Stakeholder Centered Coaching is a proven coaching methodology and philosophy created by Marshall Goldsmith that demonstrates behavioral change and dramatically increases the likelihood of a successful coaching engagement.
It’s a process you can use with your clients for creating any kind of transformational change. Even better, when coupled with a coaching online platform like Coachmetrix, you’ll be able to implement a coaching methodology and technology that completely complement each other to both measure behavioral change and prove that your leadership and executive coaching engagements are having an impact.
In the previous article in this series, we discussed how Stakeholder Centered Coaching along with Coachmetrix can set you apart. In this post, we’ll explore how to begin your Stakeholder Centered Coaching engagement so that both you and your client are set up for success.
Here’s What We Will Cover:
- Before the Coaching Engagement
- Create Clear Agreements
- The Coaching Intake Session
- How to Optimize the Stakeholder Centered Coaching Process
Before the Coaching Engagement
With coaching software tools like Coachmetrix, you can add content to your coachee’s account before you invite the coachee to your initial client or intake meeting.
If you don’t have a software platform like Coachmetrix, you can centralize all of your content in well-organized files on tools like Google, Dropbox or Microsoft365. Whatever your method, you want to keep an organized system for all of your pre-coaching engagement materials.
Here are a few simple examples:
- Design a welcome kit with a video introducing the client to the Stakeholder Centered Coaching process.
- Document your Coaching Agreements.
- Upload templates on how to enroll Stakeholders.
- Create scripts so that the coachee has a playbook on how to have regular Stakeholder conversations.
The content possibilities are endless, and you probably already have a lot of materials built.
Given that many aspects of the Stakeholder Centered Coaching approach are repeatable, creating a centralized location to access and use content across all of your Stakeholder Centered Coaching will help create more efficiencies on your coaching engagements. That is one of the primary benefits of coaching software like Coachmetrix.
After your Stakeholder content is created and uploaded, share the relevant content with your clients or invite them to join you on your coaching platform.
Create Clear Coaching Agreements
A foundational step in any executive or leadership coaching engagement is to set clear expectations with your clients. In Stakeholder Centered Coaching, this is the first step in the Start Smart process.
The International Coach Federation (ICF) calls this Establishing and Maintaining Agreements, where the coach partners with the client and relevant Stakeholders to create clear agreements about the coaching relationship, process, plans and goals.
Your coaching agreements might include areas such as:
- What coaching is and is not
- The coaching process and how you will involve Stakeholders
- An agreement about what is and is not appropriate in the relationship, what is and is not being offered, and the responsibilities of the client and relevant Stakeholders
- Guidelines and specific parameters of the coaching relationship such as logistics, fees, scheduling, duration, termination, confidentiality and inclusion of others
- Establishing an overall coaching plan and goals
- …and more
You can contract with your coaching clients in any number of ways. Some coaches will have their clients sign the coaching agreements; other coaches simply review the agreements together during a coaching intake session.
Whatever your method, your coaching agreements should be documented and centrally located so that you and your client can refer to them during the coaching engagement. Our recommendation is to upload them as part of a welcome kit in Coachmetrix.
The Coaching Intake Session
The coaching intake session is the initial meeting between the executive coach and coachee. You might refer to it as a coaching kick-off or have another proprietary name for it.
The overall purpose of the Intake Session is to:
- Begin to build trust
- Establish coaching expectations
- Define goals for the coaching process
- Ensure your coachee understands how the Stakeholder Centered Coaching approach works
- It’s also a great place to apply many of the ICF principles, such as cultivating trust and safety, maintaining presence and listening actively.
Here’s a sample agenda you might use during your Coaching Intake Session.
1. Gather information about the coachee.
Engage the client immediately in the coaching process by gathering information from them, such as:
- Key roles and responsibilities that they play within the organization
- Information about the organizational structure
- Any particular challenges they are dealing with, including work relationships
- How they believe others perceive their leadership style
- Feedback mechanisms/assessments they have completed in the past (personality style profiles, 360s, etc.)
2. Define what coaching is and is not.
3. Understand their goals for the coaching engagement.
4. Discuss logistics for the coaching engagement.
For example:
- Number of coaching sessions per month and duration
- How the phases of the coaching engagement will flow
- Calibration sessions with the coachee’s manager
5. Establish critical expectations for coaching. (See the coaching agreements in the section above.)
6. Discuss next steps.
Optimize the Stakeholder Centered Coaching Process
Stay tuned for our next post! We’ll explore more of the critical steps to starting your Stakeholder Centered Coaching engagement off on the right foot.
In the meantime, check out Coachmetrix. It is a cloud-based tool that helps optimize the entire Stakeholder Centered Coaching process:
- Online action planning
- Sharing action plans with Stakeholders
- Measuring behavioral change
- Optimizing communication between your coaching sessions
Coachmetrix has everything you need to help set your business apart and implement a Stakeholder Centered Coaching process in the modern day environment.
Start your free trial today to see how Coachmetrix can help you stand out from the crowd: https://coachmetrix.com/stakeholder-centered-coaching/
