Helping Your Clients In Deciding What To Do

During a coaching or mentoring session, when your clients decide on an action or set of actions to achieve their goals, it is very easy to accept the action or actions as what the clients want to do without asking any further questions. You will probably then encourage your clients to provide more detail and set timescales, as well as action plans.

However you may find that when your clients arrive for the next meeting they haven't completed the action or actions agreed. There may be many reasons for this but one reason may be that you had not explored the potential action or actions enough with them in the previous coaching or mentoring session, such that they have got to the right action for them to take.

There are several techniques and sets of questions that can help with exploring the potential action or actions and we have highlighted a very useful one below.

Cartesian Questions or Consequences Matrix

This is a set of questions that you can ask your clients to enable them to thoroughly explore the potential action they are thinking of taking. The questions that you ask your clients are:

What will happen if you did it?
What will happen if you didn't do it?
What wouldn't happen if you did it?
What wouldn't happen if you didn't do it?

Your clients may also find it very helpful to write the answers in a grid or matrix so that they can see all the potential consequences in one place.

The usefulness of this set of questions is that it enables your clients to fully explore the potential action from different angles as well as looking at what will or will not happen if they take the action and what will or will not happen if they do not take the action.

If you have not used this set of questions before you may find it useful to consider an action that you are considering taking and to ask yourself all of the questions. This will enable you to see the usefulness of this sequence of questions and give you ideas as to when it is appropriate to use it with your clients.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the April 2009 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

What qualities do you need to be a successful coach or mentor?

In this article we discuss the qualities that you need to be a successful coach or mentor. You can acquire coaching and mentoring skills through training, professional development and practise, but there are certain qualities that are fundamental to being a successful coach or mentor.

The qualities that you need are a capacity:

For self-awareness - This includes an ability to self observe, to reflect, to monitor your own emotions, reactions and behaviours and their impact, to understand your strengths, weaknesses, motives and needs, to recognise your prejudices and to be aware of transference and counter transference situations.
To inspire others - This includes inspiring your clients to identify their passions and values, to learn and grow, to recognise unseen possibilities, to achieve their goals and to support and motivate them along the way.

To build relationships - This includes getting to know your clients, building rapport, openness and trust, providing appropriate support and challenge, enabling your clients to discover their own answers and building a relationship that supports your clients to achieve their goals.

To be flexible - This includes being flexible around your clients' priorities and agendas, working at your clients' pace, being able to switch strategies to suit your clients' needs and varying the style of coaching or mentoring to suit your individual clients.

To communicate - This includes having a strong range of inter personal skills, including authenticity, empathy, insight and curiosity, as well as good communication skills, including rapport building, listening, questioning and giving feedback.

To be forward looking - This includes being future, goal and outcome oriented, supporting your clients in setting goals and action planning, exploring where your clients are now, recognising the past as a stepping stone for moving forward and helping your clients to remove blocks to moving forward.

For discipline - This includes keeping the sessions focused on achieving your clients' goals, whilst recognising and supporting your clients to move forward, as well as keeping a good structure to the coaching and mentoring sessions and supporting the clients where they need to change their goals or path.

To manage professional boundaries - This includes the ability to recognise whether coaching or mentoring is the right option for your potential clients and to recognise when coaching or mentoring issues are beyond your capabilities.

To diagnose issues and support your clients to find solutions - This includes an ability to take in a large amount of information during coaching and mentoring sessions, an inquisitive nature, using your intuition to provide insight to your clients and supporting your clients in finding creative solutions.

For business - This includes a strong belief in yourself and your service, the ability to make things happen, an enthusiasm for the benefits of coaching and mentoring, a can do attitude, an entrepreneurial approach and the skills and experience to run a successful business.

How do you measure up against the qualities detailed above? Which areas do you feel that you want to develop further in? How are you going to do this?

If you would like to read more about the qualities discussed above please refer to a very good book entitled The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work by Perry Zeus and Suzanne Skiffington.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the October 2008 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Working Styles

Have you ever thought about your working style when communicating with your clients? Working styles are extremely useful in communication at all levels. Understanding and thinking about your working style and that of your client you are working with will help you immensely. There are five main working styles which are summarised below. Most people have characteristics from more than one style but generally everyone has a predominant style.

