You’re excited to get started with your coach and you’ve prepared for how to get the most from your coaching experience. Now – how do you utilize each individual =session to maximize the time you have with your Executive Coach?
Here is one possible guideline for how to work with an executive coach, assuming you’re using 50-60 minute sessions. Of course, this is a jumping-off point: you can work with your coach to create whatever structure best works for you.
A typical coaching session runs as follows:
- Check in and Sharing from the Week (5 minutes)
- Coaching request (2 minutes)
- Coaching the Request (20-30 minutes)
- Promises: Practices and Projects (10 minutes)
- Wrap-up, confirm next session (3 minutes)
In your initial sessions with a coach, you are typically determining the focus of your work – what your coaching projects will be, based on where you want to go and what the gaps are to get there.
You will be covering some distinctions and possibly discussing new concepts throughout your coaching, though likely more frequently at the beginning.
After the initial month, the sessions will shift more to you driving the sessions. Please come with a “request for coaching,” i.e. what you want to take from the individual session. Great areas to consider are: where you are stuck in achieving your planned project, what’s next, ways to build on new discoveries, etc. You’ll want to phrase your request in terms of what you want to end up with at the end of the session; what’s your goal?
For example, if you are looking at a gap, i.e. “this is where I’m stopped,” or “I don’t like this thing,” try to identify what you DO want. In other words, if you notice yourself not taking the actions you want to take, a request might be: “I’m not doing what I’ve said I’d do — I’d like to leave our session with some ways to get back in action” or “I’m afraid to call the people on my list, which is slowing me down, I’d like figure out how to move forward swiftly in my marketing plan.”
The more you can come with a direction you’d like to take, the more accelerated the coaching. You are responsible for the direction of your coaching, the speed of it, and the process. If there is ever any part of it that is not working for you, please bring it to your coach’s attention so that you can partner on a solution.
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