It is hard work to slow down, remain present, and be patient to help your clients go below the surface.  Eventually, you will help them drill down to uncover new insight, key issues, and maybe – just maybe – trigger an “aha” moment.

Drilling down for insight

I was coaching a pastor to improve his supervision of a new staff member.  The new staff member struggled with feedback.  He winced when it was given.  The staff member, let’s say his name is “Brent” was quick to excuse or diminish the facts.  Not surprisingly, Brent continued repeating the same mistakes.  

At that moment I had several ideas swirling around in my head.  But then I stopped.  Challenged my assumptions.  And chose to remain present.  Incidentally, this is the process that we write about in Christian Coaching Excellence, to introduce new behaviors to your coaching (see the final pages of each of the nine competency areas in Part II of the book). 

Here is what I did to help the pastor improve his ability to give feedback to Brent.

I asked the pastor the following:

• • How have you offered feedback to Brent?

• What has been his response?

• What is the source of Brent’s reluctance to accept feedback?

• What has worked in your previous experience when giving feedback?
• What other strategies have you considered? 

Giving feedback is a learned skill.  Helping someone grow in this area can be a game changer. But you must slow down and remain present and ask reflective questions.

Piggy-backing

An extremely helpful way to coach clients go deeper is by using questions as a spring-board in follow-up questions.  This technique is called “Piggy Backing”. 

Piggy-backing is building on the actual word or phrase a client used to create a helpful follow-up question. For example, if someone says, “I need to do more about xyz,” a coach might respond with, “What are some possible steps you could take to do more about xyz?” (As a coach, you don’t even need to understand what they’re talking about.) 

Continuing in the illustration above.  In response to the question, What is the source of the staff member’s reluctance to receive feedback?  The pastor responded – “insecurity”.

Now, using the language of the client (the pastor), I asked: “To help Brent with his insecurity, what are some things you could do?”

I (the pastor) could say: “Brent, I want to give you some feedback but I want you to remain open, curious and committed to learning – okay?”

“The other day when you stepped into the team you are being asked to lead I had asked you to simply observe, remain silent, and learn.  Instead, you inserted your position and began to take over the team meeting.”

• “How do you think that made people feel?”
  • Brent responds: “They probably wondered who I was to step into their meeting like this and take over.  Maybe they felt threatened.”
• “So this might have made the team members feel threatened, what could you have done differently?”
  • Brent responds: “Maybe ask if I could make some suggestions and see if they were ready for my observations.”
• “So, if you have simply asked permission before you offered your suggestions, what difference could that have made?”
  • Brent responds and the conversation continues…

Five reflection questions to increase your ability to coach clients to go deeper

1. How have you benefitted when someone coaches you to slow down and reflect?
2. How have you helped your clients slow down and go below the surface of a situation?
3. How important is it for you to remain present when you are helping your client?
4. What are some new insights you have from helping your clients in this way?
5. How could piggy-backing help you engage your clients differently?

Giving Constructive Feedback: Skill Builder Booklet 

At its most simple level, feedback giving and receiving is just one party communicating information to another about something that he or she has experienced and thinks that the other person needs to know about. Unfortunately, this simple process is often done poorly and the intended benefit is lost. Because offering any kind of feedback takes practice and is a communication art to develop over time, this ministry-specific PDF booklet explores the whole process of giving and getting constructive feedback in summary. It does this by offering a six-step model to guide behavior to communicate more constructively as a feedback giver as well as a feedback receiver.

Communication Effectiveness Profile

Getting your message across in a way that is clear and coherent to everyone that is listening is a critical skill in organizational as well as personal life. The Communication Effectiveness Profile provides a highly structured process through which to look at the large and often complex subject of communicating with others. The subject is therefore broken down into seven sub-categories as follows:

• Empathizing
• Receiving
• Clarifying
• Understanding
• Reading Nonverbal Clues
• Feedback Giving
• Transmitting Your Message

Communication: Coaching Guide with Storyboard 

This coaching guide on Effective Communication Skills follows the four stages on the storyboard:

• Understand and appreciate both your style.
• Create the right environment.
• Address any communication barriers.
• Work your way towards mutual understanding.

The four stages are broken down into the 11 frames on the storyboard.  Suggested questions are provided that you can ask your client to help open up the conversation. Your client can refer to their own separate storyboard as a guide to the conversation as you invite your client to think about ways to enhance their communication.

Photo by Nitin Arya

Photo by cottonbro studio