Coaching skills checklists

Coaching Skills Checklists

These checklists will help you to develop your coaching skills by giving you an understanding of the principles of coaching as well as the popular models that you can use.

Coaching Session Checklist

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This Coaching Session checklist provides you with a list of items that will help you to remember to use each of the coaching skills you have developed, or want to develop, during each of your coaching sessions. You can use this list of reminders to assess how well you are developing each of these skills by putting a tick in the far right column every time you used this skill you to use each of your coaching skills during the session.

These skills include: questioning techniquesactive listeningbuilding rapportdemonstrating empathysetting a goalgiving constructive feedback and using your intuition.
This checklist is designed to help you focus your coaching skills, which are often in conflict with how you normally operate as a manager. In fact, it can be difficult to switch off your natural management behaviors when you act as a coach.
For example, when delegating work you would normally instruct an individual to perform a specified task and then monitor (but not necessarily support) that person in how they perform it. In addition, you would usually provide feedback based on results rather than by on observation of how the task was done.

In your management role you also have a list of tasks that need to be conducted to ensure the smooth running of day-to-day operations and in order to achieve this you assign different tasks to different individuals. These tasks will already have a documented process and you only require the person to perform the task. You are not attempting to draw from that individual any new ideas of how to approach the task or expecting them to challenge this process's efficiency or purpose.
Coaching requires a different set of behaviors , for example: in a management role, you give explicit instructions to follow an existing process and then monitor progress towards the expected results. As a coach, you may implicitly question why the task is being done and how it is being done because this approach can encourage new ideas as it supports critical thinking and possible change.
Another important difference is that a coach needs to build a rapport based on trust and honesty, but as a manager you are often prevented from being totally open about certain issues because of things like internal politics and commercial confidentiality.
These factors present obstacles to internal coaching that you can overcome only by making a conscious effort. This checklist is designed to help you to do just that.

Download "Coaching Session Checklist.pdf"

Coaching Questions Checklist

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This Coaching Questions checklist provides a sample of questions you can ask when coaching a member of your team or an individual from another team. These questions follow the principles used in either the GROW or TGROW coaching models. (When using the GROW model you will skip the questions related to 'Topic'.)
By using this type of question in your coaching session you will enable the coachee to conduct a self-assessment of the situation and problem they which to address through coaching. They help the individual to identify the obstacles they face and to explore potential options that they could use to address the problem.
Importantly, the coachee commits to the necessary steps they must take to successfully attain their coaching goal within the timeframe they set themselves.
You can use a question to prompt the coachee to look for a new idea or solution that would not have occurred to them otherwise. It is important to point out that the idea may not have occurred to you either. Through the use of questions you may encourage the coachee to come up with something completely novel.

Questioning offers you the opportunity to persuade your coachee to consider the potential problems that might result from a particular course of action. Finally, allowing the coachee to develop the idea themselves means that they are much more likely to commit and follow through a course of action.
This is because they have a much greater sense of ownership of and commitment towards the actions when putting them into practice. The skill in coaching is knowing when and how to use different types of questions to maximize your effectiveness.

Download "Coaching Questions Checklist.pdf"