Which is your predominant style and what characteristics do you have from other styles? Think about your relationships with your clients, especially those where you experience difficulties in communication? You may find that the reason for this is that you have contrasting working styles. Communication can be significantly improved by being aware and adapting to the other person's working style (e.g. If you are a 'Hurry Up' you may need to talk slower, explain things in detail and watch out for signs of stress when you are dealing with a 'Be Perfect'). Why not try this out and see what impact it has?

1. Hurry Up
Motivation - To complete a task in the shortest possible time.
Strength - The amount of work they can complete.
Characteristics - Respond well to short deadlines, tend to delay jobs until urgent, look for the quickest way to complete each task, dislike preparation and checking, seem to enjoy having too many things to do and rushing around, can appear impatient, often fast thinkers who speak rapidly and interrupt without listening properly and like information in bullet points and verbally.

2. Be Perfect
Motivation - To get everything exactly right.
Strength - Reliable accurate work.
Characteristics - Prepare thoroughly, plan and pay close attention to detail, written work tends to be very good although lengthy, check facts carefully and has contingency plans for potential problems, constantly apply high expectations to self and others, can become paranoid and highly stressed by mistakes and tend to speak more slowly and carefully using longer and less familiar words.

3. Please Person
Motivation - To please others and encourage harmony.
Strength - Ability to function in a team.
Characteristics - Understanding, considerate and intuitive, will endeavour to draw in quieter members of the team, aim to please others preferably without having to ask what is required, dislike confrontation and conflict, dislike saying 'no' and can find it difficult to challenge, tend to take criticism personally, often smile and nod a lot in agreement tending to phrase opinions as questions, procrastinates over decisions and has good listening skills.

4. Try Hard
Motivation - The effort required in the initial stages of a new task.
Strength - Ideas, concepts, initiating tasks and getting things off the ground.
Characteristics - Like a steady supply of new and interesting tasks, a tendency to boredom with mundane detailed aspects of any task, highly inquisitive and like to explore and discover, positive approach to problems, follow up all possibilities of a task and may pick up on aspects missed by others, communication is often strained and difficult and often volunteer for any task which seems interesting.

5. Be Strong
Motivation -To stay calm under pressure and present an image of strength and control.
Strength - Ability to cope and remain calm.
Characteristics - Excellent in a crisis, energised under pressure, think logically when others are panicking, consistent steady workers with a strong sense of duty, firm, fair and even-tempered with an ability to give constructive criticism, can remain emotionally detached enabling them to deal with difficult people, appear to be able to make unpleasant decisions without guilt, communication style is often expressionless and unemotional, hate admitting weaknesses, often view failure to cope as a weakness and dislike asking for help.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the August 2008 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Perceptual Positions

Your perception of any experience depends on the position from which you perceive it.

In coaching and mentoring, encouraging your clients to look at situations from different perceptual positions can really help to open their minds to different perspectives, the feelings of others and the impact of their behaviour on others. It can also help your clients to increase their own self awareness, identify different options and to decide on the best way forward with a particular situation.

Taking different perceptual positions is a NLP technique. NLP defines three perceptual positions that are known as the first, second and third positions. There is also a fourth position that can be used.

The different perceptual positions are as follows:

-First position - This is when you are yourself, in your own body, looking out through your own eyes and seeing things from your own point of view.

-Second position - This is when you imagine what it is like to be someone else and to see things and experience them from their point of view.

-Third position - This is when you take an observer's point of view of a situation you are involved in, seeing things from their perspective and taking an impartial view.

-Fourth position - This is where you take a holistic view and experience a situation from a position where you see all the other different positions and the system in which they are operating.

There are many ways in which taking different perceptual positions can help you and your clients including:

-Stepping outside what you are currently experiencing.
-Seeing things from different perspectives.
-Understanding how your behaviour is impacting on others.
-Ascertaining how others are feeling about you.
-Experiencing situations from different perspectives.
-Getting an overview of a situation.
-Understanding a situation in its entirety, rather than just from your own perspective.
-Evaluating a situation before taking action.
-Trying out different options to see how they may be perceived.
-Getting unstuck when you cannot think of a way forward.
-Taking the emotion out of a situation.
-Improving your self-awareness.
-Looking at different options that you could take.
-Deciding the best way forward.

