Establishing the Coaching Agreement
There is a point when setting the table stops being hospitality.
The plates are out. The glasses are filled. Everyone has a place to sit. But the host is still adjusting the forks while the guests wait for dinner.
Coaching agreements can feel a little like that.
We can become so intent on establishing the outcome, defining success, exploring why it matters, and identifying what needs to be addressed that the opening of a coaching conversation begins to sound faintly like a deposition.
I rarely have that problem.
I tend to do the opposite.
After years of coaching, I have become pretty good at hearing an agreement take shape. A client begins talking, and somewhere in the story I hear it: Ah. That's what we're really here to explore.
And off we go.
Except sometimes the agreement exists mostly in my head.
I've intuited where we're going without pausing long enough to make sure the client and I are actually going there together.
That is the edge I'm paying attention to now: making the agreement explicit without making it mechanical.
Because the coaching agreement isn't something we have to get through before the coaching can begin.
Establishing the agreement is coaching.
