As mentor coaches, we at Coach Approach Ministries love helping others develop in order that they may have a greater kingdom impact through coaching. One of the most frequent requests we hear from those who are growing their coaching competencies is advice on how to improve their coaching skillset. And we certainly have some tips to offer for better ways to listen, ask great questions, encourage, and so on… I’ve come to realize that the BEST tip for improving one’s coaching skills is to help them improve their coaching mindset. Great mindsets lead to great coaching skills.

We teach a coaching model from Thomas Crane’s “The Heart of Coaching” called The Results Cycle. The model shows us that our Beliefs determine our Behavior, which influences the Quality of our Relationships, which effect the Results we experience. In other words, what we believe has the most influence on our outcomes – because our beliefs influence our behaviors.

This seems pretty straightforward when applying it to our clients and their behavior. But what about us? As coaches, how much do our beliefs influence our behaviors? How does the effectiveness of a coaching relationship depend on our beliefs? Our mindset? About our clients, ourselves, and about the coaching process?

It seems to me that great coaching mindsets lead to great coaching skillsets. When we really believe what we say about coaching, then we really can coach at a higher level. Our coaching skills improve MOST when we embrace coaching mindsets.

Over the next few months I’m going to be sharing some specifics about how certain coaching mindsets can improve certain coaching skillsets. I’m going to explore how coaching mindsets such as:

• The client is healthy, creative, resourceful
• The client is the expert in her/his life
• “No one washes a rental car” (People take care of their own stuff, including their ideas, hopes, dreams, etc..)
• The coach should be more “curious about what could be” than “certain about what is”.

….and see how these mindsets lead to:

• Better active listening
• More powerful questions
• Effective encouragement
• Precise communication

I hope you’ll get engaged in the conversation as well and let me hear how your mindsets are improving your skillsets. I believe my coaching has become more natural and easy because of the mindsets that I’ve adopted. I’m interested to hear if/how that has been true for you.