Taking different perceptual positions is a very useful technique to use in coaching and mentoring. You will be able to see from the above how you can use it to really move your clients forward in a variety of coaching and mentoring situations.

It is also an invaluable technique to use yourself when you are reviewing your own performance as a coach or mentor. Reflecting on your coaching and mentoring sessions and client relationships from different perceptual positions will give you new insights and learnings.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the June 2008 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Layers of Dialogue

Seven layers of dialogue have been identified as being relevant to coaching and mentoring. These layers of dialogue include social, technical, tactical, strategic, self-insight, behavioural and integrative dialogue. Each layer represents an increasing depth of reflection on the part of the client as well as needing a coach or mentor with the appropriate level of skills and experience.

As a coach or mentor it is beneficial to spend time in self-development and gaining experience to know when and how to use each layer of dialogue in your coaching and mentoring sessions.

The seven layers of dialogue are:

-Social - This is developing relationships and providing support and encouragement. It includes showing an interest in the other person, seeking common ground, accepting the other person for who they are and being open with each other.
-Technical - This is learning about processes, policies and systems. It includes understanding exactly what the process, policy or system is and checking understanding.
-Tactical - This is supporting the client to deal with specific issues in their working and personal life. It includes goal setting, clarifying what is happening, understanding options and action planning.
-Strategic - This is helping the client to understand the broader perspective, to put everything into context and to understand what they want to achieve. It includes exploring the wider context, long-term goal setting, looking at strategic options and strategic planning.
-Self-insight - This is enabling the client to understand themselves better. It includes supporting the client to be open and honest, giving the client time and space for self-understanding, providing feedback, looking at values and beliefs and supporting them in their self-analysis.
-Behavioural - This is supporting the client to combine self-insight, strategy and tactics to achieve what they want to in their business and personal life. It includes picturing how things will be when the change has taken place, assessing commitment to change, reviewing the benefits and supporting and motivating the client to achieve what they want to.
-Integrative - This supports the client in understanding who they are, what they contribute and how they fit in. It explores personal meaning and all aspects of their life to gain a clearer sense of self and the world around them, to develop greater balance in their life and to resolve inner conflicts.

At a coaching or mentoring session you will move between the different layers of dialogue and as a coaching or mentoring relationship develops over several sessions you will move into the more complex layers of dialogue.

As you can see as you move through the layers of dialogue the skill and experience required as a coach or mentor increases. When you are working in the area of integrative dialogue you will be having a conversation at multiple levels, including profound questions, many different perspectives, looking at the past, present and future, using your intuition, linking goals to values and beliefs and supporting the client to greater self-insight and understanding.

It is very important that you gain the experience and skills to work at all layers of dialogue to enable you to support your clients in achieving their objectives.

More information on the above can be found in the book Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring by David Megginson and David Clutterbuck.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http:/coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the April 2008 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Intuition

In coaching and mentoring knowing what to say, which question to ask, what feedback to offer and when to delve deeper can be attributed to the experience of the coach or mentor. However, using a particular question or action may unlock the situation for the client and give them inspiration. Where the coach or mentor cannot rationally explain why they chose that particular question or action, it is probably down to their intuition.

Intuition describes the way that we gain access to and use the brain's power without the constraints of logical thinking. Intuition uses information from a wide range of sources including emotional, physical and instinctive and it enables us to quickly make sense of a complex situation at a subconscious level. It is often called the sixth sense.

Using intuition in coaching and mentoring
There are many ways of using intuition in coaching and mentoring, including:
-Directing the course of questioning.
-Following a path even though you do not know where it will lead.
-Checking that what is being said by the client ties in with how they are behaving and reacting.
-Trying to understand what the client is thinking and feeling but may not be actually saying.
-Directing the flow of the coaching or mentoring session.
Using intuition can enrich your coaching and mentoring but it is important to guard against using your intuition to justify preconceptions and to leap to conclusions.

