Before You Start Coaching

Congratulations for your willingness to be a Spiritual Leadership Coach.  Before you start coaching be sure and read Roles and Responsibilities for the Spiritual Leadership Training  Coach and Spiritual Leadership Missionary/National Leader Learner.  This will help you see the vision and process for spiritual leadership coaching.

It's important to remember this is a coaching experience.  As such, your role is to make sure the Learner has gained as much as possible from the training topic and, based on your experience, wisdom and learning, you add value to the coaching conversation.

There is a sequence of skills the SL Coach must apply to assure success.  These skills are not based on importance--they are all equally important--but rather on what skill you apply first, second and third.

First Skill - Your Questions and Listening  A coaching experience is based  first, on discerning what the Learner knows and then what the Learner doesn't know.  Self discovery is an important experience for the Learner as they have sorted through the information from the topical article and completed the Discussion Handout.  Asking open-ended questions is foundational--particularly questions that are placed in the Learner's context.  For example, for a field missionary, a series of open-ended questions from the topical article, Correcting Ministry Performance, could be, "How do nationals in the culture where you minister respond to critical feedback?  Is it different from your experiences in the U.S.?  In what ways?  How would you approach a correcting meeting differently, or would you?"

The Learner must feel you understand there are differences in leadership application from culture and country to culture and country.

Second Skill - Your Leadership Knowledge  You don't have to be a trained teacher of leadership to be an effective SL Coach.  But the Learner needs to have the confidence and assurance that like them you've read and processed the assigned article.  Displaying an understanding of the basic principles of leadership will add credibility to your conversation and confidence to the Learner to ask follow-up questions and seek your view or advice.

Third Skill - Your Experience  Your own experiences, both good and bad, add richness, context, depth and insight to the process. Not all new experiences fit into your prior experiences box but a part of wisdom is learning from prior mistakes.  Beyond that, your experiences may help an emerging spiritual leader see a bigger picture or understand a larger concept.  Be careful, of course, how long and detailed your stories are.  Just remind yourself, it's all about the Learner. 

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