How to align your goals with your plans for improvement based on proactive and action-backed reflections.
Whether you’re a Coach or a Coachee, one of the ways you could personalize your Conversational Coaching Model is by understanding the purposes of each question.
The Conversational Coaching Model is filled out by the Coach during a coaching session. If you are unsure about specific targets or performance metrics, this is the time to best assess how you feel and what can be done moving forward through these questions.
The questions are meant to be continual, so you can build upon your answers and gain a deeper understanding of the subject at hand.
1. What’s on Your Mind to achieve your performance goal?
Use your goal as a final stop, and ensure your goal is SMART — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. Then, put some steps into place to make it happen. You can consider some questions while doing this such as:
- What is my current standing?
- Based on my goal specifics, what kinds of actions can be taken to progress from this point to the next?
2. And What Else can be done?
Beyond the immediate and more straightforward measures identified in question number 1, you can also think about any external circumstances that can contribute positively or negatively impact your plan, such as:
- What are other things that might help or enable my progress?
- In the instance of any setbacks, what countermeasures should be put in place to help me get back on track?
3. What’s the Real Challenge here for you?
Great, now that we’ve figured out some key steps – let’s consider any internal or external hurdles in our way. In doing so and trying to recognize what the underlying issue is, account for how any other elements might have gotten in the way, such as:
- When does this situation happen?
- How often does it occur, and how does it impact me?
- Have I tried to fix it prior to coaching? If yes, what was the outcome?
- Are there any personal circumstances in the way?
4. What do you Need to attain your goal?
Perfect – now based on the previous answer, you can begin to identify patterns in how you’re trying to achieve your goal, and what’s standing in the way. Through this, you can then also acknowledge the following:
- What are some easy fixes I can put in place to ensure these problems do not recur?
- How can I track my progress and stay motivated?
- Is there anything pivotal I’m currently missing that will help?
5. How can your Supervisor help you?
Since we’ve now figured out what assistance you might need, you can reflect on what your Supervisor can do in order to help you improve. You can consider things such as:
- How does my current workload affect my performance?
- What on-the-job training or skills are attainable through my current position?
- Are there any additional measures they can implement to help me in my performance?
6. What are the things you WILL do and NOT do, to accomplish your goal?
Following all these considerations, you can now weigh choices based on your history, past experiences, and way forward in order to come to a clear understanding of what should and should not be done. Account for questions such as:
- What advantages and disadvantages do I find in each option?
- What has been working well for me based on my strengths?
- What has been counterintuitive which I can discard?
7. What is the Most Useful lesson here for you?
You’re almost done! Now, based on your entire session, you can come up with a plan that aligns with your own working style and behavior. As such, you can take this time to reflect on your personal strengths and weaknesses, and how what you have learned will help, based on:
- What step is the most important right now, in my current situation?
- Can I prioritize these measures based on my schedule, strengths, and goals?
- What easy ways can I use to track my progress?
This conversational coaching model will open up a more interactive, interpersonal dynamic between Coach and Coachee. If you’d like to learn how this will be implemented during coaching sessions, you can read more about it here.