How to develop your intuition?
We are encouraged from an early age to think and act rationally, which can result in our intuition being suppressed. To develop your intuitive skills you may want to try the following:
-Follow your intuition when you are coaching and mentoring, don't be afraid of it.
-Train yourself to be aware of your intuition.
-Allow yourself to follow your intuition in every day situations and see where it leads you.
-Tune in and listen to your intuition rather than letting your rational mind override it.
-Take time out from your work and life to reflect and contemplate.
-Build relaxation and exercise time into your schedule.
-Be open and flexible.
-Do something different to what you would normally do.
-Enhance your self-awareness by understanding yourself better.
-Build your self-esteem and self-confidence.
-Don't listen to your inner voices telling you not to use your intuition.
As you heighten your intuition you will enable your clients to be inspired and unlock the situation they are in and move forward.

By developing your intuition and using it in your coaching and mentoring, together with a systematic approach and your training, knowledge and experience, you will find that the service you provide to your clients will be enhanced.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http:/coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the February 2008 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Listening Skills

One of the most fundamental elements of coaching and mentoring is listening. To be a good coach or mentor you have to be a good listener, but do you always really listen to what your clients are saying?

Here are a few reminders to help you to reflect on your listening skills:

What is good listening?
Listening is not just about hearing. It is when you truly understand the other person's point of view, what they are thinking, how they are feeling and how they see the world. Listening involves not only hearing, but also understanding what is said, giving feedback on what you have heard and using and interpreting the non-verbal aspects of communication i.e. vocal factors (pitch, tone and rhythm), eye contact, facial expressions, body postures and even silence.

What are the benefits of good listening?
When you display good listening skills the person you are listening to feels understood and valued and is more likely to be open and honest with you. By giving them the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings with you they can gain greater insight and make better choices.

What are the barriers to good listening?
- Having preconceptions or making assumptions about what the other person might say and should say.
- Selective attention leading to bias in what you hear.
- Thinking faster than other people can talk and your attention wandering.
- Being unable to ignore irrelevant information.
- Other people's conversations and background distractions.
- Not allowing enough time for the conversation.
- Thinking of other things, planning what you want to say next or daydreaming.

What behaviours impede good listening?
- Interrupting when the other person is talking.
- Giving advice or offering solutions when the other person is talking.
- Using humour inappropriately.
- Reassuring or consoling the other person before they have finished speaking.
- Fidgeting or distracting the other person.
- Using emotionally laden language.

How can you improve your listening skills?
- Look interested in the other person and be alert.
- Concentrate on really listening to the other person, including what they are saying, how they are saying it and their body language.
- Minimise distractions.
- Be patient and do not interrupt
- Keep up with what the other person is saying and listen to the whole story.
- Allow the other person to be silent. They may be thinking or processing something internally.
- Provide clear feedback to show that you are listening e.g. nodding, agreeing and encouraging.
- Match the other person's body language, vocal factors, metaphors, use of language and emotional tone, so that they feel listened to, understood and appreciated.
- Try to understand what the person is actually saying, what they are thinking and what they are feeling.
- Use your intuition to try and understand what the other person is thinking and feeling but may not be actually saying.
- Do not be judgemental or opinionated.
- If you need to take notes ask first if this is okay and do it in a way that does not distract the other person.
- Analyse and reflect back what you have heard, by paraphrasing, repeating, asking open questions and clarifying.
- Summarise the key points of the conversation and ask the other person whether they agree with your summary.
- Notice if you are not properly listening so that you can quickly bring your attention back to the other person.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the December 2007 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Coaching & Mentoring Supervision

Liz Makin provides personalised coaching and mentoring supervision and support to coaches and mentors.

Are you a coach or business mentor and need someone to support you in:
- Reflecting on and exploring your coaching and mentoring work?
- Understanding your clients better?
- Improving the quality of your coaching and mentoring?
- Increasing your coaching and mentoring skills and understanding?
- Exploring different ways of working with your clients?
- Gaining greater insight and understanding of your relationships with your clients?
- Developing your coaching and mentoring business?

Liz Makin can help you with all this and more. Liz is an accredited business mentor, coach and stress consultant and is based in Stamford, Lincolnshire.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

If you would like to sign up for the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors email newsletter please click here Sign up for our email newsletter.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others and for managing ourselves and our relationships with others. It describes abilities that are distinct from but complimentary to academic intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is a tool that can enhance your coaching and mentoring both for yourself and for your clients. It can lead to a better understanding of yourself and improved relationships.

