Picking up on clues in coaching

As coaches, we need to engage in a process of deep and purposeful listening to uncover and discover self-knowledge. This involves picking up on clues.  

 

Picking up on clues extends beyond the aural skill-set. As coaches, we listen and see with all of our senses and clients frequently remark, often seemingly in awe, on the way in which we coaches detect that which is underlying coaching conversations.

 

Typically, clients are unaware of the triggers which coaches hear as clues. For coaches, these clues give away what is really going on and facilitate the process of purposeful and deep listening, which in turn results in clients learning about themselves.

 

 

Clues that extend beyond the aural skill-set might be observations of client patterns of behaviour, noticing what is not present or what is absent, or simply intuition e.g. unexplainable words, pictures, feelings or incidents that arise within coaches themselves, or that arise within the coaching space.

 

When you master the process of detecting clues through deep and purposeful listening that both includes and extends beyond the aural skillset, you become inherently so masterful  in carrying out this process that you reach a level of unconscious competence, and are not always aware of what you are doing, and this can result in what is frequently referred to as an intuitive sense, but is in fact, an amalgamation of skills that are so fine-tuned that they have become embodied. 

 

Reference:

Griffiths, K. (2008). Discovering, applying and integrating self-knowledge: A grounded theory study of learning in life coaching (Ph.D). Centre for Learning Innovation, Queensland University of Technology.

 

Not yet a member?

Already a member?