AN OVERVIEW OF NON-DIRECTIVE COACHING

Introduction

This opening chaptersummarises the basics of a non-directive approach to coaching. We begin by considering different things you might say in a coaching conversation, ranging from the directive to the non-directive ends of a spectrum. We then introduce a definition of primarily non-directive coaching that we shall refer to throughout the book. We end by looking at the three fundamental skills needed to manage coaching conversations – listening, questioning and playing back.

Directive and non-directive behaviours

Here is an exercise to consider this question of where you operate as a coach on the directive to non-directive spectrum. Below is a list of ten behaviours, listed alphabetically, that you might engage in as a coach. Take a few minutes to rearrange the behaviours along a spectrum from the most directive behaviours at one end to the most non-directive behaviours at the other.

  • Asking open questions that raise awareness
  • Giving advice
  • Giving feedback
  • Instructing
  • Listening to understand
  • Making suggestions
  • Offering guidance
  • Paraphrasing by rephrasing the client’s words
  • Reflecting back using the client’s own words
  • Summarising an extended piece of conversation

I use the exercise, which I first encountered at the School of Coaching, to highlight that as a coach there are a number of behaviours you might engage in, and to introduce this fundamental question of how directive or non-directive you wish to be.

Figure 1.1 offers one answer to the task of arranging the behaviours along the directive …… non-directive spectrum.

Figure 1.1 Directive and non-directive coaching behaviours

DIRECTIVE

Instructing

Giving advice

Offering guidance

Making suggestions

Giving feedback

Summarising an extended piece of conversation

Paraphrasing by rephrasing the client’s words

Reflecting back using the client’s own words

Asking open questions that raise awareness

Listening to understand

NON-DIRECTIVE

Thus behaviours such as instructing, giving advice and offering guidance are at the directive end, while listening, questioning and reflecting back are at the non-directive end.

The diagram also suggests that when you are coaching in a more directive style you are more likely to be looking to solve someone’s problem for them or to push them towards a solution that you have in mind. On the other hand, when coaching non-directively your role is to help the other person to find their own solutions or to pull the ideas from them.

While it is possible to take an extreme position, and indeed some counsellors would seek to operate exclusively at the non-directive end, in practice many coaches will operate at different points on the spectrum in different situations. If you are willing to vary your approach in different situations, it helps to do this with a conscious awareness of what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

When you are coaching you are continually faced with choices about what to do next and how to respond. What question should I ask now? How do I deal with this silence? The session seems to be going nowhere, so what should I do? And so on. There are a host of possible responses, and choosing which response is an art rather than a science. A vital notion to bear in mind when you say or do anything is your intention. When you ask a question, give advice or offer a summary, what is your intention at that point?

As you develop your practice as a coach, a fundamental dimension that you need to consider is how directive or non-directive you wish to be. I suggest that it is vital that you clarify in your own mind your position about being directive or non-directive. Being clear about your approach will help you continually in choosing what to do next in a coaching session or in managing a coaching relationship over time. You might like to consider which of the ten behaviours listed above you engage in most during your coaching conversations.

At the outset let me say that I believe that it is impossible to be totally non-directive as a coach. As the client speaks, your face or your body language can reveal your reaction, either conscious or unconscious. When you ask a question or play back to the client what you understand of their world, you are inevitably selective in choosing your words, even if your words are originally their words. And when you choose not to respond, you are being selective. However, it is possible to be more or less non-directive.

In my own practice, I think I am directive about the structure but not the content of the conversation. I believe part of my responsibility as a coach or supervisor is to manage the conversation in the interests of the client. Within a session I am continually making judgements about what to do next. However, I believe that I am non-directive about the content of the session. While I might ask a client to draw a picture, for example, I leave it up to the client what they put into their drawing.

A definition of coaching

There is no agreed definition of coaching. Here is the working definition of primarily non-directive coaching that I use currently:

Coaching is a relationship of rapport and trust in which the coach uses their ability to listen, to ask questions and to play back what has been communicated in order to help the client to clarify what matters to them and to work out what to do to achieve their aspirations.

There are a number of points I’d like to highlight in this definition.