Emotional intelligence is made up of personal competencies that determine how we manage ourselves and social competencies that determine how we handle relationships. The elements of emotional intelligence are detailed below:

Personal Competence

Self-awareness. This is about knowing one's internal states, preferences, resources and limitations. Elements of self-awareness are:
- Emotional self-awareness: reading one's own emotions and recognising their impact and using gut feel to guide decisions.
- Accurate self-assessment: knowing one's own strengths and limitations.
- Self-confidence: a sound sense of one's self-worth and capabilities.

Self-management. This is about managing one's internal states, preferences, resources and impulses. Elements of self-management are:
- Emotional self-control: keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
- Transparency: displaying honesty, integrity and trustworthiness.
- Adaptability: flexibility in adapting to changing situations or overcoming obstacles.
- Achievement: the drive to improve performance to meet inner standards of excellence.
- Initiative: readiness to act and seize opportunities.
- Optimism: seeing the positive in circumstances.

Social Competence

Social awareness. This is about the awareness of others' feelings, needs and concerns. Elements of social awareness are:
- Empathy: sensing others' emotions, understanding their perspective and taking an active interest in their concerns.
- Organisational awareness: understanding of what is happening at an organisation level.
- Service: recognising and meeting customer and others' needs.

Social skills. This is about adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others. Elements of social skills are:
- Inspirational leadership: guiding and motivating with a compelling vision.
- Influence: using a range of tactics of persuasion.
- Developing others: building others' abilities through feedback and guidance.
- Being a change catalyst: initiating, managing and leading others in a new direction.
- Conflict management: negotiating and resolving conflicts.
- Building relationships: cultivating and maintaining relationships.
- Teamwork and collaboration: working with others and building teams.

To improve your coaching and mentoring have a look at the elements that make up emotional intelligence described above and assess yourself against them. You can then identify areas where you would like to improve and the steps that you need to take to get to where you want to be.

You may also want to include the elements that make up emotional intelligence in your learning log so you can use them to review your coaching and mentoring sessions.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the November 2007 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Intervention Styles

A very useful model for coaches and mentors to be aware of is the Heron model of six categories of intervention. It highlights the different interventions in any facilitating or enabling process.

This model can help you as a coach or mentor to understand the different interventions available to you. It can also help you to use a wider range of interventions in your coaching and mentoring work.

The six categories of intervention that Heron identified are:

Authoritative interventions

Confronting. This is about being challenging and providing direct feedback e.g. I notice when you discuss your workload you always sound stressed.

Informing. This is about giving information or knowledge e.g. There is some very good information that will help you in this book.

Prescribing. This is about advising, offering an opinion and seeking to directly influence e.g. You need to speak to your business partner about the problems you are having with your suppliers.

Facilitative interventions

Catalytic. This is about encouraging self directed problem solving and enabling learning through self discovery e.g. What would make you feel more confident when making a presentation?

Supportive. This is about supporting through approval, confirmation and validation e.g. It sounds like you are finding this problem very difficult to resolve.

Cathartic. This is about encouraging emotions and releasing tensions e.g. What do you really feel about the situation that you are in?

It may be useful to look at your own favoured styles of intervention. As coach or mentor you will probably mostly work in the area of facilitative interventions - catalytic, supportive and cathartic. However at times it may be appropriate to use the more authoritative interventions.

You may avoid certain intervention styles because you are not comfortable working with them. These may be areas for learning. You may want to practice working in other styles to expand your repertoire.

The intervention styles can also be used by you to reflect back on your individual coaching or mentoring sessions with your clients. Did you use the most appropriate intervention styles at the right times during the sessions?

Understanding intervention styles is another area that will help enhance your learning as a coach or mentor. It will also help you to improve the service that you offer to your clients.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at mailto:Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the October 2007 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Reflection

As a coach or mentor it is very important to reflect on your work with your clients, in order to improve the customer service that you provide to future clients. Reflection can take various forms and each individual will find an approach that suits them.

You can reflect on the past, present and the future in your coaching and mentoring:

Reflecting in the past. This involves reviewing your interaction with your client in your coaching or mentoring session after the session has ended. This will include thinking about what you and your client did and said in the session, what questions you asked, what the outcome of the session was, what interventions and skills you utilised and your relationship with your client. Your reflection will be enhanced by taking notes in your sessions, writing down what happened immediately after the session or even by reviewing a tape recording of the session if the client is happy with this.

