
Where could you find support?
Where could you find out?

Clarifying

Language and thinking form a critical and complex interrelation. Fuzzy language can often be indicative of fuzzy thinking.

Prompting clarity of thought and language can help to disentangle, analyse, interpret, organise and frame a person’s perceptions, understandings, aspirations and goals.

Clarity can be promoted by:

constructively challenging perceptions
establishing what is most important
paraphrasing, organising and/or summarising what has been

Without clarity, there is a risk of disorientation and confusion. With clarity, a way forward can be clearly established.

Challenging and reframing perceptions

Perceptions and beliefs influence behaviour.

Where perceptions and beliefs limit a person’s opportunities, it can result in disadvantage or underachievement.

As such, we need to ensure that perceptions and beliefs are evidence based and valid, not built upon inaccuracies and/or subjective bias.

Questions that promote validation of perceptions and beliefs can test their accuracy, for example:

What gives you the confidence this is the case?
Where have you seen evidence to support this perception?
What benefit do you derive from holding this perception?
What risks are associated with holding this perception?
What could be possible if you changed this perception?

By respectfully challenging perceptions, we create an opportunity for them to be reframed.

Reframing requires a strong evidence base upon which different perceptions are created, and from which more appropriate behaviours can be developed.

This process can also be applied to challenge Behavioural Confirmation, where social expectations influence the demonstration of behaviours that become self-fulfilling.

A mentor as coach needs to be conscious of the bias they bring to interpreting and understanding complex circumstances impacting upon a person with whom they may be working. It may not always be possible to reduce complexity to a simple interaction of cause and effect.

Feedback

Timely and constructive feedback is critical to improving performance. However, giving and receiving feedback can be difficult – very few people like being told and, in some ways, it can be counterproductive.

Coaching promotes metacognition and reflective practice with participants to facilitate self-generated feedback, which can often be less confronting, for example:

What is critical to achieving your goal?
In working towards your goal, what would you notice?
What would that look, sound and feel like?
What has stood out for you?
What has surprised you?
What went well?
What is getting in the way?
What could you have done to produce a different result?
What have you learned?
How will this change what you do?
How are you going to use what you have noticed to inform your thinking and behaviour?

At times, however, a coach may be required to provide direct feedback. It is important the coach asks permission of the participant before doing so. Feedback should only be provided when there is a resonant strength in the coaching relationship, and at an appropriate time.

Feedback should be timely, respectful, objective, evidence based and clinical. It should be solutions focused, specific and relate to a process, rather than the person.

Feedback should be provided in a manner that articulates intent and allows the participant to draw conclusions.

Research indicates that the ratio of positive feedback to negative feedback should be at least 3:1.

A mentor as coach can model receiving and acting upon feedback by requesting feedback around their mentoring/coaching practice, to inform its ongoing development.

Creating commitment and accountability

A clear and accurate record of a goal – its purpose, process to be mastered, practices to be demonstrated and time frame for achievement – increases commitment and accountability by:

creating and maintaining focus
establishing a structure that guides and promotes goal-based behaviours
Providing a point of reference for monitoring and reporting progress towards goal

Commitment and accountability are increased when a goal is made public or shared with significant others.