Top 10 tips to help you choose
the right coach.
A
recent Google search for coaches revealed the following results
Business
Coach 800.000,000
Dental
Business Coach 18,200,000
Dental
coach 39,100,000
With
this quantity of listings it is potentially difficult to find the right coach.
Choosing the wrong one can be a very expensive mistake. Simon Coops, Chief
Executive of Acuity Coaching, “Coaches are charging up to £1,500 per hour and
there are no means of telling good from bad.”
In
this article I give you the top 10 things to consider so you make the right choice
first time.
- Check their
qualifications
Once
you have decided that you are ready to make a change and work with a coach, the
next step is check their qualifications. “It’s worryingly easy to do a short
course and set yourself up as a coach and, even though there are a number of
accreditation bodies, they have varying reputations,” says Kevin Bright,
Director of Business Psychologists, YSC. Moreover the Chartered Institute of
Personnel and Development (CIPD) journal, ‘Coaching at Work’, says, “Don’t
accept qualifications at face value. Some reputable sounding organisations hand
out coaching diplomas for a three-day course.” John McGurk, CIPD Adviser
Learning Training and Development recommends, “Find out what training and
qualifications they have and if you are not familiar with them, follow them
up.”
Unlike
dentistry there is not yet a universally accepted coaching register and there
are many coaches in the coaching market place who have done very little
training or no formal training at all.
Ask
your prospective coach details about their coach training, who they trained
with, their trainer’s providence as a coach, how long it was and how much
coaching they did as part of their qualifications.
-
Check their
accreditation
Once
you have ensured that that your coach has qualified from a reputable
organisation, such as International
Teaching Seminars, you will next need to check their accreditations.
John
McGurk, CIPD, recommends, “Find out if they are a member of a professional
body, and at what level. In other words, have they joined on the web and paid a
tenner or does their membership mean signing up to things such as continuing
professional development or a code of conduct?”
Professional
coaching bodies provide guidelines for best practice. They are to coaching what
the General Dental Council is to dentists, or the Law Society is to Solicitors.
In the UK, professional bodies include the International Coaching Federation
(ICF) and the Association of Coaches.
ICF accreditation cannot be achieved without a rigorous level of
training, a comprehensive log of coaching hours, adherence to a code of
conduct, demonstration of core coaching skills, active supervision, commitment
to post-graduate education, a written examination and a practical coaching
exam. At present this cannot be said for all other professional bodies which
have different criteria for accreditation.
- Choose coach
involved with mentoring
Coach mentoring
is a formal process that your coach should be involved with, regularly working
with a more qualified coach mentor, reflecting and evaluating their performance
with clients and sharing expertise. Supervision has two purposes, ensuring the
continued learning and development of your coach, and providing a degree of
protection for their clients by maintaining standards.
Coach
mentoring is essential for maintaining standards, and yet a recent study by the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development (CIPD) has found that only 44% of coaches are involved in
supervision although this rises to 75% of coaches who are members of a
professional body.
Ask
your prospective coach about their mentor, their mentor’s qualifications; how
long they have been in supervision and how often they meet.
- Continued professional development and
post-graduate education
By now you have found a potential coach that is
qualified, next you need to check that they are involved in a process of
Continued Professional Development and Post-graduate Education. Ask your coach
what courses, conferences and workshops they attend, which coaching journals
and books do they read regularly, are they involved in coaching networks and
co-coaching groups.
- Experience,
references and testimonials
Now
you will have honed down the potential coaches you have available to you, and
are ready to start asking how much experience your potential coach has. Coaches
involved with ongoing accreditation processes will keep a coaching log book and
will easily be able to give you an accurate number of how many hours coaching
experience they have, the numbers of clients.
John
McGurk, CIPD recommends, “Specifically ask them how many hours coaching they
have and how many assignments they have delivered on, including what kinds of
issues. If they don’t have a coaching logbook then it could be that they’ve
trained and never practiced, which is as useful as a teacher who has never
taught.” Some of your friends may be unwilling to admit that they have worked
with a coach reluctant to share their great experiences. Your coach will have a
collection of testimonial letters and comments. Ask to see it.
