What to do if it looks as if your coachee is never going to change?

The underlying purpose of coaching is for the coachee to learn how to think differently so that they can improve their life either personally or professionally. As a coach, you must find a way of raising their self-awareness and help to find ways of taking new actions to improve not only your coachee’s action but also enable them to move towards independence and self-sufficiency.

However, this process can be difficult for a person new to the world of coaching and it may take time for the coachee to recognise all the possibilities available to them. Yet, if a coachee is showing no signs of taking on board the information you wish to impart, it can be very difficult to continue with the coaching. As a coach you should be able to find a way to relate to your clients, no matter how frustrating it may be to meet resistance.

How can you reach out to your coachee?

• It could be that your coachee is still not very aware of their potential. You need to eke out a positive response and you can do this by admitting to your coachee that the sessions are not working as you expected and devise a plan to go forward together. Hand control back over to them.
• Could it be that there are external barriers stopping the coachee from progressing? They may not have originally been forthcoming with personal information that you need to be aware of, such as a sick relative, a complicated divorce or a medical complaint of their own. Coaching requires honesty on both of your parts and you need to adopt a holistic approach to helping a person improve professionally.
• Are your goals the same? As a coach, you may wish to help an individual improve professionally in different ways but your coachee may just want someone to talk to, to get issues off their chest. Some people just want to talk and be listened to. Some people do find a sympathetic ear empowering as it reminds them that they are worth listening to.
• Why has this person sought coaching? Some people truly want to improve their performance whereas other may simply begin coaching to please a superior. In a case like this, you may have to consider bringing the coaching relationship to an honest close as there is nothing you can do for them.

If you have tried for a significant period of time to engage with your coachee and find yourself getting nowhere, you need to be upfront with them. Realistically, you can only work with people who want your help. If the coachee is not willing to make coaching work for them, you need to assess whether or not they would benefit from you taking the time to persevere with their case.

Making Our Personality Work For Us In Our Coaching.

Inevitably we take our personality along with us into any coaching relationship. We cannot avoid this unless we decide to behave or act in a way that is fundamentally different fro our core personality.

I recognise that in preparing for and particularly when conducting coaching sessions then some of my senses and behaviours are heightened. I will actively listen more. I will really think about the coachee’s response, what it might mean and where to go next with the conversation. I will ask them the very best questions that I assess will help them think more deeply and clearly. I will carefully observe their body language for signs that indicate how they are thinking and feeling. I will work hard to suspend my judgement, remain open minded and block out thoughts about my own world and situation. In short I will “give them a good listening to” as someone once described it back to me.

I will also be direct and honest with any feedback to them or responses to their questions of me. I will not infer things or drop hints in the hope that they will “get it” and work it out for themselves. I will also admit it if and when I have got lost in the discussion or when I am unsure about an answer to a question. I sometimes admit that and come back later with a more considered opinion.

However I will not suspend or deny my own personality. I will express things as I normally would and use plain language. I will react, laugh smile or look quizzical in my normal way. I will bring my natural personality “to the coaching party” and act in an authentic way. I do this because it is me, it demonstrates integrity and because I would not be comfortable doing it in any other way. After all we expect our coachees to be honest with themselves and with us so we should be modelling and demonstrating the way for them.

If my natural approach and personality does not work for someone and they don’t understand or appreciate my approach then I am not the coach for them. This is regrettable but fine by me and I explain this to them at the initial coaching meeting and I invite them to consider my appropriateness as a coach for them. I would rather that they opted out at this early stage if they feel that I am wrong for them than to soldier on through a number of sessions when they have not bought in to me and my approach. In practice this has rarely but occasionally happens.

As a coach what do you do about your own ego and personality?

The first thing for us to do as coaches is to recognise that we have one and to guard against letting it get in the way of our objectivity, focus of attention, or support for our coaching subject. We are there for their benefit and not for ours!

The danger signs are - if we find ourselves telling anecdotes from our experience which have little or no relevance let alone benefit for the coachee and their agenda or circumstances. If we find that we are drifting off mentally and thinking our own thoughts, rather than focusing on the coachee’s issues and environment then we have our attention in the wrong place. This can happen to us quite unwittingly and we need to be on our guard to watch out for it. If we find ourselves judging the person, wondering how they could possibly have got themselves into such a situation and why on earth they cannot just do the simple thing that we would do to solve their problem or resolve their situation, then we are thinking more about ourselves than about them.

It is equally dangerous if we over-empathise with them and their situation and as a result lose our objectivity and ability to challenge them and their thinking. If our empathy extends too far and if we fins ourselves being overly sympathetic then the chances are that we are identifying too much with their situation. We need to check that we are standing alongside the person that we are coaching and helping them as an equal rather than treating them as a “controlling parent” might, as described in Eric Berne’s excellent work on Transactional Analysis.

Another question to ask ourselves is “why are we doing this work as a coach”?

Now I realise that there are a number of answers to this related to earning a living and to it being a natural career step from where we were before. However if we are embarking on this coaching work for personal status, position and to look big and superior in the eyes of our peers and coaching subjects then I suggest that we may going into it for the wrong reasons.
Of course we need to acknowledge and understand that we do all have our own egos to attend to and deal with – but as long as we recognise this and find other areas of our lives where they can be massaged and put first then we should be able to maintain the focus of our coaching work on the right person, the coachee and not on ourselves.