Kickstarting a new coaching engagement can be intimidating for your sponsors, your clients, and your coaches! Why’s that? Because every sponsor has different needs and every client needs a different coaching experience. Although there’s no “secret sauce” to a perfect engagement, there are things you can put in place to make sure your sponsors, your clients, and your coaches are successful.
Here are the top 9 things you can do to better prepare your sponsors, your clients, and your coaches for their next coaching engagement:
1. Design your programs
Coaching can be mysterious to a lot of people, especially when it comes to the what and how behind it. A lot of sponsors can picture coaching as just a series of conversations, and although there may be truth to that, there is a reason behind each conversation that needs to be understood.
2. Know who you’re working with
With intake forms, you have an opportunity to get to know your clients the moment they log into their coaching engagement. Ask them their goals, their strengths and weaknesses, and what they need to get the most out of their coaching engagement. This will better prepare you and them for the engagement to make sure they’re in the right mindset to kick off their coaching engagement.
3. Get your clients bought in to their coaches
Get your clients involved from day 1 by letting them choose their coach. When kicking off our OptifyCoaching engagements, the intake forms allow us to find the top 3 coach options for our clients. When making their selections, they can conduct fit calls and interviews with each coach to decide who would be the best fit for their needs.
4. Define your sponsors’ initiatives
In order to better understand the impact coaching will have on your clients, you need to identify why they’ve brought you in in the first place. Every organization has different needs and a different understanding of what coaching can do for them. Sitting down with your sponsors and outlining the goal of the coaching engagement will give your team guidance and help your coaches be more successful with their clients.
5. Align your client goals to the sponsors’ initiatives
Schedule an introductory and goal-setting meeting with your clients at the beginning of the engagement. These should be personal to each client, but also tied to the sponsor goals to make sure you’re keeping them aligned with the overall initiative of the coaching engagement.
6. Make goals visible
Keep your client and sponsor goals top-of-mind during coaching engagements by listing them out for clients and coaches when they log into their coaching system. WIth Optify, your program description is the first thing your coaches and clients see when they open their engagement. This serves as a constant reminder to the purpose of the engagements and keeps both client and coach on the same page during their sessions.
7. Take notes
When your coaches are working with multiple clients it’s easy to forget or lose track of small details. Encourage your coaches to keep notes in a standard and consistent format after each coaching session. On Optify, your coaches have a place for each coaching engagement to keep confidential notes and also can share general meeting notes with their clients.
8. Do temperature checks
Following your first, mid-point, and final coaching sessions, get a temperature check on your clients and how they feel they’re progressing. Using a pulse survey after the first session can give you insight into how your client feels about their coach fit and if you need to make any changes. Your mid-point survey will allow you to gauge whether your clients are on track. And your final survey can give insight into the success of the engagement.
9. Track and report your success
As mentioned, coaching can be mysterious. Find ways (surveys, assessments, etc.) to track your clients’ progress and make results tangible to your sponsors. Putting numbers, graphs, and statistics behind your coaching engagements can be easy with survey integrations and adds more value to your sponsors.
When building your coaching business and starting new engagements, find the right tools that help your team be successful. Standardize your process and be consistent in every engagement. The right process can give your sponsors, clients, and coaches a better experience and help make every coaching engagement your best one yet.
