What Makes a Coach
Not the questions they know, or the model they use, or their years of experience. Something else.
People often ask me what makes someone an exceptional coach. It is not the number of questions they know. It is not the coaching model they use. It is not even their years of experience. An exceptional coach is a student of human beings.
The coach needs to be masterful across the entire coaching process, not only during the coaching conversation, but before the first session begins, throughout the coaching engagement, and even after it has ended. Every interaction matters, from the first conversation, to the contracting, to the coaching itself, to the changes the client creates, to the point where the client naturally recommends the coach to others. That is all part of coaching.
The coach is a master of human beings, beyond whatever domain they coach in. Leadership, career, relationships, business: those are contexts. The real work is always with the human being. Presence cannot be faked. Gravitas cannot be performed. Both come from the work the coach has done on themselves. You cannot take another person somewhere you have never been.
That mastery does not stay with me. Increasingly, it is what I try to pass on, and it is why training other coaches has become one of the greatest privileges of my work.