Building Rapport In Coaching

Building rapport in coaching is the first step to developing a positive and productive relationship with your coachee. If you have developed good rapport with your coachee they will be relaxed, you will be ‘on their wavelength,’ will be more ‘tuned in’ to their wants, needs, concerns and emotions, and will be better able to respond and help them.

The beginning of the coaching relationship
A simple and easy way of building rapport at the start of the coaching relationship is to start off with questions to establish common ground between you and the coachee. This isn’t about going straight into ‘what do you want from coaching?’ instead asking questions like ‘tell me a bit more about yourself?’ You can then pick up on and reflect back those things that you have in common, for example ‘so you have a busy life with your young children, yes, as a mother myself I can relate to that too.’

At the beginning of each coaching session
Start developing a positive relationship with a rapport-building question such as ‘how was your weekend’ or ‘how was your night out?’ which is likely elicit a positive response, and you can respond appropriately. This helps the coachee relax into and get the most from their session.

During a coaching session
My view is that the rules for building rapport change slightly here, especially if you are taking a ‘non-directive’ approach to coaching. Yes rapport is crucial however, once the actual coaching session starts the agenda belongs to the client, your own experiences should be put to one side and your input as coach whether it is questions or reflective comments should be given to purely help the client. There are also numerous debates around the ethics of coaching, and sharing your own personal experiences may be totally unprofessional and inappropriate.

Building rapport in coaching sessions may be achieved in the following ways:

• excellent listening skills where you are reflecting back the words, emotions and feelings of the coachee and also using your intuition to pick up on what is not being said
• using the same language as the coachee…reflecting back their words and using the words in tune with their ‘representational system’. This is a Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) technique.
• ‘Mirroring,’ ‘matching’, ‘pacing’ and ‘leading’ the body language of your coachee – again these are NLP techniques all useful in building rapport in coaching.

  Recommended Resources:

  Coaching with NLP: How to Be a Master Coach by Joseph O'Connor and Andrea Lages (Paperback - 5 April 2004)

  NLP: The New Technology of Achievement by NLP Comprehensive (Paperback)

  Introducing NLP Neuro-Linguistic Programming by Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour (Paperback - Jan 2003)

  See Also:-
  

  Preparing For Coaching
  Effective Listening
  Effective Questioning
  Use of silence
  Goal Setting
  Challenging
  Scaling Skills
  More Coaching Skills
  

  
  

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