What are the best ways to develop your coaching skills outside of your executive coaching role?

As an executive coach, it is essential to continually expand your skills. Here are some tips for your growth: 1. Interdisciplinary learning 2. Network 3. Personal development 4. Get feedback: 5. Continuing Education 6. Own coaching sessions As an executive coach, ongoing training is crucial. Use interdisciplinary learning, networking and personal development for new perspectives. Obtain regular feedback, stay up to date through further training and hire a coach for your own development.

Recording our conversations and meetings on video can be an eye-opener. Reviewing our recordings can help with many things: > develop more self-confidence > be self-aware of our communication style > assess how well we listen and if we interrupt others > be more aware of our body language, and fine-tune the camera and visual setting Plus, we can of course share the recording with a peer or supervisor, and get their feedback.

Coaching is a developmental tool and the best way for leaders/coaches to develop a coaching culture is to ask for advice from individual team members. Asking for advice shows a willingness to learn and grow and builds trust and relationship in others. It also shows a willingness to self-assess ... which is critical in coaching.

An excellent and rather unconventional way to develop your coaching skills outside of your executive coaching role, is to seek your inner self and raise your self awareness level by using interdisciplinary scientific tools, e.g. specific tools from the fields of practical philosophy, etymology, psychology, quantum physics, geometry, mathematics and astronomy. This will broaden the ways of brain functionality and will lead to a profound enhancement of every aspect of human psyche, including coaching skills and coaching awareness.

One of the greatest opportunity to self awareness is to be open to hearing feedback that may challenge my own perceptions as the is where true learning occurs and my ability to expand my own capabilities to listen for wisdom from the other person.

I'm a coach, I have a coach and my coach has a coach, learning from others, other industries, other perspectives is key. Also being a coach + leader where you are running/leading/doing actual non coaching work allows you to stay close to the real world, the day to day that your clients live. Not much can be more insightful!

Being open, observant, seek clarity, reflect and comprehend in the company of coaches who abide by ethics and professional will boost the coaching competencies

It is easy to get carried away with success and feeling lonely at the same time. Its useful to have someone who knows you well over a long period who can give frank feedback, a peer/ senior who is at least 5 years senior and has handled greater complexity, as well as someone, say 5 years junior, who would be clued into what is contemporary and upcoming and see things from a different perspective. We learn a lot from people and incidents around us (what to do and what not to do!)

Mentor coaching where a more experienced and trained mentor listens to your coaching live or recorded can enable you to hone in on your competency strengths and development areas, whilst SUPERvision with an accredited SUPERvisor can enable your to restore after tricky sessions, build your resources and benchmark. Both have been extremely valuable to me as an ICF master certified coach and EMCC master practitioner.

Self reflection helps hugely in my case. I think of what I think and say and do. These days it happens more often than before. One result of introspection is that I’m able to “catch” myself on time. This means spotting any inconsistencies between what I say publicly and what I think & do privately. Another result is spotting patterns or trends in myself or in clients or the world in general. Yet another outcome is taking a few steps back, seeing the big picture & understanding a client’s issues far better & hence also developing empathy. Meta cognition is an underrated skill. 🔥😎

You can coach yourself by looking at your situation from a 3rd person perspective. When you step away from your problems, you'll be surprised at how much insight you can gain from coaching yourself.

What we see around us makes us aware. How we respond to what we see makes us self aware, the way we develop reflective habits makes us a COACH

In my opinion, if you don’t know how to do self-coaching, and get yourself to the goals that you want to achieve, you have no business in coaching others. Your ability to coach yourself is paramount if you want to get massive results in each key area of your life abd then one of your job as an executive coach is to role model those behaviours and habits to your clients so they can get be inspired to do the same and see that is possible for them too.

For me self-coaching has been very useful for developing my coaching skills. It involves a systematic and reflective approach by setting clear objectives, followed by a thorough reflection on past coaching sessions, seeking feedback from clients and colleagues, and conducting a self-assessment to identify both strengths and weaknesses. The process extends to setting specific learning goals, exploring new coaching techniques, and maintaining a coaching journal for continuous reflection. Participation in peer coaching relationships contribute to practical skill development. Embracing a commitment to continuous learning through training, conferences followed by reassessing and adjusting my coaching approach solidify this self-coaching journey.

