Basic Coaching

From One-Step Coaching to Running a Full Model

Overview

Coaching in its purest form is all about this:

providing space for someone to process and progress

When coaching yourself or anyone else, the idea is to focus on one’s ability to figure things out. Forget advice, lose any agenda, and find answers. Especially when there’s resistance. Get talking, leave out other opinions, try something out, and review how it went and what to do next.

What about mentoring, isn’t advice valuable? Absolutely it is! The trick is to be very intentional about giving and receiving guidance.

When someone comes to you with a question or concerns, ask this:

“Are you venting,

looking for advice,

need help or intervention,

or want to brainstorm?”

And offer that to someone before you start complaining or asking about anything, too.

Very often, we lean in with opinions when there are other useful options. One thing to consider is that no matter what the answer to that question is, first let them talk it out and brainstorm a bit on their own.

This easy question taps into some nuanced differences between four different, necessary roles:

Supporting is bonding. It looks like listening, reassuring, and taking action.
Sponsoring is lifting. It looks like seeking and providing opportunities.
Mentoring is based on experience. It looks like tactical advice.
Coaching is based on growth. It is more like strategic development.

All are needed.

Sometimes these can come from the same person, but it is not necessary to be all of these for someone, regardless of the relationship. Often, people will naturally lean in as one or more, and can also be another when expectations are clearly set.

Many mentors, managers, leaders, and even parents will mentor and also coach to help develop one’s skills, reach goals, and help them realize their full potential. Mentoring is highly valuable as it gives an instant boost to use and extend someone else’s experience. Coaching is also extremely valuable, as it provides a safe setting to question beliefs and explore one’s own ideas for what will help resolve an issue or stretch to reach new heights. It can be unstructured and quick, and it can be quite structured, with an objective, accountability, and frameworks and methodologies that support deep growth.

One way to explain how mentoring and coaching work together is by comparing it to a project. When we want to complete it quickly, we’ll research to find existing solutions and patterns that we can implement or clone and mutate. We end up completing it faster and more easily with the benefit of others’ shared experience and knowledge (this is like mentoring). Other times, we decide to invest time and resources into coming up with our own ideas. What we do is tailored to the particulars of our goal, sometimes even innovating and disrupting the norm. We learn how to navigate challenges in projects like this and tackle bigger ones in the future (similar to coaching). We absolutely can and should do both in one project, and can lean more in one direction or the other when the needs of the project warrant it (similar to using mentoring and coaching together).

One-Step Coaching

As noted above, we often want someone to tell us how to do something so that it is easy, help out or do it for us, withhold their thoughts and reassure us, or let us bounce ideas off of them. Regardless of how we want them to respond, having someone who will push us some can be extremely valuable. That is the value of coaching. Similarly, when someone comes to you, even if they want advice or assistance or nothing at all, you can still offer instant coaching with no effort.

Instant coaching is accomplished through one, simple step. It is the best, and also the easiest tool:

ask open questions

The most effective open questions are “Why?” and “Can you tell me more about that?”

An open question is any one that doesn’t have an easy yes or no answer, or obvious simple option. It invites more discussion and exploration. This gives the person a chance to reflect, dig deeper, and think things through more. Being able to work through thoughts and find which options are the best ones for them and their situation takes time.

Here are some other great open questions – pick a couple and use them whenever you want to coach yourself or others. Some of my favorites are:

What’s feeling stuck?
What’s your spidey sense telling you?
What’s holding you back?

A Dozen More Coaching Concepts

Being familiar with these basic concepts helps work through a wide range of goals and challenges. They’re listed in priority order in terms of importance of understanding.

Awareness

Recognizing your current state, beliefs, and reasons.

Your brain will naturally snap to familiar habits and beliefs, and recognizing what those are gives an opportunity to decide if they’re helpful and worth holding onto or not.

Awareness allows you to make realistic next-steps, based on where you are, not where you wish you were or think you should be. Addresses over-optimism that will overwhelm you.

