The purpose of this book is not to provide you with an operating system for coaching. There are great coaching schools for internal and external coaches, managers, and executives alike to learn the fundamentals of coaching. The purpose of this book is to provide the business coach and coaching leader powerful application tools. Each of the applications presented here allows you to take your core coaching skills and use them to get certain jobs done: building teams, casting vision, mastering priorities, receiving feedback. Use this Toolkit like you use your computer. With the operating system firmly in place, ask, “What am I trying to accomplish?” and select the application that will work best for the end in mind.

A few weeks ago, however, I took my computer into the shop. My programs were running slowly and it wasn’t working as well as I wanted it to. The technician gave my computer a tune-up, which cleaned out a lot of useless stuff that was slowing down my operating system. Anyone who has read the dreaded words on their monitor, FATAL ERROR, knows how important it is to clean up the operating system so applications can run as effectively as possible. So here are, from our perspective, six coaching essentials that form its operating system. Review these six items, and the self-scoring survey, as a way to tune up your practice so that the tools presented in this book will operate as effectively as possible.

Effective, purposeful questions in the arena of life and leadership achieve the same results. They awaken our awareness and create an environment of self-directed learning. They force us to think for ourselves and take responsibility for our actions. This is the central skill of coaching and its first, fundamental objective: to facilitate self-discovery. “The skill of the coach,” states Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, “is the art of questioning. Asking incisive questions forces people to think, to discover, to search for themselves.” (Bossidy and Charan, 2002, page 74)

Listening then takes an extra step of reflecting back what has been heard. It is one thing to think something, and another to say it. And quite another to have someone repeat it back to you. My wife occasionally repeats back to me something I thought I said to her and I am amazed. “I really said that?” I’ll ask. Bringing a person’s thoughts and words full circle so they may be fully considered is part of the listening process and a fundamental element of a coach’s operating system.

Another part of the listening process in coaching is the strategic use of silence—not filling all the gaps in the conversation with words, but allowing the wheels to turn and, again, allowing our clients to think for themselves. This can be very uncomfortable for those who are new to the coaching role. We feel compelled to talk, but very often a client needs our silence and not our words, space to think, pause, and reflect. John Whitmore writes in Coaching for Performance: “Obsession with our own thoughts and opinions and the compulsion to talk, particularly if one is placed in any kind of advisory role, is strong. It has been said that since we were given two ears and one mouth, we should listen twice as much as we speak. Perhaps the hardest thing a coach has to learn to do is shut up.” (Whitmore, 2002, page 49)

The temptation in a coaching engagement is to land too much on the relationship side of the equation by being satisfied with asking questions and listening only. Although this is core to coaching, it is not enough. An effective coach’s operating system helps clients decide what they are going to do in clear, concrete, measurable ways. At the beginning of a coaching engagement, objectives are formed that guide the relationship. Throughout the engagement, specific steps of action are taken to execute on these established objectives. At the end of the coaching term, the engagement is reviewed against the objectives. Bottom line: Real business coaching gets things done. End of discussion.

Clearly, as accountability increases, so does the probability of completion, the greatest percentage leap being from action five, making a commitment to another person, to action six, having a specific accountability appointment with another person. Coaches who provide this accountability deliver significant return on investment for their services. A friend of mine, a coach-based strategist in Washington, D.C., defines the process of accountability this way: “Coaching is helping people do what they already want to do.”

In other words, the operating system of coaching has an edge to it. Week after week, appointment after appointment, the coach skillfully reviews the commitments made by the clients and by so doing helps them fulfill their best intentions. Accountability accelerates performance, and accountability makes coaching work because it closes that gap between what we know and what we do. In this way, coaching can be the most challenging training program your clients will ever experience.

The first coach who worked with me years ago was absolutely masterful at doing this. After every coaching conversation, I felt an incredible sense of encouragement and strength because he was able to identify, in spite of the challenges I was facing, what I was doing right and reminded me of those things over and over again. It gave me the energy I needed to address less positive issues. The power of positive praise discussed in an earlier chapter outlines the very real business impact of affirmation. Coaches get a chance to model this principle every time they meet with their clients. Just make sure it’s not fluff. Coaching has been accused in this regard of serving to its clients a diet of sugary-sweet sentimentality. In many cases these accusations are true. Make your use of affirmation real food—in-depth content—not cotton candy.

