In coaching conversations, the coach isn’t the source of insights, ideas, and solutions.

This dynamic is a large part of what separates coaching from mentoring, teaching, and consulting. Those helping functions seek to provide relevant input to people that they can act on. The trouble is, your experience and solutions are yours, not theirs. Advice that worked for you may simply not fit them.

Coaching takes a different approach. By acknowledging the unique wiring, gifting, and experience of people, we use powerful questions and active listening to prompt deep reflection, which produces new awareness, internal shifts, ideas, and workable options to try out.

Christian coaches acknowledge an even more powerful dynamic at work, the Holy Spirit.

Consider this passage, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” ‭‭(1 Corinthians‬ ‭3‬:‭6‬-‭7‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬).

The Holy Spirit causes the growth. Our role is planting or watering.

I remember a conversation where I had the perfect advice ready… and stayed quiet instead. I moved from “making it grow” with my advice, instead I “planted or watered” with a few reflective questions.

The real power of coaching is getting in sync with the work God is doing in a person’s life. God is very patient and creative in how He works with us. I don’t assume I know what He’s doing in the moment. Open reflective questions and patient active listening go a long way in exploring and discerning what God might be communicating.

At the end of the conversation, it’s not about what I said or asked. It’s about what the Holy Spirit is growing. But here’s what I’ve learned: it takes skill to “plant and water.” Great questions don’t happen by accident. Coaching is a craft worth developing.

Our coaching training equips you with skills to ask those open reflective questions that get in sync with what God is already doing in the people you serve. If you’re ready to grow as a coach and deepen your impact as a Christian leader, I’d love to have you join us.

We tend to believe what we think.

When we experience something, our experience, values, and beliefs shape how we interpret it. What makes perfect sense to us, however, can look entirely different to someone with different experiences and values. Our point of view is just that, our viewpoint.

While we can understand how we came to think in certain ways, that doesn’t mean we’re perceiving reality accurately or in helpful ways. And our actions will be judged not only on our perspective, but on what those around us perceive as reasonable.

This is why the Apostle Paul warned about our thinking: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Taking captive every thought means examining our thinking before accepting it as true, then aligning it with God’s perspective. But how do we actually do this, both for ourselves and for those we lead?

Coaching provides tools to examine thinking deeply in safe and empathetic ways. Coaches don’t rush to judge or share their perspective. Instead, they listen empathetically and explore with reflective questions that reveal both our current perspectives and other ways of seeing things.

As a trained coach, I’ve had the privilege of helping others to examine their thinking and discover God’s perspective for themselves.

Learning coaching skills transformed not just coaching conversations, but my entire approach to leadership. Instead of assuming my perspective was right and telling people what to do all the time, I learned to ask questions that help people examine their own thinking and align it with Christ’s truth.

If you want to help others think more clearly and align their thoughts with God’s perspective, coaching training equips you to do exactly that. Consider joining me to learn advanced skills to transform your conversations.

Gift projection is the idea that because we have a certain gift, strength, or ability, others should have it too. After all, when something works so well for us, it’s easy to judge those not using it as lacking.

This isn’t only a 21st Century challenge, the Apostle Paul counseled 1st Century Romans on the issue:

“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” Romans‬ ‭12‬:‭4‬-‭6a‬ ‭NIVUK

In my enthusiasm to help people, I can project my gifts, strengths, and abilities onto others when encouraging them to solve their problems and move forward.

My thinking was, “It’s easy. Just do it like this.” What’s easy for me isn’t easy for others—because we all have different gifts. Instead of projecting my gifts onto others, I needed to activate their gifts.

Coaching drastically changed things for me. One of the basic practices of coaching is to “draw out” rather than “put in.” By asking questions, listening, and partnering to explore, coaches draw out from the coachee their reflections, strengths, insights, ideas, and resources. We draw out their “gifts” Paul wrote about, and activate them, encouraging them to put them into practice.

We need everyone’s gifts functioning at full capacity. A coaching approach is a great way to activate everyone’s gifts.

Back in college, my friend Jeff made a list of what he called my “hare-brained schemes” (meaning: wild ideas I’ve tried):

• Panning for gold
• Starting a surf-wear manufacturing company
• Flying to Orcas Island in a small Cessna for a prom date
• Driving down the West Coast with a friend, a tent, and $100 to see what was there
• Using a sheet pan as the floor of my rusted out VW bug

Creativity and perhaps watching too many Wile E. Coyote cartoons? Pretty safe to say these were hare-brained schemes.

Praying for people often involves a few reminders, “Lord, help her to know how much you love and care for her,” a fair amount of encouragement, “Jesus, help him to see that he’s doing his best,” and a sprinkling of advice, “God, I pray she could be bold and talk to her boss, relying on your confidence, to make her case directly.”

At a missions conference last week, I joined with others praying with coaching skills. What I heard included listening, asking, waiting, responding, and partnering – both with the Holy Spirit and the person we prayed for. It went something like this:

Coaching is a rapidly growing field, but with that growth comes the risk of substandard training programs and false promises.

I’ve been training Christian leaders in coaching skills for 20 years and regularly speak to people who joined training programs from other organizations. Sadly, some have found only after paying and taking their training that the program didn’t live up to the marketing hype. 

I want to help you to be able to do your research and discern which programs over-promise and under-deliver, and which will be able to deliver on what you’re looking for.  

Productivity is getting things done. There are two streams of productivity in which you need to work, at the same time. The problem is, these two streams are at odds with each other. Mastering both is the key to personal and professional productivity.

I keep trying to prove the old adage, “You get what you pay for,” is wrong. I want to pay little, yet get a lot. This a question of cost versus value. By nature we seemed wired to focus on the cost of a product or service. By changing your focus to value instead, you will make better decisions, get better results, and even save money in the end. Here’s how.

I recently grappled with the cost versus value equation regarding my exercise. Over the years, I’ve joined various gyms, bought home equipment, and downloaded exercise apps. My results were always mixed. I would do well for a period of time and then it would drop off.