Cutting Deals!

Have you ever found yourself floundering or a bit lost in a coaching conversation when your coachee goes off on a tangent, or when you're not sure which topic to discuss next?

'Contracting', or agreeing on how you and your coachee are going to spend your time together, is essential to coaching because it keeps the two of you willingly walking down the same road together.

In coaching language, ‘Contracting’ really boils down to ‘cutting deals’. There are many facets to formal contracting with your coachee, such as initial contracting, multi-party contracting, etc.  But there are also many subtle moments during the coaching conversation when 'cutting deals' with your coachee is needed in order to stay on track and move forward together.

Here are some of those moments:

• When selecting a topic to discuss: “Shall we discuss XYZ?”, or “What would you like to discuss?”
• When rounding up a topic: “Have we covered that?”, or “Do you have anything else to add?”
• When summarizing: “How about if you summarize your key takeaways from this discussion?”, or “Shall I summarize my understanding of the situation?”
• When moving on to a new topic: “What would you find useful to discuss now?”, or “Shall we move on to XYZ?”
• When coachee ‘goes off on a tangent’: “You’ve moved the conversation in a new direction. Would you like to discuss this instead of what we agreed upon, or go back to the original plan?”
• When coachee seems to be spending a lot of time relating a experience or story and you are not sure why: “Can you help me – how does this connect to our goal for today?”, or “Would you like to spend our time together on this?”
• When offering feedback: “Can I share something I noticed when we first met?”, or ”Would you like to know how I’ve experienced you regarding this topic?”
• When making a conclusion: “Let me see if I’ve got it right.“ [then share conclusion and check for agreement/accuracy with coachee]
• When offering a hypothesis: “I have a hunch. Are you interested?” [then gain agreement], then offer: “Could it be that….?” [ then check whether coachee recognizes this as a possibility]
• When managing time: “We’ve got about 10 minutes left. How would you like to spend that time?”
• When planning future session topics/timing: “Our time is almost up. Is this something you would like to explore next time we meet?”, or “What would you like to focus on next time?”, or “When would it be most useful for us to meet next, before that MT meeting to prepare, or afterward to debrief?”

I’m sure that I haven’t covered all of the possible types of opportunities to contract, and would love to hear from you. When do YOU contract in the course of your coaching conversations?