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Reflective skills

Developing skills to encourage reflection in others is useful for a coach or mentor. Reflection is a dynamic process, which enables you and your coachees to move forward and develop new ideas about, and understanding of, a situation. Reflection is a way of getting people to think or reflect about the way they did something or the way they experienced something. When you use your reflective process skills your coachee will be encouraged to evaluate these situations in a variety of ways, challenging their assumptions and experiences so that they can truly understand and bring new ideas and knowledge to any situation. Reflecting allows the coachee to ‘hear’ themselves as others perceive them.

For instance, when coaching a colleague about a job issue, you might notice changes in their body language and non-verbal behaviour which prompts you to reflect back in the following way: ‘I notice that when you spoke about client management you sat up straighter, your face looked more animated and you spoke more enthusiastically – why might that be?’ This promotes further exploration and discussion about the issue. A good coach will enable the coachee to reflect about both the event and situation itself, and their feelings and emotions. Once your coachee has the ability to effectively reflect they will gain greater insight into many events and situations they face.

Skills for reflection

To encourage reflection there are a set of particular skills you need to be aware of, these include:

• Patience is vital for developing an effective coaching relationship and in order to encourage reflection which can often be quite time-consuming. As a coach you may sometimes feel the urge to offer ideas or give advice, but, as we already know, coaching is so much more effective if the coachee reaches their own conclusions and develops their own plan of action. So when you are encouraging someone to reflect and delve deeper into an issue, demonstrate patience and resist the temptation to offer advice, guidance or ideas. Usually good-quality reflection aided by some of the following skills will lead the coachee to their own outcomes. When they get to the outcome by themselves they are much more likely to be committed to the action and its implementation.
  
• Curiosity is essential for good reflection and you must be truly interested in helping your coachee to fully understand, explore and expand on the issue for themselves. You will help them to broaden out their thinking by examining their issue from multiple perspectives so that they can reach their own conclusions. Curiosity is demonstrated by your ability and energy to inquire and ask wide-ranging questions, and by showing genuine interest in the coachee and their situation. (See Chapter 6 on questioning.)
  
• Testing understanding demonstrates evidence of good listening. It involves reflecting words and feelings back to the coachee so that you can determine whether or not you have understood them. This in turn can make the coachee think further about the issue to encourage a broader understanding of both the situation itself and their feelings about it. It is a form of paraphrasing where you, the coach, restate what you have heard from the coachee.
  

  For example, if your coachee has been talking about a problem with a couple of colleagues who he feels are ignoring him, you could simply say something like, ‘So you think they are ignoring you?’ By repeating back the coachee’s own words you will not only show that you have been listening but will also encourage them to continue reflecting about this. Of course you have to be careful not to overuse this type of short reflection, so another way of testing understanding is to paraphrase what you think you have heard in your own words. When paraphrasing you can reflect both the content of what they say and the feelings they are demonstrating. For instance, you could say, ‘You are feeling frustrated about being disregarded by these colleagues?’ By reflecting both the content and feeling communicated to you, the coachee will be encouraged to explore further and develop a clearer focus about the situation or issue.
  

• Clarifying is a form of reflection that uses questions to determine that the coach fully understands what the coachee is saying. Clarification is often used when complex, confused or muddled messages are being conveyed. This is a particularly important skill when coaching or mentoring due to the often emotional nature of these discussions. When emotions run high people can become less clear and articulate in telling their story. If this is the case the coach may find it difficult to make sense of what their coachee is trying to articulate.
  

  Clarification is helpful in two ways. First, it shows that you are listening with the aim of truly understanding what the coachee is getting at. Second, it reduces misunderstanding; a good clarifying question will get the coachee to respond by either agreeing, or by elaborating further. When using clarifying questions what you are interested in is judging the accuracy of your perception of the situation. The important aspect of clarification is that your questions must be non-judgemental, as your purpose is to establish meaning and understanding. So for instance useful clarification questions might be:
  

  • Help me understand what you mean by giving me an example?
    
  • I am not quite sure I understand your main point. Perhaps you could just recap what you said?
    
  • When you said you were confused did you mean that you did not understand their point?
    

  Good clarification will encourage your coachee to speak frankly, openly and honestly because it shows that you are actively listening, and are keen to completely understand the issue. The benefit to the coachee is that by you encouraging reflection through clarification, they then tend to expand their perspective and can examine the issue in more detail.
  

• Summarising is another important component of reflection. However, a summary should be used to recap what has taken place during a coaching session or part of a coaching session. For instance, you might say something like, ‘Let me summarise where I think we are.’ The summary serves to draw together the various points discussed during the session in a succinct and straightforward way. Any summary is given from the coach’s perspective. This is your opportunity to check out that you have understood the main elements of the session (or part of the session). The coachee can then add more information, or indeed correct any inaccuracies or misperceptions. When summarising, you must select the most important and essential points from your meeting and state them in your own words to ensure that you have fully understood. You may find that taking brief notes during your session will help you to summarise effectively. These notes will act as a memory jogger, but will also serve as a record of each meeting.
  

The following model, which is adapted from Davies (2012), might prove useful when thinking about how to incorporate reflection skills into your coaching practice:

Reflection is an essential communication skill that demonstrates good-quality listening and helps to build open, honest and mutually respectful coaching relationships. Done well it can truly bring about transformational coaching sessions by enabling the coachee to reach their own conclusions and outcomes.

As Dr Bob Nelson, American writer and management consultant, said:

You get the best effort from others not by lighting the fire beneath them but by building the fire within them.

Tips for success

• Reflection encourages evaluation and enables movement.
  
• Reflection enables your coachee to build a full understanding of his or her own issues.
  
• Skilful reflection requires patience and curiosity.
  
• Testing your own understanding of your coachee’s situation by listening and paraphrasing will often encourage further analysis and understanding.
  
• Practise your reflective skills – testing understanding, clarification and summary – in day-to-day meetings to hone your ability.