Acceptance

Being aware of your current state, beliefs, and reasons, and knowing that they’re normal.

Every normal human brain has four main objectives. It wants everything to be:

Easy
Fun
Safe
Better

Everything we do without thinking it through much, will fit into one of these four objectives. The first three are the ones that protect us, and the last is what propels us. These are part of being a human, and one human is worth as much as any other no matter what.

Trouble can come when realizing that the first three also can limit us, and when the last one leads to judgment and shame. Acceptance is a more effective starting point, since it takes additional brain power to address restraint and negativity before you can make decisions or take action.

Timing

There are no time limits to accomplish something, because everyone is equal as they are right now.

Negatively judging someone at a point in time denies the value of learning and growth. Evaluating something at a point in time is only useful when it helps motivate you to make progress. Use target dates as a tool to help you focus, not something to trigger shame.

50/50

Everything can be viewed as having positive aspects, and negative ones.

Seeing both sides of something can help improve understanding and avoid getting stuck. Circumstances can be interpreted in different ways, and none are right or wrong, just different. Some interpretations will help more, and they may not be the first interpretations we have or are hanging on to.

Self-confidence

Believing you can figure anything out.

Confidence is based on experience and expertise, on proof found in the past.

Self-confidence is recognizing that you’ve tried and learned and accomplished many things, just like everybody else, and you can and will again.

There’s nothing wrong with confidence and self-confidence, and no such thing as too much of it. It helps form a good relationship with yourself–your past self and your current self–and having belief in your future self.

Note that arrogance displaces confidence and self-confidence. It is understandable, as it is rooted in a normal fear of failure and abandonment, and it leads to criticism and denies kindness and growth.

Know-How

You don’t need to know how to do something before you decide to do it.

Making a decision doesn’t ever need to factor in how much experience or knowledge you have about it. You can figure it out, and believing that will keep you going. Doubting it or waiting until you know how to do something will hold you back.

Failing in Advance

Avoiding something because you might not be successful at it.

Thinking you might fail to achieve something of course guarantees that you fail to achieve it – there is factually no difference between not trying and not accomplishing it, and trying and not accomplishing it.

We want to “fail” on purpose often, in terms of taking real action in order to learn. There’s no growth when we fail in advance to avoid emotions.

The time and money put into it is about the experience of trying it, and not the outcome. The outcome is not the reward, the experience is. When the outcome is the reward, it diminishes the value of anything leading up to it.

A Good Decision

An option you’ve selected based on reasons you are comfortable with.

An option isn’t good because others approve of it. It isn’t bad if you are worried or scared about it, anymore than it is good if you feel relieved. It isn’t a bad decision if it doesn’t work out as you expected, either. All that matters is that you factored in what you felt was important reasons behind choosing what you did.

If you aren’t sure if you’re comfortable with your reasons, check to see if you made the decision when you were feeling peaceful and understanding the situation, or if you were reacting emotionally or trying to control something. The only one who needs to back up your decision is you.

Commitment

Something you’re interested in achieving no matter what.

Otherwise it is an interest. Purposefully differentiating between commitments and interests can help create focus and motivation.

Real Action

Producing something that didn’t exist in the world before.

Real action leads to something tangible like a written article, software, or a craft, to intangible but actual things like spoken words or an experience. Passive action is activity like learning, thinking, and observing, which could lead to change in the world but in and of itself doesn’t change anything.

Both are needed, but only real action will create impact and results. Sometimes consciously, but often unintentionally, we’ll spend a lot of time in passive action mainly in a normal attempt to conserve energy or avoid confrontation or rejection.

Emotions

When emotions are strong, it is difficult to think, much less be creative. Identifying a single emotion (use a wheel like this if needed) is the first step. Then focus on what it feels like physically. And remember it can’t hurt you.

disComfort

Discomfort is the price of growth. Find the comfort in discomfort (disComfort) to get through it.

