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.
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