Article

GENIUS
COACHING

GENIUS COACHING IN ACTION

The GENIUS coaching model was developed by Alec McPhedran as a guide to managing a creative thinking coaching session. This grew out of Alec’s experience of coaching people in the television and film industry where creativity and innovation are essential assets. The GENIUS coaching model is used by professional coaches and managers in developing talented and creative people.

GENIUS COACHING

GOALS

The first step is to set the GOALS. Goal setting is critical for a number of reasons but primarily it provides a reminder of what has to be worked on, what needs to be achieved and ensures conversation is relevant to achieving the goal. With GENIUS coaching there are three types of goals to set.

1.	The Aspirational Goal of the overall coaching contract or coaching sessions. What will have to be really achieved at the end of the coaching programme? This should be highly ambitious, breaking into new territory for the coachee and aspirational.

2.	Sessions Goals. That is “what do we need to achieve by the end of the session that directly supports the aspirational goal?”

3.	The third set of goals are the Action Goals. As a result of the coaching session, what does the coachee need to do by the next meeting with regards to working towards the aspirational goal?

By using this three step approach to goal setting, it provides the coachee with consistency and accessibility to making things happen and with a clear understanding of why they need to do things. The key skill for the coach is managing and setting the aspirational goal. This is based on the ability of the client.

ENERGY

Once the aspirational goal and the session goal (or goals) have been set the next part of GENIUS coaching is to look at the ENERGY of the coachee. They may want to achieve something that is far reaching for them but do they really have the energy? Desire to achieve and energy to do something can sometimes be poles apart. Get the coachee to rate their energy levels to make this work, perhaps by giving a score out of 10. Without the genuine energy to achieve the goal, is the goal the right one in the first place?

NURTURE

Once the goal has been established, and the energy to achieve agreed, NURTURE the range of opportunities. This again is where the questioning and listening skills of the coach come into play, as well as their ability to brainstorm, encourage creative thinking, thinking of things that are really off the wall, never been done before. When nurturing ideas, this ideally should be treated in the same way as pure brainstorming session. Pull out the ideas, don’t critique to early, set the parameters, linked to the objectives and work through some of the ideas. This is also a great time to use challenging tools such as de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats (data, emotion, negativity, positiveness, feel good, innovative thinking and process). Once each idea has been reviewed, worked through and prioritised into key actions that come out of the nurturing process. From the Six Thinking Hats model you will then be able to move into the next stage of GENIUS coaching thanks to the emotions and negatives discussion.

INHIBITORS

That’s because you need to revisit the agreed actions from the nurturing stage and identify the INHIBITORS. What’s going to stop the ideas from working? This is really powerful as the negatives are sought out. It’s those negatives that are then addressed with the coachee to establish how they will be tackled should they arise – the development of the cunning plan B scenario. We are great at planning the perfect life. Unfortunately life’s not perfect. Therefore it makes sense to anticipate inhibiters and manage them into positives. It’s worthwhile at this point revisiting your nurtured actions to see if they need revising to reflect the points identified in the inhibitors stage of the session.

UTOPIA

Utopia is an imagined perfect place or state of things. This is where the coachee imagines the end result. Using Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic, imagining the successful conclusion and/ or writing down the Utopia once the goals have been achieved. This is a powerful tool to make the end result real. It’s what turns that aspiration into the reality. Once goals look real they will become real. Setting and writing down goals is an essential role of the coach to get the coachee to understand and agree first.

STEPS

Finally, the coaching session is rounded off by summarising the STEPS to be taken by the coachee. What will they do between now and the next session? These are developed by writing Action Goals and clarifying the actual steps to take to achieve the Action Goal.

By working through the GENIUS model, this will help identify ambitious goals, the energy to achieve those goals, generate and nurture new ideas, consider why things might now work and what to do if that situation arises, imagine the end feeling of success and start those first steps to achieve. Again, using NLP process at the end of the session, check how they ‘feel’ about how excited or motivated they are to reach the goal. This reinforces a feeling, making the goal that more realistic.

GENIUS is about the process of coaching. Of course, along with successful coaching comes knowledge, skills and experience but that’s another issue.

NOTICE

This handout can be freely distributed and or referred to subject to ensuring copyright and reference is made to the originator of the GENIUS coaching model, Alec McPhedran.

Alec McPhedran Chartered FCIPD MAC MCMI is the managing director of Skills Channel TV Limited, a training company for busy creative people. He specialises in one to one coaching, facilitated learning and team development. For further information, visit www.geniuscoaching.co.uk or www.skillschannel.tv. GENIUS coaching is a concept copyrighted to Alec McPhedran 2007.

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