It is very similar to writing a reflection about how the coaching session went through - helps to grow all the time. Self coaching helps to be more aware and mindful. Especially while you are waiting for your coaching conversation with your coach as it is very easy not to ask some kind of questions that your coach will surely ask.

Up leveling one’s coaching skills comes not just from reading about coaching but from learning about the world in which you coach. If you coach business leaders, read professional development and leadership books, & HBR. Study strategy, leadership, and OD to better understand what’s going on in their world, what keeps them up at night, what they’re focused on…it’s invaluable to understand your clients and speak their language. If you coach in-house lawyers as I do, seek to understand what’s going on in the legal profession-attend continuing legal education on AI, automation, remote work, compensation, etc. I think this is a differentiator-do your clients see that you get them and that you are passionate about the area in which you coach?

Evaluate the quality of everything you spend time on. All the media you consume. All the apps you spend time with. All the books you read. Don't be an accidental student. Seek factual information about how reality works and never shy away from challenging yourself to understand different viewpoints, strategies, models, and frameworks. Not all content is useful. Not all content is accurate. Not all content is relevant. Spend less time on opinion, and more time on reflection. Don't write for the sake of creating content or getting clicks or obtaining followers or being known. Write as the result of discovery, recognition, and insight. Don't contribute to obscurity just to establish demand for your services. Share things of value.

Expanding coaching skills extends beyond the executive coaching role. It involves seeking out opportunities for peer coaching, allowing a reciprocal exchange of coaching methods and ideas with colleagues. Engaging in observation sessions conducted by seasoned coaches provides invaluable insights into effective strategies. Workshops and webinars, while enhancing knowledge, offer a platform to adopt and adapt new coaching methodologies. Practicing self-coaching serves as a personal growth tool, applying coaching techniques for self-improvement. Seeking feedback from clients, peers, or mentors facilitates an iterative process of improvement.

I love to read about the different modalities of coaching. It is a great way to expand the coaching repetiore which can only benefit clients. Most recently I've been reading about narrative coaching and also somatic coaching. Very different but also similar in framework.

Each client has his/her own story and there will be plenty of interesting findings to dive deeper after a coaching session. Then there will be a perfect time to spend it with a new book, TED talk etc. In addition - reflecting new learnings on paper will be also a way to know yourself better in order to be more useful for a client. P.s. not mentioning that with that you will have plenty of ideas to share in social media as a content.

Innovation comes from the ground up, not the top down. The more you understand the most practical facts about a process, a product, a service, or a situation, the more opportunities you have to innovate. Innovation is more often the result of recombination than of actual eureka-type invention. Don't eliminate the possibility of innovation by imposing novelty as a requirement. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

Eclectic sources and experiences are great for innovation. If you like art/ performing arts you can study the methods that the teachers use. What I find fascinating in Indian classical artistes is that they have life long teachers and coaches. So a singer may have a teacher who is a flautist! Once you get ideas you try new variations/ iterations all the time. Over a period of time the variations start to work and become part of the process. As you grow as a coach and evolve as a person, automatically the approach starts to get better and different.

When I am not coaching executives, I am practicing my coaching skills with work colleagues where I am continuously experimenting with new methods & techniques particularly with coaching questions. I believe the 2 most important qualities of any good coach are 1) being able to ask aptly timed powerful questions and 2) being able to develop active listening & deep listening capabilities when the client responds and navigates their mind around their mental blocks. Building an effective reusable list of coaching questions requires continuous trial and error in different situations with different people followed by reflection to see which one works and produces the desired result for different situational coaching styles in use by the coach.

The question here is what coaching skills are you looking to develop? Is it active listening, compassionate interrogation, creating a safe space, creatively pushing boundaries... One of the very best things a coach can do is to walk-the-talk. Lead by example. You need to be that light for them so that their path doesn't look so frightening. In coaching on embracing fear, I joined a client on a trip to a skate park (I hadn't skateboarded since I was 15) It was something he wanted to do but didn't have the resources he needed to overcome the barriers to changing his life, living with more passion and resuming his position in the driving seat. We unlocked the fear and learnt more about ourselves in the process, thriving as a result.

