How to be a Phenomenal Coach to Anyone, About Anything

Three little questions changed my coaching game forever

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I’ve been an educator for over twenty years, primarily in secondary schools. In all this time, I didn’t know what an academic coach was until I became one. For almost a full year, I floundered in this position or felt like I did. I read countless books about coaching, some really phenomenal ones like The Art of Coaching and Coaching for Equity by Elena Aguilar, some great books by educational giant Jim Knight, and really practical workbooks based on the student-centered coaching model by Diane Sweeney.

If you’re not in education yourself, chances are those are a bunch of names you’ve never heard of. The thing is because I was so lost in terms of figuring out what, exactly, I was supposed to do as a coach, I researched the crap out of all sorts of coaching: life coaching, creative coaching, business coaching, stress management coaching, you name it. I learned that, if there’s a thing out there, like, literally ANYTHING, there’s likely someone actively coaching or studying to become a coach to support others in doing that thing.

I had dozens of friends coming out of the woodwork with realizations that they wanted to become coaches, getting certifications to do so from institutions that, I guess, are legit since the only criteria to be a coach seemed to be to declare oneself a coach. In education where I work, at least, the criteria is a minimum of three years in the profession and a Master’s degree. It doesn’t matter what the degree is in, mind you, just that one possesses one.

Though I began the career and researching coaching in general with a modicum of skepticism, after a few years I really began to get the hang of what a coach is and what my role is as a coach. To be clear, I specifically coach teachers who work with English Language Learners and the large refugee student population where I live. Needless to say, it’s a lot to ask of an educator, especially a high school teacher, to get a teenager with limited or nonexistent formal education, illiterate in any language who was just introduced to English and hailing from a refugee camp in Tanzania, to “proficient” according to state standards, in four years or less.

This difficult task is so challenging, it requires a coach and I now realize precisely what that means for both the teacher and myself. My whole job, every ounce of it, is to support a person in finding the skill, depth, desire, and meaning to do her job as well as she can. It’s not about yelling from the sidelines what a great person she is, it’s about helping her cultivate her own intrinsic motivation to cheer herself on from the inside.

No small task.

Once I made this connection and began to see my work more clearly, I realized why there’s a coach for anything, everywhere, and how we’re all basically doing the same job: supporting, encouraging, and motivating others to be their best, most authentic selves.

Again, no small task.

This leads to the most powerful tool in my coaching arsenal, the tool that all good coaches must use to perform their job well: active and directed listening.

In The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, Michael Bungay Stanier offers seven key questions to catapult coaches into the active listening state right away. Stanier also authored the fantastic The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever in which he coins the term, “the advice monster,” which he recommends all coaches tame.

Basically, there’s this internal assumption many of us carry that we need to offer something from our own experience to help solve other people’s problems. In other words, many of us feel we need to offer advice to others but the problem is advice comes from the giver, not the receiver. Being a good coach means activating the internal wisdom of the person you’re coaching, getting them to a realization for themselves.

Cue The Coaching Habit’s seven questions. Rather than enter a coaching conversation saying anything at all, lead with a question. Specifically, Stanier suggests, lead with this one: What’s on your mind? Follow up with, “and what else?” and, “what’s the greatest challenge here for you?” The following four questions he offers are all fantastic, but the first three are the ones I use the most.

I’ve been asking so many questions, trying to build my skills as a listener up so much in my now seven years of coaching, I often offer disclaimers when I hear something like advice, or even a personal adage, come out of my mouth.

“Well, if you want to know my opinion,” or, “this is true for me, but your experience is likely wildly different so take it with a grain of salt,” are common sentences for me. My experience has a place in the conversation, but not a very big one and sometimes nothing at all.

Being a coach is a deeply meaningful, fulfilling role.

In fact, I’ve recently hired a social media and platform-building coach to help launch a book and I am beyond grateful I did so. It’s a fantastic use of my money and I’m seeing great gains in my writing and side hustle as a content creator.

Regardless of what or who you coach, or how, or whether you’ve never been or had a coach, check out the questions in The Coaching Habit and see the kind of impact they have on your skills as a listener, coach, life partner, or friend.

The Takeaway

At the peak of his career, Tiger Woods still had a swing coach. My guess is Tiger’s ability to swing a golf club far outweighed his coach’s, but honestly, that doesn’t matter at all in a coaching relationship. Coaching clearly isn’t showing or telling or offering advice, it’s learning to support another person so deeply and with such empathy that they find the strength to grow as human beings from within themselves. Ultimately, it has very little to do with the coach, it’s got everything to do with the person they are building up.

I’m certainly not the best teacher in the world though it’s without hesitation I can claim I’m very good at it and have been successful, but this is not what has made me an effective coach. To be an effective coach, I have had to learn to get myself out of the equation as much as possible and relegate my experiences to stories that may help a teacher see a situation a little more clearly or from a different perspective, but not provide the answers.

The answers must come from them. All I have to do is figure out how to help them find them.

Though I didn’t know what a coach was until I became one, I am one of the luckiest people on the planet that I am learning and growing professionally in this career that allows me to become a better person. Learning about how to help others find their passion can have a remarkable effect on a person, one anyone, coach or not, can benefit and grow from. After all, couldn’t we all use a little time away from our advice monsters, from the idea that the world and our place in it are all about us?

It’s not, it’s about the people around us and what we can do to help them grow, learn, and thrive.