Think about being on land with a river running next to it. You’re familiar with it and consumed what grows there. On the other side there are different trees and animals that you want to have access to, and you know there is even more to explore beyond what you can see. The only way to get there is to swim across the water, and even though you hate the cold you dive in anyway.

The other side of the river is your desired state, your goal, or the next amazing version of yourself. The river is that discomfort that has to be experienced to get there. The exhaustion fighting the current, the muscle cramps, the scrapes from the rocky bed and fish nipping at your heels. If we suit up, do some practice laps on the side, take our vitamins, and recognize that we could use the pedicure, it will not only be worth it but maybe even a little fun. People do things like this all the time just to do it. There’s no getting around the river – we have to dive in.

Being comfortable with any discomfort that could come up enables you to take action and accomplish tremendous things. Get good with it.

Applied Concepts – Four Formulas for Growth

Awareness + Acceptance = Power

When you’re aware of how your thoughts and feelings influence what you do, and can accept that it’s normal which helps you not judge yourself for it. Then you can keep that higher-functioning part of yourself engaged more, and draw on more of your own power to achieve.

Decision + Commitment = Drive

Getting comfortable with the reasons behind a decision you’ve made, and knowing that you’ll make something happen no matter what will help you fight off discouragement and fear and keep going, overcoming obstacles as they come.

Ideas + Real Action = Results

Coming up with alternative thoughts and being sure to produce something in the world that didn’t exist before is key to accomplishing your biggest achievements and impact.

disComfort + Choice = Unstoppable

Once you’re able to be comfortable being uncomfortable, or finding comfort in discomfort, if you will, is what will rapidly accelerate your growth. The majority of worst-case scenarios equate to little more than experiencing a negative emotion, so being able to process feelings more easily will remove that from being a hindrance. Pair that with deliberate, intentional thoughts and actions, taking control of what you choose to believe and act on, there’s nothing you can’t do.

Simple Growth Exercises

Use any of these questions whenever you’re feeling comfortable and need to push yourself to figure out your next opportunity.

List 25 or more words you would want people to use to describe you next year.
How do you feel about your current roles and responsibilities?
What is horrible about failing? What if none of that were horrible?
If you could wave a magic wand, what would you make happen?
Is it ok for others to be wrong about you? In what ways are others wrong about you now and it’s ok?
Make and keep a list of statements in this format:
<impact made from activity done because of superpower possessed>
What will be the same if you {get promoted, change jobs, take the difficult assignment on, etc}? What would be different?
What, if anything, is keeping you from what you want?
What will happen if you don’t help others? Identify as many good outcomes as bad.
List 10 or more strategies you can take to reach your next goal, and continue until you have significantly more real actions than passive. Finally, add to it 10 or more obstacles you will face including fear, disappointment, and embarrassment, and strategies to work through those.

Repeatable Coaching Model

aka CTFAR

Use this model to understand what’s happening at a point in time, play out how to handle something, help make decisions, get unstuck, or break down a goal. It is able to be applied universally because it’s based on simple cause and effect principles. This model helps you see the facts, figure out why you’re feeling the way you do, know what will help motivate you, see why something keeps happening, and much more.

The more you do this, the faster you get at it. You can complete these stages in any sequence, but for simplicity it is listed in the most common order.

⚠️You can invite others to try this as well, but understand that it’s tricky to help them much past Stage 2 so encourage them to work on that themselves or work with a trained coach.

Stage 1

Thought download

Start to process where you’re at. Sometimes this starts with writing down everything in your head. Sometimes it will be finding someone who will create a judgment-free zone to let you unload in, or something else.

💡Being able to do a thought download helps slow the brain down so that the natural part of our brain can be examined, and the higher-functioning part of ourselves can engage.

Stage 2

Circumstances

Next, slow down and go through that thought download to find the facts.

You will know it is a fact when you’re sure that no one could argue with it, not your best friend or your worst enemy. You will know if it is a fact when you ask “how do I know?” and there’s no other answer to prove it. You will know it is a fact when there are multiple ways to interpret it, but none of those things change it.

