Tag Archives: Keith Webb

learning by doing

Posted on by
3

Our Keith Webb workshop was so good! I am very grateful for my teammates who facilitated our training with excellence. I want to share two of my highlights with you.

1 – First, the workshop used adult-learning (andragogy) many times everyday. 

I enjoy attending trainings when the facilitator uses adult-learning principles. I also appreciate the opportunity to add some new creative ideas to my toolbox.

Some key adult-learning principles:

  • Honor the knowledge and experience of the audience
  • Allow the adult learners to self-direct their learning by planning – as much as possible – what content to cover
  • Make the workshop task or problem-oriented using realistic and relevant situations rather than content-oriented.
  • Use varied activities for multiple learning styles and information retention.

These are some of the creative adult-learning activities we experienced during the workshop:

  • Personal reflection time to record what we hoped to learn as well as our desired coaching topics before beginning the workshop
  • Practiced coaching in pairs, triads, and speed-rotating around the table
  • Coached on real life issues
  • Reviewed material by teaching it back to our peers
  • Acted out concepts, watched videos, worked in small groups, created metaphors, and asked for feedback to better learn the concepts
  • Summarized the highlights and action steps at the end of each day

2 – Second, the workshop demonstrated that even while stumbling through a new method and making many mistakes, people discovered break-through ideas that were encouraging and hope-filled.

Personally, I considered some of the deeper heart issues behind one of my struggles, cried, laughed, and left the workshop with practical and do-able action steps.

This is the power of coaching. When a coach asks powerful questions, listens with full engagement, helps move the coachee toward action, and trusts God to do the transformational work… great things happen!

How can you integrate some of these adult-learning ideas in your next training / teaching / workshop opportunity?

Again, to learn more about Keith Webb’s coaching model, you can buy the book HERE, read Keith’s blog, or look up one of his workshops via his website HERE. Highly recommended. 🙂

Other posts about Keith Webb’s coaching model: how’s that working for you? and want to be a good coach?

 

want to be a good coach?

Posted on by
14

Keith Webb's "The Coach Model"

Coaching values the coachee’s past experience, honoring his/her knowledge and
decision-making skills, and fostering ownership of chosen action steps. 

Keith Webb’s, The Coach Model, offers an excellent process that helps me to focus on coaching rather than talking, and enables me to help the persons I’m coaching discover solutions for themselves. You’ll notice that Webb’s five process steps spell COACH so that it easy for to remember. Here is a quick summary of how it works:

CONNECT — How are you?

A good coach begins the conversation catching up on anything that has been going on since the last time together. This “small talk” helps to build relationship trust and ensures there is no major distraction going on that might sabotage the discussion that day. An especially difficult situation may require rescheduling the appointment or simply acknowledging the trial may lessen the pressure enough to continue with the conversation.

During the Connect time, a good coach will also ask about previous action steps. The question, “What progress did you make on your action steps?” positively assumes progress, validates partial completion, and focuses on what worked well. This is also a great time to address any struggle or failure and help the coachee adjust the action steps if necessary.

OUTCOMES — What would you like to work on today?

Once the past action steps have been reviewed, it is time to for the coachee to state his/her desired outcomes for the meeting. A good coach helps the coachee by asking questions that narrow the topic enough to make progress in the time allotted. Some questions that help:

  • Explore: What might be the deeper issues? What do you want to achieve?
  • Clarify: What do you mean by…? Could you give me an example of…?
  • Focus: Which part of the problem would you like to work on today?

AWARENESS — What can you discover about this issue?

Once the coachee settles on a topic, a good coach asks lots of powerful, open-ended, questions to help the coachee reflect, increase perspective, and consider different angles that might be helpful.

A good coach will be careful to ask questions that benefit the coachee. For example, a coach doesn’t need to know all the details of past situations, so better questions focus on what the coachee wants to see in the future.

Tell me about the conflict.
 vs
What would excellent resolution of the conflict look like?

COURSE — What will you do this week to move forward?

Now it’s time for action! Once again good questions help the coachee generate a variety of possible action steps, evaluate the options, and then choose the best one(s). Using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Timely) goals ensures the coachee confirms the what, how, by when, and with-what-help details of the actions, increasing the follow-through.

HIGHLIGHTS —  What are your “take-aways” from our conversation?

“We build our brains by repeating things.” ~ Keith Webb

A good coach closes the conversation by asking summary questions for the coachee to review and repeat newly gained awareness or knowledge and useful or meaningful aspects from the appointment. This helps to embed the learning and give some feedback to the coach also.

If you want to learn more about this process and increase your coaching skills, I highly recommend Keith Webb’s book, The Coach Model. You can also follow his BLOG or attend one of his workshops.

I’d love to hear from you… What are your best tips for coaching well?  What process do you use for coaching? 

_________________________

You might also like: how’s that working for you?, a coaching process you can use, asking powerful questions,  or questions for a destination

how’s that working for you?

Posted on by
2

Photo by CloudVisual on Unsplash

Some of my worst experiences with people
had to do with me trying to convince someone else of my “great” idea.

In one way or another, I was displaying what Keith Webb calls my “know-it-all-ism”. It was not pretty, and it did not work nearly as well as I hoped it would. It often resulted in high resistance, defensiveness, or hurt feelings – none of which I intended, but I definitely caused that impact. Turns out, telling people what I think they should do doesn’t work very well for me at all.

I am reading Keith Webb’s book, The Coach Model, in preparation for a coaching training I get to attend soon. So far, the basic concepts are not brand new, but they are excellent reminders of key principles and practical helps. They have convicted me in many places and encouraged me in others. Rather than experience this range of emotions alone, I thought I’d share some of them with you!

First, a summary of the symptoms of “know-it-all-ism” – just in case you want to join me in the painful self-awareness process…

Keith explains that there are two types of “know-it-alls” – aggressive and passive:

aggressive know-it-alls:

  • are quick to speak
  • listen – until the other person takes a breath
  • have an answer for everything
  • win arguments, but lose respect

passive know-it-alls:

  • pretend to listen
  • maintain a smug facial expression
  • ask questions that subtly point out why the speaker is wrong
  • internally mock or criticize the speaker

Ouch. I am guilty of both of these.

How about you? Ever act like a know-it-all?

Thankfully, the book offers a better way. Keith Webb defines coaching as:

An ongoing intentional conversation that
empowers a person or group to fully live out God’s calling.

This kind of conversation eliminates the need for me to know it all. It also releases me from the self-imposed responsibility of changing the other person or correcting whatever I feel that person is not handling correctly (yet).

A coaching conversation of this type puts the attention on what God has in mind for the person and allows it to happen in His timing – not mine. There is incredible freedom in this coaching. Keith writes that freedom often feels risky – like accompanying the person on an unknown journey – but at least it will be their journey, rather than mine. I’ll have less control, but I have a feeling that will work out better for both of us.

I’m looking forward to learning more from this book and from the training. I’ll share more in a next post – stay tuned!