How
comprehensive are your coach’s resources and how flexible is their approach to
coaching? Be wary of coaches who use one coaching model in all situations, as
with clothes, one size does not really fit all. Coaches with NLP backgrounds,
particularly if they are Master Practitioners will have a vast number of
coaching skills at their fingertips with the flexibility to move between and
combine models. This ensures you get what you set out to achieve, coping with what
ever issues come up in your session. Ask your coach about their coaching
philosophy, style and what range of coaching tools they use.
- Whose agenda
does your coach work to?
Coaching
is all about YOU and you reaching your goals. Be very vary of coaches that
offer a one size fits all solution or who are unwilling to explore different
business models, it is your practice and your coach’s job is to help you discover
and create the solution that is right for you.
Make
sure that your coach is prepared to work to your agenda when it comes to
scheduling sessions, and be flexible in your approach. Do you want a one-off
session, and then return again later, or do you want weekly sessions, or a
combination of the two?
Most
coaches agree that the clients, just like the patients you treat with active
perio disease, that achieve the most and get the best results are the ones that
are committed to a frequent and regular sessions. Discuss with your coach what
is right for you. Do you want your coach to work with you face-to-face, or on
the telephone? You will probably experience greater insights and get the most benefit
insights when you meet your coach away from your home or workplace, and you can
be inquisitive about how powerful telephone coaching is, alternatively, choose
a combination of the two.
- Choose a
coach who has a coach.
By now
you are coming towards the end of your selection process and are probably
intrigued by how committed to the process of coaching your coach is. Would you
buy ortho from a dentist with crooked teeth, perio treatment from a specialist
with bleeding gums and stinky breath or meat from a butcher who was a vegetarian?
Of course you wouldn’t. So if coaching is so great you would obviously want a
coach who is committed to the process and has their own coach wouldn’t you?
Choose
a coach who is so committed to the environment of change that coaching provides
that they have their own coach. Ask your coach about their coach, how long have
they been in coaching, what are their significant outcomes as a result of
coaching? Choose a coach with integrity and who ‘walks the talk’.
Before
you commission a coach it is a great idea to have thought about the areas that
you would like your coach to work with you on, think about the problems you are
having and the outcomes that you want to achieve. If you don’t know what you
want, but you know what you don’t want, or what you are not prepared to
tolerate any longer, that works too. It
could be an issue about a business development, management/leadership
performance or even a health or behavioural problem you may have.
If
your outcome is a little hazy, you can relax, a good coach will spend time with
you, tuning, tweaking and clarifying so that you are crystal clear about
outcomes that fit you.
- Book an
initial intake session before committing.
By now
you are really be in the place where you are ready to commission your coach.
Before you sign up to a coaching programme, it is important to check that you
get on with your coach. Just with patients there are some that we get on with
and some that we don’t, some that are best treated by a colleague not because
you don’t have the skills you just don’t have the personality fit.
Book
and pay for a taster session or an initial intake session. A taster session
will generally be a short session of 30 minutes to one hour and an intake sessions typically a couple of
hours. Obviously an intake session and will give you and your coach a better
opportunity to find out how well you are going to work together and give you
more information about how your coach works and what results you can expect.
Use the
time to discuss how you would like your coach to support you, what level of
accountability you want them to hold you to, explore what you want to achieve
and the evidence for that. This time is for you to design the coaching alliance
that will be supporting you in the future.
Now
you are happy with your coach’s credentials, experience and skills and you both
get on, commission them, start the process and begin to live the life that
until now you have only dreamed of.
If you
would like to know more about dental business coaching, training events for
dental teams or NLP for dentists by Dr
Jane Lelean, please contact her at jane@IODB.co.uk
or on 07989 757 884.
