If you feel coaching is hard, exhausting and takes too long, it’s not your people. It’s the complexity you’ve added when overthinking the process.
1. You’re Following a Script, Not Connecting with a Person.
If you’re focused on, “getting the coaching framework right,” you’ve left the conversation and entered rigidity or perfection mode. Now you’re robotically walking through the framework’s questions, without allowing the conversation to unfold naturally.
2. You’re Stacking Multiple Questions.
If you you’re asking two questions in one breath, that’s interrogating or “double dipping.” One question at a time or you’ll drift into several conversations.
3. You Feel Pressure to Create the Perfect Coaching Question.
There is no such thing as the perfect question! Great coaching isn’t perfection. It’s presence. When you’re trying to sound perfect and focus on the ideal question, you’re no longer listening. By the time you ask your question, it’s no longer relevant.
4. 1:1 Sessions Feel Like Workshops.
If you’re teaching, preaching, or presenting information more than 20% of the time, you’re no longer coaching. You’re telling or advising.
5. You’re Offering Solutions Instead of Uncovering Their Truth.
The more you focus on creating a solution, the more the coachee sits back and waits for you to save them. That’s dependency, not development of accountability, confidence, critical thinking and a growth mindset.
6. You’re Over-Preparing for Coaching Conversations.
If you’re building strategies, outlines, or scenarios before every 1:1, you’re coaching your perception, not the human. Coach the facts-not what you perceive may happen. Be present to focus on the now.
7. Your Making Coaching About You.
Coaching is always about the coach. Their agenda, not yours. If you focus on your agenda, you’re not focusing on the coachee. Your job is the question, not cross the finish line. Like selling, the coachee determines value-not the coach.
8. Your Conversations Drift into Theory and Hypotheticals.
When the dialogue becomes abstract and moves into discussing fears of what could happen or, “What if’s,” you’re struggling with coaching things that haven’t even happened yet. Coach facts, not fiction.
9. You’re Avoiding Awkward Silence.
Quiet moments aren’t dead space. They’re where you give people the gift of time & self-reflection to create new thinking. If you fill the silence, you steal the breakthrough.
10. Coaching Feels Like a Performance Review
Coaching is a human conversation that applies to the whole person. If you’re checking boxes (data, reports, activity) instead of working off the coachee’s agenda, you’re managing numbers, not coaching people.
11. You’re Asking Loaded, Manipulative Questions
If you’re questions begin with, “Have you tried…”, “Why don’t you go ahead and…” or “Don’t you think it’s a good idea if you…,” you’re guiding the person to where you want them to be. That’s driving your agenda, not creating new possibilities.
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