Briefings

Shame is a universal experience of mentally healthy people. Defined as “a feeling of humiliation or distress caused by...

Working with shame

Achieving work-life balance is vital to individuals, teams and organisations. People feel more fulfilled and better able to perform...

Work-life balance issues

The energy grid is a simple tool for helping managers and executives analyse where their time and, most importantly,...

Where do managers spend their energy?

The relationship between strengths and weaknesses is a complex one. Strengths can often become weaknesses, if we become over-reliant...

Working with strengths and weaknesses at a deeper level

There are two types of noise or interference that prevent people achieving what they want. One we can call...

Working with noise

The notion that "It's rude to interrupt" is instilled into most people from an early age. A coaches or...

When is it OK for a coach or mentor to interrupt?

This is a practical and very simple way of helping someone, who is feeling overwhelmed. There are three parts...

What are you NOT going to do today

It’s general good practice to separate mentoring from line management – there are simply too many areas of potential...

What to do if your mentee becomes your direct report

Coaching and mentoring don’t have to happen in a formal meeting environment...

What to do if a coaching or mentoring session runs out of time

Coaching and mentoring don’t have to happen in a formal meeting environment...

Lying

Coaching textbooks are full of advice for coaches to develop their skills of empathy.

How empathetic do you need to be as a coach or mentor?

This simple tool provides a structure for thinking about goals and intentions, from the perspective of current and desired...

Dilts’ identity matrix

Values elicitation triangle This technique helps people work pout their core values.

Values triangle

In working through personal reflective space, whether alone or with a coach or mentor, the quality of dialogue is...

Personal reflective space

A good coaching conversation will typically engage with all three levels of learning loop.

Triple loop learning - helping the coachee think more deeply

Authenticity is one of those irritatingly vague qualities expected of modern leaders...

Helping your coachee or mentee become more authentic

If we really attend to what someone else is saying, it’s not that difficult to pick up significant words...

Listening skills

The mentoring conversation provides a safe space to experiment with learning behaviours.

You make a faux pas

One of the mistakes many coaches and mentors make is to assume that every formal conversation should result in...

The mentoring conversation is inconclusive

Effective mentoring requires intimate sharing of hopes, fears and inner feelings that doesn’t happen in normal conversations. So it’s...

What if you feel you are becoming emotionally too close in a mentoring relationship

Burnout – when people can no longer cope with the stress of their job role - is an increasingly...

What if the mentee is in danger of burnout or derailment

When someone appears not to want to learn, it may be for one of several reasons...

Reluctant learner

It’s not uncommon for a mentor to become frustrated, when they have deep conversations with a mentee, then nothing...

What to do if the mentee does not do what they say they will

There comes a point at least once in a coaching conversation, where the coach feels instinctively that the issue...

What if the coachee says ‘I don’t know’

People lose hope when their attempts to bring about positive change result in repeated failure and/or a deep sense...

When the coachee/mentee loses hope

The instinctive reaction to this situation is for the coach or mentor to back off and suggest that the...

What if the coachee or mentee is also receiving professional help from a counsellor or therapist

When people have high anxiety about a problem, they often instinctively seek someone else to tell them what to...

When the client wants a solution too soon

Losing a loved one, or being exposed to a traumatic experience (for example, a violent crime) can give rise...

What to do if my coachee/ mentee suffers a traumatic loss

NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming stirs very different responses in coaching and mentoring.

Using NLP techniques in coaching and mentoring

Experienced coaches and mentors learn to use intuition, in parallel with more analytical processes, as a rapid means of...

Using intuition in coaching and mentoring

Using humour in a coaching or mentoring dialogue can be beneficial in a number of ways. Firstly, it helps...

Using humour in coaching and mentoring

Visioning is a technique used in many coaching / mentoring situations, it is often used to help the learner...

Visioning

Personal disclosure is an important part of an open, trusting relationship. It allows us to build multiple points of...

Using personal disclosure

SWISH is a technique used in NLP to help people replace unwanted or unhelpful thoughts and responses with helpful...

SWISH technique

This is a practical tool which helps people understand the complexity of their own thinking. It is a creative...

Separate selves

Scripting is a technique, which helps people bring about change in a conversation or situation that always seems to...

Scripting

This technique is based on research from Stanford University and elsewhere that suggests a powerful connection between how closely...

Future self

Framing refers to how we create meaning and how that influences how we behave. So, for example, being unsuccessful...

Framing and reframing

At the end of the coaching / mentoring session, the learner should leave with a sense of: Having addressed issues,...

Ending the coaching / mentoring session

Emotional mapping is particularly useful in helping a client work through the mix of emotions they are feeling about...

How to use emotional mapping

The drama triangle is a useful model from transactional analysis. It depicts the interplay of power and responsibility between...

Drama triangle

This is a very simple quick and fascinating exercise to illustrate how people often have different views of the...

Creativity exercises

Many of the issues people bring to their coaches and mentors relate to difficult choices.

Making difficult choices

Being an effective mentor requires a continuously expanding portfolio of MDQs – (Massively Difficult Questions). These are what stimulate...

Seven dialogues of coaching and mentoring

How important is it to find a (complete) solution now? What are the potential benefits of a short term fix...

Powerful questions for finding solutions

Strong emotions in a mentee or coachee (for example, anger or grief) can induce panic in the coach or...

Managing strong emotions in the coaching/mentoring dialogue

Stress, which affects most people at some point, can be positive or negative. Positive stress makes us alert, focuses...

Managing stress

Procrastination is typically a repeating cycle with four stages: Putting off something we aren’t positively motivated (energised) to do Feeling guilty Reduced...

Managing procrastination

Even the most experienced coaches and mentors encounter occasional moments of disconnect – points in the learning conversation when...