In a situation like this, there is a technique that should be part of every coach’s operating system. The technique is called partner brainstorming. Partner brainstorming is co-creating a list of options between a client and a coach. One item is placed on the list by the coach, the next item by the client, or vice versa. This helps a client who is genuinely stuck by involving the coach with idea generation, but alternating the contribution keeps the client participating as well. At the end of this exercise, a client has a list of options from which to choose, not the solitary opinion of a coach.

Coaching is not a weekly pep talk given by an expert. Please read that line again—coaching is not a weekly pep talk given by an expert! It is a professional, collaborative relationship. This model must be maintained even when advice is needed and is never violated when the advice is outside of a coach’s area of expertise, as with legal or medical issues.

How did you do on the survey? What were your highest scores? What were your lowest? Consider giving this survey to a few trusted clients to tune up your operating system. Identify areas that need sharpening and consider hiring a coach yourself to work with you on them.

How do you light a coaching fire for your prospects? Use one of the tools in this book in a live demonstration. Go though the values exercise in Chapter 1 and ask, “What would it be worth for you to have someone help you live these values consistently?” Fill out a SMART Goal Worksheet or conduct the positive praise exercise. Demonstrate in a very real, compelling way exactly what coaching is all about. Instead of selling your coaching services, you will actually be delivering a bite-sized chunk of value that a person can choose to have more of if they like. Have you ever tried to open a bag and eat just one potato chip? Pretty hard, isn’t it? Give your prospects a tantalizing taste of what coaching can do for them and wait for them to ask for more.

Most coaches then have as part of their operating system a set of policies and practices they share with the prospect. They ask for an intake form to be completed and have their clients sign a coaching agreement that outlines the parameters of the engagement. This is what we mean by contracting. Often the first month’s payment, or a deposit of some kind, is also collected. Because I do most of my coaching in the corporate world, I avoid the legal department like the plague. Instead of an official contract, I have a series of expectations that I ask a person to initial and fax back to me along with basic contact information. This is what initiates my coaching engagements. Here is a copy of that document.

The goal of this phase is to establish a set of coaching objectives that will define the engagement. This is the backbone of your work together. Apart from a set of clear objectives, your coaching sessions will not have the focus critical to execution and could devolve into a series of very expensive conversations.

There are two approaches to setting objectives in a coaching engagement, also referred to as a coaching focus. Marshall Goldsmith has developed a system for working with executives that identifies up front a behavioral habit, or a tic as he calls it, that is getting in the way of their success. Once identified, the coach works with the executive to eliminate that habit. Marshall works with “People who do one annoying thing repeatedly on the job—and don’t realize that this small flaw may sabotage their otherwise golden career. . . . My job is to help them—to identify a personal habit that’s annoying their co-workers and to help them eliminate it so that they retain their value to the organization.” (Goldsmith, 2007, pages 9, 10)

The great gift this approach gives to its clients is simplicity, one clear focus in the midst of a mountain of things to do. But there are coaching engagements where I have found that a single coaching focus was overly simplistic. In other words, there was no tic but a cluster of interrelated issues that all had to be addressed. For instance, I had a client who needed to spend more time developing his people but had a communication style that was harsh and abrupt. If I helped him schedule his time better to meet with his people but didn’t help him communicate better, I would have actually helped him find more time to alienate his people. Not exactly the results I wanted. Or if I worked on his communication style, but gave him no help with his time, I would have succeeded only in adding more items to an already long list of things to do. Added to these challenges was the fact that this client was almost incapable of delegating important tasks to others. Coaching him how to delegate projects would significantly affect the use of his time, but without being able to talk to his team in a more respectful manner, delegation would be useless.

Here were three interrelated problems that needed to be addressed: time mastery, interpersonal communication, and getting things done through others. In this situation I felt that focusing on just one of them would not deliver the best possible coaching results. That is why I took a cluster approach to setting the focus of this coaching engagement, landing on three objectives for our time together. We then began working on them in concert. Please note that these were not three random objectives: The issues were interrelated, and we still had a crystal-clear focus. However, that focus was on a set of issues that existed in a system where each affected the other.

To help distinguish between these two approaches, I have called one behavioral-objective setting and the other developmental-objective setting. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, and both are appropriate for differing situations. Here is a summary of each.

With either approach this Toolkit is a valuable resource. Once an objective, or set of objectives, are identified, select the tool that best develops the actions that will deliver the desired outcomes and use that tool over and over again.