Selfcoaching om vanuit eigen trilling nauwkeurig verbaal en non-verbaal aan te sluiten bij taal- denk en realisatieniveau van de coachee.

Pro bono coaching isn't just a one-way street; it's a win-win. For coaches, it's a chance to broaden horizons and deepen understanding. It's an opportunity to learn from diverse experiences, gaining insights that can't be found in any manual. It's about honing your craft in real-world scenarios, adapting your approach, and growing as a coach through the unique challenges and triumphs of those you're guiding. Plus, it's immensely fulfilling, reminding you why you embarked on this coaching journey in the first place—making a tangible difference in people's lives.

Pro-bono coaching and mentoring are excellent ways to reach clients facing a wide variety of challenges but who may not be able to afford an executive coach. The variety of challenges adds depth and breadth of experience.

Une chose qui m'a vraiment aider quand je me suis lancée, faire du coaching gratuitement et même aujourd'hui pour tester de nouveaux outils et découvrir de nouvelles problématiques je n'hesite plus a faire du gratuit

Volunteering in different communities is also important as the great opportunity to broaden awareness of diversity and integrity, as well as understand and feel different backgrounds, and needs that executives deel with in their daily activities.

Ich bin skeptisch bei diesem Tipp. Denn gerade in Sozialunternehmen und ehrenamtlichen Einrichtungen wird hohe Professionalität benötigt, denn dort gibt es oft knifflige und fordernde Fälle. Alternativ schlage ich vor, dort als Co-Trainerin bei einer Person mit ciel Expertise zu hospitieren für einen geringen Satz. Und diesen dann gerne auch zu spenden 😊. Als weitere Möglichkeit, seine Coachingfähigkeiten zu erweitern empfehle ich, live-Coaching Sessions zu verfolgen, z.B. via Podcast oder auch via YouTube. Sehr interessant sind die Sitzungsprotokolle von Steve the Shazer, die auch als Buch veröffentlicht sind (Worte sind Zauber).

1. Practice, practice, and practice. There is nothing to beat intentional, deep practice (not just clocking hours) and reflecting on them. 2. Attend #CoachingUnlimited to refresh coaching competencies, business quotient, and network. Don't go for shallow sessions where you learn nothing. 3. Go deeper, ACC to PCC, PCC to MCC. 4. Then, facilitate sessions. Volunteer to support learner coaches. Be intentional and fully present in all these as they are all learning opportunities (no scope for ego as a mentor). 5. Become an ICF assessor. Deep dive into coaching competencies. 6. Mastery is going beyond the framework. Embody coaching mindset to become a master of the art. 7. Upskill, deepen presence, embody coaching mindset, lifelong journey

Coaching is not just a set of skills one is supposed to acquire in pursuit of the goal of bringing out the best in others. Coaching is also (and more of) a mindset - our perceptions, beliefs and values around human potential and our intention and readiness to help them realise it. Are we truly empathetic, do we really listen - to the said and unsaid, these are based more on who we are and what we believe in and value. Coaching is so much of an attitude which is demonstrated in every role of our life - as a leader, a spouse, a parent and so on. People acquire and practice to get the right skills, the focus also has to be on self reflection and understanding ourselves- only when are self aware, can we become coaches in the true sense.

We can have a "coaching conversation" without being in a formal coaching relationship. Anytime someone shares with us a project or a challenge they are facing, we can listen with curiosity and ask deep, open-ended questions with genuine interest. That is an essential part of training the coaching "muscle", and at the same time, it's much more fulfilling and also helps develop healthy relationships.

Never stop taking time for yourself. The better you are centered within yourself, the better you can serve others. Because without roots, there are no wings!

As a coach you may like to pick up a new course/ skill where you are absolutely a beginner (like sketching or dancing or kick boxing). When you learn from ground up, you become a student, it keeps the ego grounded and allows you to receive. When you make progress and get acknowledged, you feel happy. This process of learning / adding to yourself is a great way to become enthusiastic about other's who are trying to learn.