Do you have any coaching tools? You know, specific activities or assignments you use frequently? A popular one I heard a lot about when I was training as a coach was The Wheel of Life (there’s an electronic version here). One of the books I got early on was Coach Anyone About Anything which I loved because it was full of tools and activities that you could use in a variety of coaching situations.
The other day I came across a writing exercise and decided to give it a try. Set a timer for three minutes, now write a list of then things you saw two days ago; three minutes, ten things. Now reset the timer for ten minutes, pick one thing off the list and write about it for ten minutes. Write what you saw and just keep going. The purpose of the exercise for writers is to get used to just writing, to sitting in a room and putting pen to paper and keeping writing – even about nothing. But I realized something, the first half of the exercise could be a very powerful tool. It’s very hard to remember things you saw two days ago – today, yesterday even, but to pull up things from two days ago is diffucult (try it and you’ll see what I mean). What, I thought, an excellent way to teach people to begin to pay attention to the moment. This could be a coaching tool!
I suppose, after a certain amount of time, it’s only natural that we begin to collect, adapt, and create our own tools based on the kinds of people we find ourselves serving (and our core message). I’m just not sure what to do with them now! I’m thinking of writing them on index cards (one per card) and keeping them all on a binder ring. It’s easy to add to and pull from, but keeps them all in a convenient place.
Do you have coaching tools? What do you do with them? How do you collect them? What are your favorites? Do tell!
Thanks,
Megan Potter
