Coaching is not telling, at least that is what we reinforce with beginning coaches. The telling coach gives answers rather than creates awareness. The telling coach creates dependence rather than fostering responsibility. The telling coach is the easiest coach to ignore. New coaches learn that awareness can be created by asking powerful questions – open

  Like many others (maybe you?), I count C.S. Lewis as one of the greatest thinkers, writers, and communicators ever.  The author of over 30 books spanning genres of poetry, fantasy, apologetics, and literature, Lewis’s intellect was unmatched.  But Lewis the genius recognized the limits of intellect.  In fact, he believed our intellect and reason

  The International Coach Federation recently announced a change to their list of core competencies. The list and descriptions for each competency help coaches know what’s expected of a coach. The new list has eight competencies while the previous list had eleven. The only somewhat surprising change? The new list drops “Powerful Questioning”. Hmmm. Brian

  In my ebook The Language of Coaching, I compare learning to coach with learning a new language. It’s not that we learn new vocabulary, syntax, grammar and alphabet, but we do learn a new way to speak the language we already know. For new coaches, one of the most challenging aspects of learning this

  One of our mantras at CAM (and we have many) goes like this: “the brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.” We say this often because coaching relationships often bump up against this truth. Sometimes it’s a friendly bump and other times it’s a hurtful collision. The human brain wants to match the novel to

  The modern proverb “Curiosity killed the cat” showed up on the scene in the late 1800’s. It was a warning against investigating too deeply into things. If you didn’t heed this wisdom, it was going to kill you! That’s a pretty dire warning. But when it comes to coaching, curiosity is the key. Having