Managing moments of disconnect

Personal disclosure is an important part of an open, trusting relationship. It allows us to build multiple points of...

Managing disclosure

Learning is at the heart of any coaching and mentoring relationship. We learn in different ways, through different methods...

Learning from mistakes

Coaching and mentoring some people can be hard work, but it can be rewarding, because it provides a useful...

How to manage “difficult” coachees/ mentees

In essence, all coaching and mentoring are about helping people achieve change.

Hope to help the coachee/ mentee cope with change

Leary’s rose is a simple tool for helping clients understand the dynamics of relationships.

Helping the client manage difficult relationships

The research on mentoring, in particular, shows that one of the most powerful things a coach or mentor can...

Raise their self-esteem

For behaviour change to take root, it usually needs to be embedded in self-awareness.

Raise their self-awareness

Survivor syndrome occurs when people retain their jobs during “downsizing”, while colleagues lose theirs. Survivors feel a certain amount...

Overcoming survivor syndrome

It’s very easy for people to confuse being a high achiever with being a perfectionist – after all, both...

Overcome perfectionism

When we fail to live up to our potential, one of the most common causes is that our negative...

Helping the coachee or mentee overcome negative self-talk

People vary widely how motivated they are to learn and progress. Given that you have limited time and energy...

Increase their motivation

Positive assertiveness is an elusive attribute. Stereotypical thinking often means that behaviours, which can be seen in males as...

Increase assertiveness

The research on mentoring, in particular, shows that one of the most powerful things a coach or mentor can...

Develop greater self-belief

Well-managed delegation is one of the core skills of an effective manager. It frees the manager up to concentrate...

Delegate more effectively

There are a number of techniques and tools coaches and mentors can use to help the coachee/mentee gain commitment...

Cope better with change

People in all cultures tend to think of themselves as more ethical and more morally virtuous than we actually...

Helping the coachee or mentee become more ethically aware

Objectives come in many sizes and varieties. Research evidence shows that whilst objective-orientation is significant in overall leadership performance,...

Goal setting in coaching and mentoring: general principles

Levels of meaning are like the layers of an onion: each layer conceals another, deeper, layer of information. Goodman...

Getting to the heart of a problem or issue, using levels of meaning

Coaching textbooks are full of advice for coaches to develop their skills of empathy. It might seem to make...

Empathy versus compassion in coaching and mentoring

A coaching or mentoring decision tree can help to identify the appropriate type of developmental approach and method.

Coaching or mentoring: which do you need? (A decision tree)

We all have concerns in our lives; concerns could be around home life, health, finance, family, friends, the environment,...

Circles of concern and influence

Building rapport is the first step in creating a successful relationship. Investing time in the early meetings to get...

Building rapport

Identifying strengths is just the first part of a strengths-based approach to personal development.

Building on personal strengths – beyond the basics

There has been a huge surge into research on the subject of resilience in the workplace.

Build resilience to setbacks

Coaching and mentoring don’t have to happen in a formal meeting environment...

Brief coaching and mentoring

People often struggle to get started on a goal, because they can’t work out how they are going to...

Breaking down goals into easier chunks

While some people embrace and thrive on change, others find it threatening.

Build key relationships

When people come to coaching and mentoring, they often do so with goals they have only part thought through....

Assessing commitments to goals

Anchoring is a technique used to change adapt a stimulus response pattern so that the coachee or mentee is...

Anchoring

Being noticed in a positive way is a vital part of career progress.

Acquire track record

The three-way conversation between coach, client and the clients boss, is commonplace in coaching.

Managing the three-way contract

While the core relationship in coaching and mentoring is the coach-coachee or mentor-mentee, other people have a stake or...

Managing expectations of other stakeholders in coaching and mentoring

It happens to every professional coach or mentor at some time. What seemed like a fairly straightforward, normal assignment...

Developing resilience as a coach

Our ideal self is who we would be if we lived up to our values all of the time,...

Working with the ideal self

Consciously or unconsciously, we all make judgements about how we prioritise stakeholders.

Working with conflicts-of-interest

Whistle-blowers typically get a rough deal. Firstly, they typically undergo a great deal of stress in the period, when...

What if my client is a potential whistle-blower

People often limit their performance by feeling inappropriately inferior or superior to others.

Working with status - when the client feels superior or inferior to others

You have had a useful and helpful conversation about the issue the mentee/coachee has brought for discussion.

What if the coaching or mentoring session ends too soon

Coach training courses typically place a lot of emphasis on the skills of creating rapport, as an essential skill...

Breaking rapport to end the coaching session or mentoring session

One of the main reasons people don’t make the changes they aim for in coaching or mentoring is that...

Coaching or mentoring the whole person

In challenging working environments, resilience is increasingly an essential competence.

Helping your coachee or mentee develop resilience

Coaching isn’t always a comfortable experience. When it achieves most, it often involves an uncomfortable journey into ourselves and...

How coachees mentees sometimes sabotage the coaching conversation – and what to do about it

While a coach or mentor may be familiar with terms such as depression, bi-polar disease, personality disorder, psychopathy, burnout...

Mental health issues in coaching and mentoring

Suggesting to someone else that they need counselling takes courage.

When to refer a coachee or mentee to professional counselling or therapy

“Presence” is one of those easily recognisable but hard to define qualities. It plays a significant role in how...

How to help a coachee mentee develop presence

It’s a common misconception that loneliness is about isolation from or lack of contact with other people. In reality,...

How to recognise and help a coachee or mentee manage loneliness

Logical levels is a method of helping someone think through more deeply how they relate to the world around...

Logical Levels as Behavioural Framework

As we’ve already seen in the previous modules, having the right environment for learning together is critical. One useful...

Trust v clarity of purpose matrix