What could go wrong

The planned activity does not happen.

This could be because someone else cancels it, the business no longer requires it or unforeseen circumstances come into play. If this happens, then you either need to rearrange or, if that is impractical , look towards running a simulation. You may also consider doing something different from the planned activity.

The activity does not turn out to involve the things that you thought it would .

Perhaps it takes an unexpected turn of events or it does not provide the opportunity to practise the skills you thought it would. This is a golden opportunity to work with your coachee and discuss why events did not happen as planned and what can be learnt when this occurs. It might be that, on reflection, you could have pre-empted this at the planning stages.

Everything happens as planned but the coachee performs so badly , or has such a bad experience, that his or her confidence is shattered .

In this situation, you can t start analysing immediately “ the coachee will not be ready to do so and will not be able to be positive about the experience. It is time to ˜hug the person “ be supportive and upbeat, with the aim of helping the coachee restore his or her self-esteem.

Tell the coachee to tell you when he or she is ready to discuss the activity. When the coachee does tell you, you may find that you don t need to spend a lot of time reflecting on the experience, but can focus on ˜If you were to do that again, what would you do differently? . This gets away from reliving a bad experience and on to positive action for the future. You can continue the coaching as planned, with a silent agreement not to discuss this situation until the coachee is ready, if at all. Individuals have their own ways of dealing with things and it is not for us to insist that this is through discussion or analysis.