Unit 2: What are the skills of coaching?

This unit introduces participants to the three core skills of coaching together with 12 aspects of being a great coach.

Coaching is a rich and complex activity. It requires a lot of time and effort to achieve a high level of competence. Excellent professional coaches will always say that they can learn more and get better – even after 20 or more years of coaching on a regular basis.

In this respect, it is like teaching. A teacher who believes that there is nothing more that they need to learn will quickly start to lose effectiveness in the classroom.

The quote that ‘Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival’ (W Edwards Deming) could have been written about both teaching and coaching.

Participants will:

• begin to understand and practise the key skills of a coach.
• be able to appreciate the importance of the three core skills of coaching
• experience good and bad listening
• be able to ask good coaching questions
• be able to ask questions that help coach and coachee to review, reflect and clarify throughout the coaching unit.

• Introduction and review
• Starter and micromanaging
• Cause and effect and the three core skills of coaching
• Features of coaching
• The power of questions
• Reviewing, reflecting and clarifying
• Inter-unit activity and review