Category list

Questionnaires

Questionnaires can be used in coaching for a variety of reasons:

to help the coachee analyse the coaching needs;
to help the coachee understand his or her personality and its impact upon his or her performance;
to help the coachee gather information about his or her impact upon others.

Choose the questionnaires that you use with your coachee carefully to ensure that they meet the requirements of the coaching programme. There are many questionnaires available, some of which must be administered and the results fed back by qualified individuals. If you wish to use psychometric tests and are not qualified to do so, contact the British Psychological Society who can provide a list of registered testers or details of appropriate training courses.

Some of the questionnaires and tests that we have found to be useful include (in no particular order):

Insight Inventory (available from OTL, Worthing). This is a personality questionnaire that does not need to be administered by an individual who has completed psychometrics training. This test offers an individual profile and also has a 360-degree element to it to enable the coachee to gain feedback from colleagues and managers. The inventory highlights the differences between working and personal styles.
Belbin Team Roles Inventory (available from Belbin Associates). This questionnaire provides information about the role that an individual will take when working within a team.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This psychometric test must be used by a qualified person. The results of the questionnaire give an insight into where individuals like to focus their attention, the way they like to take in information, the way they like to decide and the kind of lifestyle they adopt.
PersonalWork Styles Questionnaire (available from Sherwood Publishing). This questionnaire can be used to identify whether your coachee prefers a ˜Hurry Up , ˜Try Hard , ˜Be Perfect , ˜Please People or ˜Be Strong working style.
Learning Styles Questionnaire (available from Peter Honey). This questionnaire enables your coachee to analyse his or her preferred learning style “ activist, pragmatist, theorist or reflector.

Demonstrations

A demonstration is a presentation that illustrates a task, procedure or use of equipment, showing the coachee how to do it. It should always be followed by supervised practice. Demonstrations can be used to fulfil any objective to do with specific procedure, skill or behaviour.

In coaching, demonstrations should not be used to teach new skills or knowledge, but to illustrate either what the coachee did or how he or she could use existing knowledge and skills in a different way.

Preparing a demonstration

Break the task or activity down into stages “ ˜bitesize chunks “ each stage being complete in itself.
Plan to keep the demonstration short and simple, with as few key points as possible. Practise using slow movements to illustrate the points.
Ensure that the steps demonstrated flow in a logical order “ and that they will seem logical to the coachee.
Check the objectives that your demonstration is designed to accomplish. Do the objectives relate simply to the ˜how to of the task or do they relate to the ˜why and ˜when .

Role-play

Role-play should be used with care. When coachees hear this term there can be a variety of reactions , many of which are not positive! Sometimes we substitute the word practice for the term role-play as this is more acceptable and feels less threatening .

Role-play is a powerful tool since it gives the coachee the opportunity to practise the skills required in a given situation without the ˜dangers of being in the real world.

Guidelines for using role-play

Generally you will discuss using this technique with the coachee and talk about the advantages of it as a method to support his or her development.

After the role-play, ask the coachee how it felt and what he or she would do differently next time “ the review technique can be used effectively here.

You might want to consider getting the coachee to role-play with another person while you observe. If you choose this technique, the third party should be carefully selected and well-briefed.