These facts are your circumstances.

Thoughts

The rest, the non-facts, are your thoughts about the circumstances.

💡Being able to separate out thoughts from circumstances is key, because notice how thoughts are choices. If thoughts weren’t choices, then we’d all think the same all the time. Even when we’re surrounded by people who do think the same, they’re still choices. In fact, circumstances are neutral. They don’t mean anything until we choose something to think about them.

Stage 3

Feeling

Pick just one of those thoughts, and notice how you feel when you think it (use a feelings wheel like this one if you need help).

Actions

Pick one feeling. When you’re feeling that feeling, what do you do? What don’t you do? Get specific here. Slow your brain, and avoid the tendency to jump into another feeling or thought. Make a pretty exhaustive list, and be sure to stay on that one feeling.

Results

What happens as a result of those actions and/or inactivity? The results can only be about you, not anyone or anything else.

💡The real magic happens when you use this CTFAR formula, and realize that the results you generate are directly related to your thoughts. Not to the circumstances.

💡If you’re judging yourself or others here: List out every possible way to think about this, even unbelievable thoughts, like ridiculous opposites of what you’re thinking right now. Try to justify how the result might be actually be ok, even desirable. Remember that no one has worried or shamed themself to greatness. Exploring the good things that are equally as possible will help you reach acceptance, which is where you can begin to leverage more power. These things are normal and understandable in this world with our human brains and imperfect universe.

Stage 4

Alternative thoughts

Try to think of other possible thoughts, with the same circumstance – don’t change the circumstance. If you’re stuck, get really crazy, even if the thoughts aren’t believable. The idea in the end, though, is to land on a thought that is believable. It doesn’t need to be ideal, just something you can work with for now – you can always change your thought again later to something closer to your ideal.

💡Do not go to alternative thoughts until you understand and are truly are ok with the first three stages. Going straight to alternative thoughts without doing this first is ok, and makes the same original thoughts likely to come up again – sooner, with more frequency, and/or with stronger emotion. This is because the thoughts haven’t been processed yet, and because even once they are, the brain will still be processing and reprocessing them. Doing the CTFAR model won’t prevent the cycle from recurring in your head – it’s like brushing your teeth (I just brushed yesterday! I have to brush again today?). The model makes it easier to keep your head “clean” by doing it often, rather than if you never do it or only do it once in a while.

Example 1 – A Problem

I was quite upset one afternoon, to the point I couldn’t really even sort out why exactly. It seemed I was upset about everything.

Stage 1: I did a thought download by typing in a clean document. Getting everything out of my head helped me get through the strongest emotions I’d kept spinning on.

Stage 2: I then went back to identify anything in what I wrote that was actually true, what no one could deny. And from those, I could look at the first one: When reviewing a ticket for a project my team was working on, I saw that there wasn’t a comment added to it for more than 30 days. I could take that, and walk it through the model then, capturing that fact as the circumstance, and a key thought about it.

C – No update on issue with status “In Progress” since 18 Mar (today is 29 Apr)

T – This is a disaster.

If I were to stop right here, this is great awareness and helps my brain slow down and recognize where this is coming from. And then I can question it more. Why do I think this is a disaster? How likely is it to be a disaster? What would be the worst case scenario? All those open ended questions.

Stage 3: If I want to look further and run the entire model, it would look like this:

F – Rage

A – stomped around office, vented to close colleagues, spent 20 minutes digging through old messages about it, replayed in my head what people are saying about this instead of listening in meetings, didn’t reply to questions about it, assigned issue to myself, went into reactive mode only paying attention to Slack messages and other notifications, ignored my planned action items, snapped at family member for coming into my office

R – I’m a disaster of a leader.

Notice how the result I created here only applies to me and reflects the actions I took and didn’t take, as it always will. And the actions are what I do when I’m feeling how I feel. And how I’m feeling is a result of my thought, which is one of many possible thoughts. And my result is a direct mirror of my thought, which it always will be.