Reflecting in the present. This involves thinking about your client interactions whilst you are in the coaching or mentoring session with the client. This is much harder to accomplish than reflecting in the past as you need to remain fully focussed on the client whilst reflecting on how the session is going. This type of reflection may not be appropriate for an inexperienced coach or mentor.

Reflecting in the future. This involves reviewing your reflection in the past and present and deciding how you will behave differently in the future. You may identify areas for learning or areas where you want to find out more information or read up on. You may consider different interventions that you could use or different ways of handling similar situations in the future.

The Seven Eyed Model of Supervision may help you in your reflection as it provides a framework for considering your coaching or mentoring in. The relevant areas from the model to use are to focus on the client and how they presented, to explore the strategies and interventions that you used, to explore the relationship between you and your client, to focus on yourself and on the wider context in which the work happens. This was discussed in the August edition of our newsletter - see Seven Eyed Model of Supervision.

Reflection can be enhanced by using the NLP technique of perceptual positions i.e. looking at what happened from your perspective (the 1st position), considering it from your client's perspective (the 2nd position) and reviewing it from an onlooker's perspective (the 3rd position). It will also be very relevant to reflect on the relationship between yourself and your client, as well as considering the background to the coaching or mentoring.

Another area for reflection is on your own reactions and thoughts during and after the coaching and mentoring sessions. This will highlight where you are being affected by your work with your clients and the importance of attending to your emotional and physical well-being.

Many coaches and mentors choose to use a learning log or journal to enhance their reflection. They will use this to note down individual learnings, as well as to identify patterns across different clients. You may find that you have issues at specific times within your client sessions, at particular stages in your coaching or mentoring relationships, when dealing with certain topics or with particular types of clients.

By reflecting you will identify things that work well for you and you want to do more of and other things that you want to work on in your coaching or mentoring. Reflection will also help you if you decide to undertake supervision as it will help you identify areas that you would like to discuss with your supervisor.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the September 2007 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

The Seven Eyed Model of Supervision

There are many different models of supervision but one of the most commonly used is the seven-eyed model of supervision. The seven-eyed model of supervision is a framework that can be used in the supervision of coaches and mentors, as well as in other professions. The model was developed by Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet and is covered in detail in their book Supervision In The Helping Professions. A link to this book and other books on supervision can be found at http://coachmentorsupervision/Books.

The seven-eyed model provides a very useful framework for supervision sessions and includes the different areas that supervision can focus on. The model can act as a checklist for supervisors, as well as coaches and mentors who are being supervised. The seven modes of supervision highlighted by the model are as detailed below. In explaining the modes I have used the term ‘coach’ to mean the coach or mentor who is being supervised.

1. Focus on the client and how they present. This mode focuses on what actually happened in the sessions with clients, how they presented themselves, what they chose to discuss and how this relates to previous sessions. The aim of this mode is to help the coach pay attention to their clients, their clients’ choices and the connections between various aspects of their clients’ situation.
2. Exploration of the strategies and interventions used by the coach. This mode focuses on the strategies and interventions used by the coach, including which ones, when and why they were used. This may help in developing alternative strategies and interventions, as well as discussing potential consequences. The aim of this mode is to increase the strategies and interventions available to the coach.
3. Exploration of the relationship between the client and the coach. This mode focuses on what is happening in the relationships between the coach and their clients. The aim of this mode is to help the coach gain a greater insight and understanding of the dynamics of their relationships with their clients.
4. Focus on the coach. This mode focuses on how the coach is affected by their work with their clients, both consciously and subconsciously, and how they deal with this. This includes both the coach’s well being and their development. The aim of this mode is to increase the capacity of the coach to engage with their clients and to more effectively handle their responses.
5. Focus on the supervisory relationship. This mode focuses on what is happening in the relationship between the supervisor and the coach. The aims of this mode are to ensure that the supervisor/coach relationship is working well and to explore how the coach/clients relationships may be playing out or paralleling in the supervisor/coach relationship.
6. The supervisor focusing on their own process. This mode is where the supervisor pays attention to what they are experiencing in the supervision sessions. The aim of this mode is for the supervisor to use their responses to provide another source of information to the coach.
7. Focus on the wider context in which the work happens. This mode takes into consideration the wider context in which the work happens, including the context of the clients, the context of the coach’s profession, the context of the coach/clients and supervisor/coach relationships and the wider world of the coach and supervisor. The aim is to understand and pay attention to the wider context as part of the supervision.

