Your role as coach if you are indeed coaching and not giving advice or consulting means you aren't pushing your own values. Sure, you should have an opinion to accommodate your strategy for how and where the call will go but your values should inform your coaching not enforce it. Your values are an extension of who you are and how you coach and as such should have been communicated before you began working with your client/coachee.

Active listening is the cornerstone of effective coaching. As an executive coach, I've experienced the transformative power of truly hearing my clients. It's about more than just hearing words; it's understanding emotions, motivations, and unspoken cues. Active listening builds trust, encourages deeper exploration, and leads to breakthrough insights. It's through this skill that I'm able to guide leaders towards meaningful change and growth.

Frameworks are fine but so is simply taking the time to create an agenda for your calls. Here's my agenda that I've used in one form or another: - Welcome/Get Related - Review past week's wins/insights - Review assignments (learnings etc.) - Discuss new topics/themes - Provide practice areas for the following week - Close with acknowledgments As far as the actual model to coach from or within, that's entirely dependent on the coach and their comfort and confidence level in coaching others. Using models like GROW can indeed help drive the conversation and I recommend it for newer coaches or coaches working with first-time or more challenging clients.

Challenging the coaching client is critical especially for executive level clients. In their cases there often aren’t enough people in their sphere who inspire them to seek and incorporate other perspectives. Providing them with the space to be curious and consider paths less traveled can spark empathy, engagement, and new behaviors.

I agree. During a recent consulting assessment, a client shared that they had no one to confide in who could help elevate their thinking and open new perspectives. That is one of the values we bring as consultants and coaches.

Hold the observer perspective. Imposing one's values will only arise when we anchor our consciousness as a problem solver of the client.