For the past year or so, I have been coached for the pur­pose of obtain­ing an Exec­u­tive Coach­ing des­ig­na­tion that will help Build­ing Cham­pi­ons with some of our cor­po­rate and inter­na­tional work. My coach is very gifted, and has been effec­tive in help­ing me to improve my coach­ing skills.

As part of the process of get­ting this des­ig­na­tion, I have spent time being observed while coach­ing Mas­ter Cer­ti­fied Coaches from the Inter­na­tional Coach­ing Fed­er­a­tion. These are peo­ple whom I have never met or even talked to prior to the ses­sions. These have been pretty chal­leng­ing, and I must con­fess that I com­pletely botched last week’s session.

The con­ver­sa­tion went some­thing like this…

Coachee: “I need to improve my work life balance.”

Daniel: “So, what do you think could be caus­ing some of the chal­lenges you are hav­ing with man­ag­ing your cal­en­dar? What I am look­ing for are some spe­cific exam­ples of causes that you might be expe­ri­enc­ing.” (With­out giv­ing the poor gal an oppor­tu­nity to respond, I stacked another ques­tion on her.) “What are the top three things that come to mind when think­ing of your time man­age­ment challenges?”

Coachee had to be think­ing: “Shut up man and take a breath! You must think I am an idiot, and that your ques­tions are so incred­i­bly pro­found! And you clearly love the sound of your own voice!”

Of course, that is far from what I thought or intended.

The Mas­ter Coach who was observ­ing me laid it out pretty plainly: I was stack­ing questions.

What this means is that I would ask a ques­tion, and before giv­ing my coachee an oppor­tu­nity to answer, I would ask it another way to make absolute sure that she under­stood it. The truth of the mat­ter was that I was unsure of where I was going in the coach­ing ses­sion, and I was lack­ing con­fi­dence in my interaction.

So, why do I share such dirt on myself?

I observed this in myself while it was hap­pen­ing. I have also observed it in oth­ers when they are pre­sent­ing to a group, con­duct­ing per­for­mance reviews, or lead­ing meet­ings and con­fer­ence calls.

This often hap­pens when we are unpre­pared for engage­ment, and are feel­ing ner­vous as a result of our lack of prepa­ra­tion. In the face of so much ques­tion­ing, the very peo­ple we are try­ing to con­nect with will often shut down or become defen­sive — which is the oppo­site reac­tion we are hop­ing to draw out.

Here is the action plan for me and hope­fully for any­one else out there who may stack once in a while: know your stuff inside and out! And then, be com­fort­able allow­ing the other party in the con­ver­sa­tion to have the quiet space to respond or to ask a clar­i­fy­ing question.

Does this help any of you? What I mean is, do any of you find this to be ben­e­fi­cial? Will it help you as a man­ager or coach­ing leader?

Let’s stop stacking,

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Tags: Coaching, Communication, Preparation, Questions

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