Supervision should involve all seven of the above modes, but not necessarily in every supervision session. The use of the different modes will also vary with the developmental stage of the coach. A coach who is new to their work will want to focus mainly on the content of their work with their clients and the detail of what happened in each session. They will also need help understanding the wider context, therefore the supervision will focus in modes 1 and 7. As the coach gets more experienced it will be possible to spend time in mode 2 as well, and as the coach develops further all modes will have their place in the supervision.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the August 2007 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

What is supervision?

Supervision can be defined as the process by which a coach or mentor can transform their work and develop their coaching and mentoring skills, understanding and capabilities with the help of a supervisor. It is a process of helping you to step back from your work so that you can take a broader view of your coaching and mentoring.

The main functions of supervision are:

Developmental. This includes developing the skills, understanding and capacities of the coach or mentor. This is achieved by reflection on and exploration of the coach's or mentor's work with their clients. This will help the coach or mentor to understand their clients better, to become more aware of their own reactions and responses to their clients, to understand the dynamics of how they and their clients are interacting, to look at how they intervened and the consequence of their interventions and to explore other ways of working with these and similar client situations.

Resourcing. This includes responding to how the coach or mentor are allowing themselves to be affected by their clients and how they need time to become aware of how their clients have affected them and to deal with their reactions. This is necessary to help the coach or mentor not to become over full with emotions. These emotions may have been produced through empathy with their clients or have been re-stimulated by their clients or be a reaction to their clients.

Qualitative. This provides a quality control aspect to the coach's or mentor's work with clients. A coach or mentor may want a quality control aspect to their work or the coach or mentor may be required to undertake supervision by the organisation they are working for.

The main areas for supervision to focus on are:

1. To provide a regular space for the coach or mentor to reflect upon the content and process of their work.
2. To enable the coach or mentor to develop understanding and skills within their work.
3. To enable the coach or mentor to receive information and another perspective on their work.
4. To receive both content and process feedback from the supervisor.
5. To be validated and supported both as a person and as a coach or mentor by the supervisor.
6. To ensure that as a person and as a coach or mentor one is not left to carry unnecessarily, difficulties, problems and projections alone.
7. To have space as a coach or mentor to explore and express personal distress, re-stimulation, transference or counter transference that may be brought up by their work.
8. To plan and utilise the coach's or mentor's personal and professional resources better.
9. To be proactive rather than reactive as a coach or mentor.
10. To ensure the quality of the coach's or mentor's work.

For more information on supervision please refer to the following books:
-'Supervision In The Helping Professions' by Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet.
-'Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy' by Peter Hawkins and Nick Smith.
-'Reflective Practice and Supervision for Coaches' by Julie Hay.
For links to these books please visit our website Books page at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk.

If you would like supervision for your coaching or mentoring please refer to the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors website at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk or contact Liz Makin at http://www.blogger.com/Liz@makinithappen.co.uk.

This article first appeared in the July 2007 edition of the Makin It Happen – Supervision & Support for Coaches & Mentors newsletter. Please click here to Sign up for our email newsletter.

Are you a coach or mentor?

Liz Makin provides personalised coaching and mentoring supervision and support to coaches and mentors.

Are you a coach or business mentor and need someone to support you in:
- reflecting on and exploring your coaching and mentoring work?
- understanding your clients better?
- improving the quality of your coaching and mentoring?
- increasing your coaching and mentoring skills and understanding?
- exploring different ways of working with your clients?
- gaining greater insight and understanding of your relationships with your clients?
- developing your coaching and mentoring business?
Liz Makin can help you with all this and more.

Liz is an accredited business mentor, coach and stress consultant and is based in Stamford, Lincolnshire. More information can be found at http://coachmentorsupervision.co.uk/.

Liz also provides personalised coaching, mentoring and stress management services to business owners, directors, managers and professionals through her business Makin It Happen - Coaching, Mentoring & Stress Management http://makinithappen.co.uk/.