First and foremost, coaching is a relationship between two people. The definition offers a couple of pointers to the nature of an effective coaching relationship – one based on rapport and trust. The fact that the coach is operating non-directively will create a different relationship than if the coach were directive.

Second, the definition states that the role of the coach is to help the client to articulate their goals and how they will set about achieving them. Non-directive coaching is about facilitating, not instructing, advising or guiding. It is working with someone, not doing something to them.

Third, the definition introduces three basic skills that will be explored later in the chapter – listening, questioning and playing back. However, while these skills are important, the more fundamental ability that the coach needs is to establish rapport and trust in the relationship. Coaching is an art not a science. The coach is continually drawing on their experience and their intuition to shape what they do next.

A question that I am often asked is: What is the difference between coaching and mentoring? My usual answer is that until you define your terms they mean the same thing. Here is a definition of mentoring that I have coined to parallel the definition of coaching offered above:

Mentoring is a relationship in which the mentor draws on their experience, expertise and knowledge to advise and guide a less experienced person in order to enhance their performance or support their development.

For me, mentoring is more likely to be a situation where a more experienced person helps another to work out their way forward, in part by sharing their experience, offering suggestions and giving advice. These are behaviours at the more directive end of the spectrum, and they may be entirely appropriate depending on the context and the agreed objectives of the mentoring arrangement. In advocating a predominantly non-directive approach in this book, I am not claiming that this is the only way in which someone might help another to perform, learn or develop. Moreover, a really good mentor is able to operate at the non-directive end of the spectrum and will offer their advice or guidance judiciously.

Someone recently captured the difference between mentoring and coaching when he said, “I couldn’t mentor Barack Obama but I could coach him.” Providing Barack Obama was willing to be coached by him, that is.

The first skill - listening

The fundamental skill in non-directive coaching is the ability to listen empathically to understand your client and their world. Note too that it is important to communicate to the client your understanding. A key way of conveying this is by playing back to the client your understanding, and we shall look at this below.

There are two linked but distinct reasons why it is so important for a coach to listen well to a client. First, you need to understand their world – their reality, their hopes, their aspirations, their fears, and the things that are stopping them from taking action – in order to respond with an appropriate question or intervention or silence. In The Coach’s Coach, Alison Hardingham says that in her view active listening

is the single most important skill for a coach. It is what enables the coach to understand the coachee and her world. Every other intervention the coach makes has to be based on that understanding, and the more complete that understanding is, the more effectively the coach will intervene. (Hardingham 2004)

.

This might seem a good enough reason to claim that listening is vital to good coaching. However, the second reason is even more fundamental. In Turning to One Another, Meg Wheatley writes: “Why is being heard so healing? I don’t know the full answer to that question, but I do know that it has something to do with the fact that listening creates relationship.”

Listening, as Meg Wheatley says, creates relationship, and good coaching is first and foremost about the relationship between you and your client. In listening to your client, you show them respect, and this helps to build the relationship between the two of you.

An adjective that captures the quality of listening needed to coach well is attentive. In Time to Think, Nancy Kline describes attention as “the art of listening with palpable respect and fascination”. She writes, “The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.”

So, while listening is important in all forms of coaching, listening with respect and attention is especially and fundamentally important in non-directive coaching.

Levels of listening

There are different ways of listening to someone, most of which are unsuitable for coaching.

First, and it is not an uncommon experience, is not listening at all. I know one woman who describes the quality of her husband’s listening at times as Listening while watching Sky Sports.

A second and pretty common way of listening is listening, waiting to speak. This is when I want to talk and will wait for as short a time as possible before starting to speak. Sometimes I might wait for you to pause, but equally I might interrupt you in mid-sentence. In Time to Think, Nancy Kline says, “We think we listen, but we don’t. We finish each other’s sentences, we interrupt each other, we moan…. We give advice, give advice, give advice.”

A third way of listening – and it is typical of the kind of listening that goes on in many meetings – is listening to disagree. I want my point of view to prevail or to get my way. I’m listening for the weak points in what you say, and when I spot one I pounce. In some situations – in a court of law or in much academic discourse – this is the normal form of conversation, and it may be entirely appropriate. However, it is essentially adversarial - it is about winning and losing.

