4 Stages of the Coaching Journey every Coach Must Know
My intention has always been to build meaningful coaching relationships in my professional journey. As a Life Leadership Coach, it has always been about giving people the vision and courage to create their own path and encouraging them to forge ahead fearlessly.
Our mind is a magnificent tool - one that can push you to explore your limits or one that can hold you back with endless fears. My aim has always been to bring higher levels of awareness with everyone I partner with using coaching models.
As a coach, I’ve come across numerous clients who have approached me with their fair share of struggles. Often, there is confusion, chaos, and lack of awareness to view the appropriate path. My challenge is to bring a transformation in the minds of these people. Yes, the same mind that plays tricks on us throughout our lives, telling us what we can do and cannot do.
Exploring patterns and having clarity are success markers that display how useful the session is for the client.
A number of coaching professionals I’ve interacted with indicate the most difficult thing about coaching is defining ‘where to begin’. If the coach is assured a client is motivated and capable of delivering what is required, then, what follows is the 4 stages of the coaching journey. This is useful to achieve the purpose of the coaching journey. If you are a coach, you’ll find these 4 stages extremely useful for effective coaching. It aims to add immense value to your client-coach relationship.
4 Stages of Coaching Methods to move from ‘Clarity to Success’ in the Coaching Journey
1) Problem Statement
The first stage of one’s coaching journey is the client who approaches the coach with a situation that needs to be resolved. As a coach, you must be cognizant of the situation and the current state of mind of the client. He/she may have faced multiple failures or hardships that have created worry, stress, anxiety, fear, depression, and more. Here, the client operates from his/her fear instincts or the constant state of dilemma. He/she may find it difficult to embark on a new idea or job because there is a statement that is constantly looming in their mind which begins with “I don’t.” “I don’t think I can do this, as I haven’t been successful so far,” is an example which forms the problem statement a coach needs to tackle with. The client embroiled in own thoughts is focussed largely on what they ‘don’t want’. This takes the attention away from what a client genuinely desires in life. A coach must be quick to spot this problem statement to proceed to the next stage of coaching. As a coaching method, the coach works with the client from this state of confusion to clarity.
2) Goal Statement
A client in the state of confusion may not even be aware of what is required. A coach has to display excellent questioning skills as well as listening skills to communicate with clarity. A coach needs to gently ask what a client wants and be able to decipher the deeper message by reading between the lines. A sentence such as, “I’m afraid I will be unsuccessful,” is actually the problem statement. Here, the client’s goal needs to be shared across in a positive manner which can easily be captured in a precise statement such as, “ I want to adopt a disciplined approach to discover success.” By sharing this goal statement, the coach gives the client access to his resourceful space. He/she gets a direction to change the thought pattern and move away from the unconscious thoughts that are bothering the mind.
Our mind is a magnificent tool - one that can push you to explore your limits or one that can hold you back with endless fears.
Now the goal has been formed (discipline and strategy) and the same goal needs to be clarified and verified by the coach. When a client realizes what he/she wants from the session as well as one’s own life, it shows a heightened sense of awareness which acts as a success indicator for the coach. Exploring patterns and having clarity are success markers that display how useful the session is for the client. This is one of the useful coaching techniques.
3) Awareness Learning
A coach’s effective questioning skills creates awareness in the mind of the client of what they want. With this awareness, a client may realise the effects of the thought process and its impact in many other areas of life. This space itself is called as awareness space. At this stage, the client knows exactly what he/she wants from life apart from the goals as discussed earlier. The client is now aware that perhaps, he/she focussed too much on what couldn’t be done rather than what could have been done. The client develops a higher sense of awareness and receives tremendous learning, possibilities and tapping resourceful spaces of one’s own shortcomings. Awareness is beneficial to the client to witness the errors in one’s own thinking. The client learns to reprogram the mind to expand the frames of reference. For e.g.: He/she develops the thought process to see one’s own struggles. The client gets an awareness that the situation could have been handled differently without trying to struggle against the problem. What mattered here were the steps to have taken to resolve the problem, overcome fears, and more.
4) Action Statement
Successful coaching at this stage is when the client realizes that he/she is accountable for one’s own life. Once the awareness levels have been reached, the coach works with the client to develop accountability and understand what they want, while giving them the vision to use their wisdom and learnings. This is an important purpose of coaching. The action statement defines what a client can do to achieve goals and different methods that are a magnet for success. At this stage, the client learns that he/she needs to initiate a change within and use the goals as the guideline.
Coaches who do not follow the procedure of working from the problem statement until the action statement may often find their clients are not displaying the desired progress. By using these 4 stages and following a step-by-step procedure, clients are assured of successful sessions leading to a fulfilled coaching journey for both parties. Effective coaching techniques with the use of this model ensures the purpose of coaching is achieved for all.
Apart from being a Life Leadership Coach, I believe I am a catalyst for change. If, like me, you want to inspire lives and love coaching people, view my certification courses here. Need a life coach? Write to info@coachdrparas. Do share your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
