The Art of Partnership for Co-creation in Coaching

Partnership is at the heart of coaching. Here I share what I have learned about crafting partnership as an art and for co-creation in coaching.

From the outset, partnership emerges as the work is co-created together by the coach and client.

Partnership in coaching is the trust the client and coach have in each other, and in the process.

So, what does this look and sound like?

If coaching is not done to another person... what does this mean for us as coaches?

The coach will do less and rather be the coach. Coaching is facilitative and in service of the client. As coaches, we facilitate the process for clients to make sense and work out meaning from insights generated from within.

In 2021, ICF updated Core Coaching Competency 7: Creating Awareness was renamed Evokes Awareness. The shift in wording for this Core Competency is significant for appreciating that fresh insights only surface when the client views their situation in a different way.

In a learning and development context, and specifically coach education for this thought-piece, it is human to want to perform in a way that we determine is value for our clients. Or to bring into the coaching space an expectation to perform that we have come to know or have been conditioned by elsewhere.

This tends to show up in the early phases of coach training when it is normal to become preoccupied with doubt or hesitation.

In the 1970s, Noel Burch explained this in his 4 stages to Unconscious Competence. Learning unfolds over time, often in unexpected ways. There will be periods of uncertainty, moments of discomfort, and times when motivation feels distant. These experiences are part of developing something new. Burch's diagram normalises this. Getting out of your own way is unburdening. Trust yourself, trust the coaching process and let go of anxiety to perform.

Practice is the experiential way to develop. Starting is the only place to start. Start where you are - every coaching conversation is a chance to evolve. Each time you coach, you build confidence and clarity. Equally, welcome being an Observer to sharpen your awareness, and a Client to experience coaching from the inside out. Each role deepens your learning.

As coaches, we need to learn how to be fully present rather than over-thinking or analysing if the question posed to the client was the best one, or mentally scrabbling to work out what should have been asked instead. This can block partnering. ICF Core Coaching Competency 5: Maintains Presence is fundamental for more mature depth of coaching.

When we maintain presence, we have greater potential to co-create a relationship with our client.

What does this look and sound like?

The PCC Markers for ICF Core Coaching Competency 5 (above) explain how we partner with our client.

And when we partner with our client, the 8 ICF Core Coaching Competencies are integrated: as coach, we will demonstrate a coaching mindset, cultivate trust and safety, listen actively, evoke awareness and facilitate client growth.

If we are busy in our heads trying to perform as the 'perfect' coach, we risk presence for partnering.

There are key strategies for coaches to craft partnership with their clients.

Firstly, coaching is a partnership when decisions are shared about how a coach and client will work together each and every time they meet. From a compatibility call, contracting is the vital opportunity to identify and describe the logistics (such as where and when coaching will take place, its duration and regularity, the broad-brush strokes of what will be worked on over time etc.). Re-contracting is helpful for maintaining partnership. But what can easily be overlooked is how essential it is to share decisions about how to work together each and every coaching session.

And this has been called right-sizing (Claire Pedrick, 2020). It is a form of checking-in about what happens in every coaching conversation. Ask the client how to have a conversation that is useful. There is potential pitfall for coaches in training and new to the profession to work and think too hard, take in too much data, over analyse and put in a disproportionate amount of effort for too much to be resolved. Making the work the right size for the session co-creates a useful framework for the client's thinking. By right-sizing at the beginning and throughout the session, a coach will stay in partnership with the person (who) and not the problem (what).

Another way to craft partnership is for the coach to ensure their client chooses what happens next, throughout the session. Without this invitation, coaches are leading.

Coaching sessions can yield positive outcomes for the client if there is a clarity around what is the work for today, how we will do it and very importantly, how the client will know they have done it.

Lastly, partnership in coaching is staying in sync. Checking in prevents the coach from automatically deciding what to do or making assumptions about their client.

Checking in is forward-facing. Example questions include:

What would be useful next?

What insights have you had so far?

Where are we now?

We have 10 min remaining, what's the most important thing we need to do between now and the end?

A coach only knows if they check in. There may have been an internal shift or discovery for the client. A coach might have observed a change in a client's physiology. A check-in statement with no attached meaning such as: "I notice you're breathing has changed..." invites the client to share the sense and meaning of this for them.

When in partnership, a coach trusts the process and will feel comfortable not knowing where the client is heading in the session. The client leads and the coach remains by their side.

The strategy for partnership I most want to illuminate is silence.

When a coach facilitates the process using silence, a client can reflect, discover and learn without interruption. In silence, the presence of the coach is palpable because the silence is not passive. The coach is curiously listening and noticing.

In this way, a few ICF Core Coaching Competencies are integrated - 2: Coaching Mindset; 5: Maintains Presence; 6: Listens Actively; and 7: Evokes Awareness.

The ICF definition of Evokes Awareness is: "Facilitates client insight and learning by using tools and techniques, such as silence." And PCC Behavioural Markers indicate that for there to be partnership in coaching, and to stay in partnership, coaches are to bear witness to the client's awareness emerging, for a new perspective.

Let me offer an analogy created in 2017 by two Management Consultants, Colin Price and Sharon Toye: "Like an egg, if it's broken from the outside by others, life doesn't survive, but if it's broken from within, life starts."

Clients can potentially benefit from silence to 'be': to be present and to be thinking at their own pace. In silence, clients can shape sense and meaning from inside themselves. And silence is time and space for the coach to notice when this happens.

Core Coaching Competency 6: Listens Actively encourages listening beyond what we hear to what we notice.

If coaches give their clients conclusions, the partnership is broken and the coach is not acting in service of them.

The ICF Philosophy emphasises that partnering is to: "...honour the client as the expert in their life and work, and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole”.

Partnership connects the coach to the client in saying, "As your coach, I believe you can work out your own solutions."

"The thinker does not have to talk," said author Nancy Kline, in 2020. She goes on to say that: "Often the most important insights arise in the thinker's silence, aided by the partner's silence." Silence gives a client the permission to go deeper to find the answer.

The value of the work we do together, in partnership, is not about what the client hears us say. It is about what happens in them, and what happens in the space between coach and client and sessions.

We want the client to emerge from the egg themselves.

When partnership is lost, there is disconnection and no flow. What does this look and sound like? The coach and client may stumble over each other.

It is highly likely that the coach is doing more thinking than the client; the coach is leading and the client following; the coach accidentally decides what to do; and the coach assumes the session is on track without confirmation from the client.

When there is partnership in service of the client, the coach and client are in sync and there is flow in the coaching conversation.

Partnership is an Art and at the Heart of Co-creation in Coaching.

Kirsty Knowles

Founder of Think Being®

Accredited Coach, Facilitator, Mentor Coach, Coach Educator & Consultant - Co-creating Change & Development for Mindset, Leadership and Culture