Dynamics of a Coaching Conversation

What is a coaching mindset?
Gaurav: ICF defines the coaching mindset competencies like this, where a coach develops and maintains a mindset that is open, curious, flexible, and client-centered. Let’s try and understand what does it mean when we say coaching mindset?

Tracy: My interpretation of this is that we’re really inviting ourselves as coaches to go beyond the doing of coaching. The coaching mindset is actually about saying that to really be the best coach I can be. It’s not just about what I do. It’s about how I am being when I’m doing the practice of coaching.

Coaching is not just about learning, a set of skills, almost like a checklist that says, If I do all of these things if I ask these questions, and I listen, that we’ll have a great conversation. And one of the things that we know from some aspects of coaching psychology is that one of the largest impacts on the success of a coaching engagement is the nature and quality of the relationship between the coach and their client. And so, our mindset, our attitude, our stance, our state, is going to have invariably an enormous impact on the nature and quality of that relationship. So, it is not just about applying a skill. This is about how are we being where we are applying that skill.

Co-Creating Coaching Space
Gaurav: Coaching, it’s not about asking questions. It’s not about listening. It’s not about using direct communication or managing progress and accountability. It’s the space from where you’re operating. And would it be a fair assumption to make, that when we are talking about being, it also talks about the intentions and the space that you’re holding?

Tracy: In the coaching space, maybe the coach says nothing at all. Maybe the coach doesn’t actually do anything other than be with their client, other than sit with them, with the client’s work, with the client’s thoughts, with the client’s feelings, and sits with them to witness what that client is experiencing.

So, I think it’s, for me, that is the Coaching mindset. It’s not about necessarily what I do, even though those things are of course, valuable. But with the coaching mindset am I able to just step into a space that is going to be an optimal space for me to work with that person. That coaching space is going to be created equally, by my energy, by my thoughts, my feelings, what’s going on with me, as it is about my client because we co-create that space together.