It took me a few minutes after writing that out to sit with the rage, focusing on the headache I felt, the shakiness and sensation in my hands, the tightness in my jaw. Focusing on the physical aspects of it helped get me out of my head, where I was focusing on all the stories there, making me even more angry. Even reminding myself that I’m angry helped crowd out my other thoughts why that might be, which helps move through the anger.

Stage 4: Once the anger started to subside, I was able to try a different angle, to consider an alternative thought. As is the rule when running other thoughts through the model, I have to keep the C the same.

C – No update on issue with status “In Progress” since 18 Mar (today is 29 Apr)

T (Alternative) – There’s probably a reasonable explanation for this.

F – Understanding

A – Reflected for a minute, quietly reached out and asked a few folks for current state, offered help if needed, found folks who recommended next steps, updated stakeholders, added to my planned action items list to follow up, shut off slack/notifications, somewhat focused on plans during scheduled focus time

R – I’m being a reasonable leader, the kind of person I want to be.

I check in to see if this alternative thought is something I can really get behind, or if it’s a stretch. Since I feel okay with it, I tuck this away as something to try next time something like this comes up.

Before, this sort of thing would have put me on a downward spiral for days, if not weeks. And things outside of my control were pretty much the only thing that would lift me out of it, so I could stay in a funk until something good happened. That means I have little control, and is pretty disempowering, subject to everything around me determining how I feel.

It took me a lot of practice, but I can do this whole process now in a matter of minutes. Today, it took me maybe 20 or 25, for example. I’ve done it in as little as 2. Sometimes it still may take a few days, but at least it isn’t months. And I get moving on to learning and growing again.

Example 2 – A Goal

I had a big idea that I wanted to make happen at my company to make work easier. I talked to my coworker about how this would help so many, and even how I could be recognized for it and it might help me be able to get my ideas heard more in the future. I shared that I was scared to propose it since people might shoot it down or think it isn’t worth it, and that I have no idea how to do it really since I’ve never worked on anything like this before. They agree it’s very aspirational and recommend against it. I talk to another manager I know, and they don’t think it will work out, but offer me a proposal example that was accepted recently. I write up my idea and send it to my manager, who agrees and helps find a team to work with me on it for a month, and ultimately we implemented the new system.

As I’d shared with my coworker, in the beginning I wasn’t sure I wanted to make the pitch, because it seemed impossible and not worth the energy to try. But up front, I’d also figured that not doing anything wasn’t going to make anything better, and I do want to stretch myself, too. So I used the model to see what I could think that might help me see this through. Again, in abbreviated fashion:

C – I have an idea

T – I don’t how this would be doable, but I can figure it out

F – Excitement

A – Talk to coworkers, brainstorm next steps, ask around for advisors, find examples, keep working through feedback, practice presentation, pitch idea

R – I find a way to get work started

A very interesting part of this model is noticing how I can “pre-think” about this result, and work backwards through it. If my desired result is “I find a way to start work”, what actions would I need to take? How would I need to feel in order to take these actions? For example, feeling unsure likely won’t lead to me reaching out to others to find a template. Feeling curious might, though. And what do I need to think to feel curious? Choosing to think like my coworker that “this is too aspirational” will likely make me feel discouraged. Choosing a thought like “I wonder if someone might have an idea what I should try next” might help me feel curious, and certainly “I don’t know how to do this” won’t.

Final Thoughts on the Model

💡Remember that there aren’t good thoughts or bad thoughts, only different options that yield different results. Some will work better for you than others. Other thoughts will work better for different people. It’s good to explore different thoughts without judging them – the beauty of the model is to observe how our thoughts affect our results, and decide what thoughts we want to keep.

💡As humans, we are all worthy of respect and decency at every point of our lives. We don’t need to earn it. We don’t need to worry that it will only come “if we do it right”. If we aren’t being treated with respect and decency then that is a result of how others are thinking, and there can always be different people who don’t think that way.

💡You’ll never go wrong choosing kindness, understanding, and partnership.