A fourth type of listening – and this way of listening is vital if you want to coach well – is listening to understand. In listening to understand, I am trying to see the world as it appears through your eyes. I am trying to appreciate what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling. I want to understand your dreams and your hopes, your fears and your doubts. The word that is often used here is empathy.

Beyond listening to understand there is another way of listening that is helpful in coaching – listening to help the client to understand. As long as your client understands, you don’t have to know what they are thinking. In any case, you won’t fully understand their reality in all its complexity and subtlety anyway.

Figure 1.2 summarises these five different levels of listening.

Figure 1.2 Levels of listening

Listening with the head, the heart and the gut

Let’s assume that you are listening in order to understand your client. Within that mode of listening you can listen with your head, your heart and your gut. Let me explain what I mean by these metaphors.

First, listening with your head means focusing on the words that your client actually says. At a thinking level, they are communicating facts, information, arguments, ideas and concepts. You might imagine that they are communicating from their head to your head, and you may speak back from your head to their head.

However, people communicate at a feelings level too. They may vocalise their feelings – I’m angry, I feel sad, This is so exciting, etc. Often, however, the words spoken may be only the tip of the iceberg and the feelings that lie beneath the words may be expressed non-verbally – through tone of voice, or body language, or facial expression. To listen effectively you need to tune into what is not being said. You might call listening at a feelings level listening with your heart.

At a deeper level still, you might listen with your gut – that is, with your intuition – and pick up messages that are there but again are not spoken. Sometimes your gut tells you things well before your intellect catches on. With your gut, you might hear about your client’s fears or hopes or needs.

Silence

An important aspect of some coaching conversations is silence. A key challenge to a coach is to be comfortable with silence. In Time to Think, Nancy speaks of the times when the client might go quiet as they think deeply about something. She writes: “Listening to their quiet, you will not know what they are thinking. But you will know that they are thinking….ideas are forming, insights are melding, most of which you will never hear about.”

If your client is busy thinking, why on earth would you want to break the silence? When the silence is awkward or tense, you need to consider whether and how to break the silence. Being clear about your intention is important before you break a silence. Breaking a silence simply because you feel uncomfortable isn’t appropriate. Breaking a silence because your client seems to be feeling uncomfortable may or may not be appropriate.

The second skill - questioning

If attentive listening is the most important skill you need to coach well, then questioning is the next most important. Listening and questioning go hand in hand – good coaching questions emerge from listening with empathy and curiosity to the client.

A good coaching question is one that makes the client think. For example, they may think more deeply about something they’ve just said, or they may think through the consequences of a possible action, or they may face up to some contradiction in what they’ve been saying.

In considering the kinds of question you might ask as a coach, it is very useful to distinguish between open and closed questions. Open questions usually begin with Kipling’s trusted friends:

I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What? and Why? and When?

And How? and Where? and Who?

Closed questions, interestingly, generally begin with a verb:

Have you …?

Are you …?

Could you …?

Will you …?

Open questions are usually more useful than closed ones because they prompt more thinking in the client. A word of caution about asking a question beginning with Why? This can often come across as unduly challenging and might provoke defensiveness in the client.

A closed question can be answered simply Yes or No or with another one-word answer, often with little thought required. You may be lucky and find that the client interprets a closed question as an open one and gives an expansive answer, but it is safer to ask the open question in the first place. A closed question can generally be easily turned into an equivalent but more thought provoking open question. Compare these two questions, for example:

  • Was it the signal which caused the accident?
  • What caused the accident?

Occasionally, a closed question is just what is called for. For instance, you may want to check out if your client really is committed to an action by asking a question such as: So, will you speak to your boss today?

The word I like to use to describe the right question is crisp. A crisp question – simply expressed – helps to focus the client on the most useful issue for them at that moment in time.

A common mistake made by people learning coaching skills is to ask questions that are not at all crisp. One way that they do this is by asking a number of questions all rolled into one. Often, if they left it at the first question it would have been a useful question.

Another mistake frequently made by learner coaches is to ask a leading question – that is, is one that already contains the answer or at least a suggested answer. These are often suggestions dressed up as questions, along the lines of Do you think it would be a good idea to ……? I think that if you wish to make a suggestion, then make a suggestion – but don’t dress it up as a question.