The Benefits of Mentoring

Although many coach trainees engage in mentoring as a credentialing requirement, the opportunity to participate in this self-directed learning is an excellent investment in yourself on both a professional and personal level. The support that comes from a coach mentor brings your learning to a different mastery level.

Mentoring is a time to look at how you position your practice and how you relate to your clients. Coach mentoring provides reflective practices on who a client is and what they struggle with, giving you new perspectives and tools to be more effective and impactful in your coaching.

There are many reasons why you might engage in coach mentoring that go beyond what is required to get your credentials. Here are a few benefits of mentoring:

  • Develop self-awareness while coaching
  • Receive feedback on your coaching skills and develop a personalized learning plan
  • Increase coaching knowledge
  • Explore new niches or markets
  • Grow and transform your coaching business
  • Take control of your career
  • Understand the client and their motivation and personal challenges
  • Prepare for coaching exams
  • Stretch your thinking by providing you with alternate perspectives
  • Benefit from lessons and experience of the coach mentor
  • Access to a safe and confidential listener
  • Identify your personal and coaching strengths and leverage them
  • Create a sense of partnership and inclusion in the larger coaching environment and reduce feelings of isolation
  • Become more adaptive to work with different people
  • Increase your flexibility and your coaching style.

Mentoring takes time. A relationship of trust needs to be built to create a safe environment where the mentee can feel secure and share real issues that affect their professional and personal success. The mentor/mentee conversation will go beyond work-specific functions and may include work/life balance, self-perception and how the personal influences the professional. Above all else, the mentor supports the mentee, their career and their individual growth.

If you are an ACC coach seeking your PCC credential, or if you are a new coach who is ready to examine ways to improve your practice, contact Manon Dulude Ph.D, RP, PCC to discuss upcoming group and individual coach mentoring opportunities. Call 905-873-9393 or email info@forgecoachingandconsulting.com.

Coaching Capacity Screening helps Coaches Maximize Client Success

The Coaching Continuum TM  model , as well as the ICA  class “Client Screening for Successful Coaching Engagement”, were developed recently by Manon Dulude, Phd, PCC, BCC,  and Jeanne Erikson, PhD, PCC, BCC. Dr. Dulude researched coaching effectiveness, and Dr. Erikson has been active in ICF coaching ethics development.

Both the Continuum theory and the skill class address what seems to be a knowledge gap in coach training encountered by both novice and seasoned coaches. The novice sometimes reports he or she took on a complex client, but felt unequipped to assist the client reach his or her goals. Seasoned coaches have concurred that after working with a complex client who demonstrated a poor ability to progress, the client likely did not have the capacity to fully benefit from the coaching requested.

How can we match coaching strategies to client strengths more fully? This may come with coaching experience, but why not develop a systematic way to teach this advanced skill?  Does it have to remain an elusive “art?”

We contend coaches at all levels of experience can be equipped with skills to discern the client’s “coaching capacity”.   After review of the coaching, as well as change research literature, we concluded that each client has a “coaching capacity” that can be discerned.   This capacity is part of the “who” of the client as are culture, gender, heritage, age, etc. Coaching questions about distress management as well as resilience skills are central to this assessment.

The Coaching Continuum TM model taught in the screening course proposes concrete options for matching coaching strategies to client capacity.  The model captures client progress from difficulty managing emotional distress, to capacity for resilience coaching, to capacity for balance coaching, and finally to capacity for performance coaching. Suggestions are discussed for types of coaching that may move the client forward at each stage.  In addition, the model helps coaches deal with the reality that client capacity may change negatively during coaching when a client is faced with huge stressors or involuntary change.

Coaching is about maximizing each client’s goals and success. The Continuum TM model and client screening class are about maximizing each coach’s success. Classes in 2016 begin in March, June, and October at ICA.

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