8 Essential Ingredients for Adopting a Coaching Mindset

Coaching starts with your mindset

To help a participant own their actions during a coaching conversation, a coach must have the proper mindset. Coaching is a coachee-centered relationship, which means many of the ingredients to a good coaching conversation focus on the coachee, not the coach.

Adopting a coaching mindset will facilitate the coachee's learning and reflection, improving the impact of coaching.With clear direction and guidance from a coach, the coachee will be able to solve their problems and broaden their thought processes.

Developing a coaching mindset means the coach should focus on ways to:

Maximize the coachee’s potential by allowing the coachee to unlock his or her own answers
Promote accountability by identifying concrete actions and potential setbacks
Encourage action that reaches toward a goal after each coaching session
Enhance the coachee’s ability to think about new possibilities, actions, and outcomes
Challenge the coachee to shoot for excellence with higher goals and challenges
Broaden the relationship and not remain confined to just a coach and coachee, but collaborate with other stakeholders when necessary or relevant
Provide organizational context and “connect the dots” throughout the organization so the coachee can ground solutions in the reality of their day-to-day work
Keep up with new approaches and tools to help each unique level of leader and his or her needs

Organizations that adapt coaching as part of a larger development strategy better transfer critical knowledge and build their internal talent pipelines, positioning them to continue achieving success even as current leaders retire or leave the company.

Coaching conversations are one critical way to develop leaders of all levels, from emerging to established. Emerging leaders could benefit from group coaching to broaden their horizons across business units, while executives would benefit most from one-on-one coaching relationships to promote in-depth critical thinking about business challenges.

The right coaching mindset and focus help establish the tone for coaching conversations and lasting impact, leaving leaders and coaches with good insights to move forward.