Finally, some coaches choose to conduct Dialogue and Discovery in one extended intake session that may extend three to four hours. I prefer to use my first two or three sessions and let a client use the in-between time to reflect. Tools that work well in this phase are the ones that have assessment aspects to them like the Life Leadership Dashboard, the SWOT grid, or the True TEAM survey. A lot of coaches use a 360-degree assessment and this is the place they use it. These are becoming, however, overused (and a bit resented), and I prefer personal interviews with supervisors and direct reports if a 360-degree perspective is needed.

Here is a worksheet I use to onboard new clients. This worksheet summarizes basic steps of action that need to be completed for both Phase One and Phase Two.

One final comment on the use of an early win listed in this worksheet. People often come into a coaching engagement a bit skeptical about what it can really do for them, especially if those engagements have been prescribed by upper management. I like to find something simple and meaningful to get done right away. Like a football team marching down the field and getting a touchdown the first time they touch the ball, it gives the coaching relationship real momentum and energizes everything you do afterward. Some of the tools in this book are quick-and-easy applications that can have an immediate impact. Use them to build momentum. Yes, the changes you are seeking to achieve in your coaching work are for the long term, but a good first drive can get coaching started on the right foot. Ideally you want an early win to align with the objectives you are identifying, but sometimes they do not. The point, however, is that some engagements need a shot in the arm to get them started right.

This is where the Toolkit has its greatest value. Pick a tool that will help you and your client reach the outcome of a specific objective. Take time explaining the tool and then experiment with it in a session. Completion of the tool may be given as fieldwork and reviewed at repeated sessions. Finally, to close the learning loop, ask your client to teach that tool to one or two other people and debrief the experience. Here’s how I have done this for the Weekly Planning Worksheet.

If you meet three times a month with your clients, as I do, here are two months of sessions with this tool. When you move on to another objective, keep having your client fax his completed worksheet to you as a point of accountability.

In the course of Phase Three, issues will inevitably come up that are not part of your established objectives. I once had a client’s top salesman get arrested just before our session. It makes no sense to push ahead with your predetermined agenda when a situation like this occurs. Deal with pressing issues as they arise. That’s the great thing about coaching: It is extremely nimble and able to adjust to the needs of the moment. However, if every session presents a new crisis, perhaps you’re not working on the right objectives. Revisit your objectives and reevaluate them.

The reevaluation of coaching objectives is good for another reason: midcourse correction. Often at the beginning of a coaching engagement a client has no idea where to focus, but once you get started gains a clearer picture. Be willing to drop one objective and add another as the engagement unfolds. I like to include a client’s supervisor or sponsor in this review process and get his perspective on how things are going. This can be a bit tricky. You don’t want to violate confidentiality, but neither do you want to hear just one side of the story. Gather as much feedback as you can from all perspectives. Better yet, ask for a day of live observation where you are like a fly on the wall in your client’s world to just observe her in action. I have seen within minutes in a live setting what eluded me for hours in one-on-one sessions.

In the closure of a coaching engagement, the tools in this book can also be of help. For instance, I have worked with a client to complete a SMART Goal Worksheet that addressed his activities for the first three months after coaching. A delegation plan for a future project could also be designed, using the PAR Delegation Flow Chart. I have set an appointment six months into the future for a group to retake the TEAM survey to measure their progress or to redo their SWOT.

My favorite closure exercise, though, is a simple letter. I have clients write themselves a letter of what they would like their life and leadership to look like six months after coaching. Then I hold on to the letter and mail it to them in six months. Knowing that letter is coming, not from me but from themselves, is a powerful motivator for staying on track. The point of all these activities is that coaching doesn’t stop after coaching sessions stop. A good coach locks in learning and makes it a permanent part of a person’s life.

In 2002, Nortel Network’s Leadership Edge program engaged MetrixGlobal to determine the business benefits and return on investment from an executive coaching program. The results, reported in Coaching for Extraordinary Results, were astounding. Coaching produced a 529 percent return on investment. When combined with the financial benefits of employee retention, the overall return on investment of coaching jumped to 788 percent. (Mitsch, et al., 2002, page 19)

Clearly this is good news for those of us seeking to serve our people in a greater way in these days of reduced training budgets and heightened financial accountability. To do this, though, we must make sure our operating system, the core skills of coaching practice, is functioning at their very best. In addition, the tools of coaching, the applications presented in this book, when used effectively, make your coaching that much more powerful as you seek to serve others in the decades ahead.