It struck me, as I finished off the series about mastery in thinking, that it might be useful to provide you with a questionnaire to help you to decide how you show up to coaching and whether you could get more from coaching if you were to show up differently.
So this questionnaire – for your eyes only – is to enable you to do just that: rate yourself on a scale of 0-5, for each of these mindsets, where 0 = not at all and 5 = all the time.
Please go ahead and print it off so that you can rate yourself and process what you find.
Your mindset for coaching – rate yourself 0-5 for each mindset
- I embrace my role as thinker in the coaching process
- I am ready to move beyond known thinking to new thinking
- I realise that there is no one right answer for the issues I bring to coaching – only answers that fit my unique needs, personality and context
- I believe in my capacity to be creative, resourceful and whole
- I am willing to use my head, heart and gut to access new thinking
- I am willing to experiment in coaching and outside of it
- I understand that real change happens when I focus on myself, who I wish to be, not just the problems I need to solve
- To make the most impact, I recognise the need to work on the system around me
Your readiness for coaching – rate yourself 0-5 for each mindset
- I am ready to introduce change into my life
- I am self-selecting into coaching
- I understand that coaching is not mentoring, teaching or consulting – and will not try to hook my coach into those modalities.
- I will identify what matters most to me to work on in coaching
- I will bring my whole self to coaching, vulnerabilities, emotions and all
- I am ready to be challenged
- I realise that we can only work on me in coaching, not other people
- I will look for possibilities vs impossibilities
Thinking accelerators – rate yourself 0-5 for each mindset
- I get enough sleep to enable me to think clearly
- The level of my physical activity promotes my mental acuity
- I walk in nature at least once a day to restore my attention
- My diet supports critical thinking
- I drink enough water to keep my brain hydrated and at peak thinking capacity
- I proactively keep my stress levels under control
Logistics – rate yourself 0-5 for each mindset
- I commit to blocking time on both sides of a coaching session, to prepare mentally and physically, and to reflect
- I commit to turning up on time, every time
- I commit to switching off distractions in the coaching session
- I commit to carving out deep thinking time in my diary, over and above my coaching
If you have rated yourself as a zero for most of the mindsets, coaching probably won’t work for you, until and unless you are willing to shift your mindset.
If you have rated yourself a four or five for most of the mindsets, you are likely to be very coachable.
Now that you have rated yourself on each of these mindsets, take some time to think about how you might shift your rating upwards in order to get more out of the coaching process – if you choose to of course.
- How will you shift your mindsets?
- What do you want to do differently before, during and after coaching?
A wonderful post Clare in so many ways. It helps the client get the most from the coaching experience and clarifies the responsibility for both parties embedding the commitment from both the coach and client (implicit through the commitment questions). Wishing you continued success in all you bring to the profession with kindness and care in spreading the word for many to benefit from. I appreciate your generosity. Warmly, Jane