Trust is an essential piece to your coaching relationship with your clients. It demonstrates your trust in the client that they are naturally resourceful, capable, creative, and can do what they ultimately will tell themselves to do. Trust also demonstrates your client’s trust in you so they can show up vulnerable and not feel judged as you the coach respects their beliefs, values, and identity.
But another essential piece of building trust and safety in your coaching relationship is trusting yourself as the coach to be fully present, to listen at a deep level and to respond with a confidence, not to be right as the coach, but for your client.
Here are 6 signs that will help you trust yourself as you coach your clients towards their goals, outcomes and desires or dreams:
- Trust your presence over performance: We as the coach do not have to have all the answers and we don’t have to be right. Our presence and our curiosity for the client is enough.
- Trust in how silence allows the client to do the work: We as the coach do not need to fill all the pauses or silences, we let the silent pauses do their work in our client.
- Trust in our client’s ability to create their own solution, outcome or goal. We as the coach resist offering what we think or how we would handle their issue.
- Trust in our intuition from what we notice, heard or observed in our client: we as the coach engage in genuine curiosity that follows what we have seen, heard and noticed from our client staying client-centered.
- Trust that we can be curious: We as the coach ask questions for the client, which builds trust with client that we don’t have an agenda for them.
- Trust in yourself – even when you don’t know where to go: We as the coach need to become more comfortable in the coaching conversation when there is uncertainty with where the client wants to go. Stay curious for the client.
Trust Your Client May Need You to Push
Another important piece to trusting yourself as a coach for your client is to trust that your client may need to be challenged in their thinking. Often times we will smooth over it, soften our approach, reassure, ask more questions because we don’t want the client to be uncomfortable in the session or with us.
But we can see that there might be more, that maybe they are answering all your questions with “I don’t know” or they keep moving the goal post because they internally maybe resisting going to that place of being vulnerable.
Trust that you don’t have to be right here, but you can watch for the pattern or the moment when you feel the urge to soften or reassure.
Ask yourself what would be most helpful for my client right here in this moment? Then allow for the client to let the moment be something that will help them make a valuable shift.
After Session Reflection for the Coach
Then consider after the session reflecting on how you did in trusting yourself for your client.
- Was I fully present?
- Did I stay curious for the client?
- Did I problem solve in my head for the client?
- Did I lead the client to my solution?
- Did I allow silence and pauses?
- Did I let go of my performance?
- Did I stay client-centered?
Create Simple Reminders for Yourself
If it is helpful, create simple reminders before a session. This will be the key for you the coach to shift from performing coaching to being a coach as you build trust with your client so they feel seen, heard and maybe even challenged as they work to discover their po