Coaching Techniques – How to Help
This domain, Coaching Techniques – How to Help, tests the coaching stance and core skills: contracting, listening, questioning, feedback, team coaching, ethics, and boundaries. The exam distinguishes coaching from mentoring, consulting, and therapy.
Core rules and concepts
- Coaching is a partnership that helps the coachee find their own answers. Mentoring shares experience; consulting gives expert advice; therapy addresses clinical issues. A coach moves between modes deliberately and with permission.
- Contracting agrees on goals, roles, confidentiality, feedback, success measures, and boundaries. Without a contract, coaching drifts into advice-giving.
- GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, Will. Use it as a flexible sequence, not an interrogation script.
- Active listening includes paraphrasing, reflecting feelings, summarizing, and withholding judgment. Powerful questions are open, short, and oriented to learning.
- Feedback can use SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact), with permission or an invitation first. Separate observation from interpretation.
- Team coaching observes interactions, surfaces group norms, and uses conflict productively. Tuckman's stages (forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning) are descriptive, not linear.
- Ethics include confidentiality, consent, competence, and referral. Do not coach without agreement.
Worked example
A team lead asks the coach to “fix” a developer who is “not engaged.” The coach contracts with the lead, observes a refinement session, and notices the developer's ideas are cut off by a senior engineer. She gives SBI feedback to the lead, asks what the lead wants to change, and facilitates a team agreement about turn-taking. Reasoning: the presenting problem is an individual; the data points to a group norm and a system dynamic. Coaching the lead's awareness is more useful than diagnosing the developer.
Traps that cost marks
- Jumping to advice before contracting or exploring.
- Using GROW mechanically when the coachee needs reflection or safety.
- Giving feedback as judgment rather than SBI.
- Avoiding conflict or colluding with the loudest voice.
- Breaking confidentiality or coaching without consent.
- Confusing team coaching with facilitating a meeting; both can be useful, but the contract differs.