Have you ever encountered situations in which you’ve been asked to coach people whom are not coachable? What would you do in those situations? What are the options that you might have? There are not too many options.
There are these actions you might take into consideration:
- Just Give up, ignore the un-coachable. This is the simplest thing you can do. However, there are two ways of doing it:
- To not tell the coachee
- This is an option if you don’t find your interaction and the outcome of that coaching exercise valuable at all. You will find that even having this conversation is a waste and no outcome will be realized. I highly suggest to avoid this option.
- To have a conversation with the coachee
- This could simply opens up the coaching conversation. It might help you with the situation and awarness for the coachee. Your client then might be more open to be talked to and receive feedaback. You can leverage the conversation you are having and build on top of that. Hopefully in some days later you can have the coaching arc conversation with him/her.
- Talk to him/her
- To have a chat with him/her and let him/her know about the coaching arc. It will open up the conversation about where you are standing and what both of you need from each other. You might come to a conclusion other than a coaching agreement. You might end up with teaching opportunities or a mentoring one.
- Talk to his/her boss
- If you’ve been asked to have a coaching conversation with a person, there must have been a reason for that. If it hadn’t come from him/herself, it should have been come from someone higher than him/her. You can use that opportunity to further investigate the situation. May be it is not the coachee that you need to coach, may be it is the boss, or may be it is both of them.
- Find out Why
- Find out why you have been asked to coach the coachee. Then you have to figure out if that is the valid concern for the coachee and have a conversation with him/her or his/her boss. Then, you truly can unlease your coaching potential.
- Be Influential
- You can influence the coachee by understanding him/her and coming up with innovatve ways of influencing that person. There are lots you can do here, you can show geniue interest in what the person is doing. You can give him/her some tips and see if it gets caught by him/her.
It has been said that there are no bad coachees, only inflexible coaches. Nice List of options here.
That's a good one, I will remember that, Thanks. I am going to write an update to this post based on the new techniques I tried and feedback I received, stay tuned!