Coaching Fundamentals: What's your topic?

One of my goals for this blog is to help folks discover whether coaching could be right for them. I'm basing this Coaching Fundamentals series on my experiences coaching and being coached. In a previous post, I described what happens during a typical coaching session. In today's post, let’s talk about how to choose the topic you bring into a session.

First of all, what do I mean by topic? In a coaching session, the topic is the subject matter that you explore. The key thing about a topic is that it should be something that you want to make forward progress on. Progress could mean that you create a concrete plan - like deciding how to adjust your weekly routine to accommodate the twice weekly roller derby practice you’d like to commit to. Or progress could be gaining clarity for yourself - like understanding what it is about the relationship with your new manager that’s leaving you feeling uncomfortable or frustrated.

In preparing for your coaching session, you should have a sentence or two in mind to introduce your topic to kick off the exploration with your coach. So you don’t have to come into a session with a fully formed idea of what you want to do with the topic through your work in the coaching session. In fact, it’s helpful to come into the session with an open mind about where that exploration could lead. What might seem like a practical topic could lead to some interesting self-discovery, or something that starts as introspective could end up with some practical next steps that help you apply that learning right away.

What's alive for you?

In my coach training, our professor described coaching topics as what's alive for you. At first, my logical brain understood this to mean that a topic is what's timely. This makes sense - if you have something on your mind that is time-sensitive or urgent, it can be difficult to focus on anything else. But, as I’ve learned over time, what’s alive for someone can have many other dimensions. A topic could be something empowering or inspiring. If you've just learned something exciting about yourself, you can bring that into coaching to see how you can use this new insight to make positive strides for yourself. Conversely, a topic could be something that’s blocking or distressing you, and bringing that to coaching can help you process what’s happening so that you can move on. The topic that is alive for you is going to be personal and contextual. If something is on your mind and has energy behind it, it’s likely something that will bring energy and momentum into your coaching session.

What's alive for you? What topics do you want to explore and examine through coaching?

Self-reflection to generate topic ideas

But what if there’s nothing that obvious? What if things that are floating around in your mind each take up similar levels of importance? In this case, you may have to do a bit more self-reflection to confirm the topic for your next session. I’ve created a few prompts to help you collect your thoughts, and provided some examples and how you might explore them through a coaching conversation.

What scenarios are impacting me right now?

• Preparing for an interview or presentation: Talk through your preparation process, discuss the questions or feedback to anticipate from your audience, and plan how to manage any nerves or doubts that crop up

• Planning a difficult conversation like providing employee feedback: Talk through how your conversation partner might react and how you can respond, gain perspective and empathy, and manage the emotionality of the conversation

• Reflecting on a recent experience: Evaluate what went well that you want to be able to repeat, discuss what didn’t go well, and plan how you can use the learning to improve future experiences, celebrate the positives and mourn any losses

What am I blocked on and can't seem to move ahead right now?

• Procrastination blocking progress on a project: Discuss a project that you want to take on but can’t seem to get started, explore the underlying sources of your procrastination, and determine if or how the project can move ahead

• Self-doubts that prevent you from trying something new: Explore hesitation or anxiety about a new experience, interrogate the doubts to confirm if they are a product of cognitive distortions, strategize about how to proceed

• Gain clarity on feelings and reactions that are impacting a relationship: Discuss a relationship or interaction that is giving rise to powerful feelings, explore possible sources for the feelings, evaluate if there is anything you would like to change about the dynamics of your situation or how you are managing the emotionality

What decisions am I trying to make right now?

• Choosing an academic program: Explore the pros and cons of available programs, identify what you value most about each option, identify any areas of uncertainty that require more research before you can make a decision

• Committing to a new activity or group: Explore what you hope to gain from a new group or activity, assess your availability to commit to the time, money or social engagement of the activity, determine if there are any barriers or resources that can help you make the most of the new activity or group

• Deciding between multiple next steps in your career: Identify the values and priorities that impact your career decisions, evaluate the various opportunities that are available to you against these values and priorities, uncover if you need more information to make your decision

What plans do I need to make right now?

• Seeking and deepening friendships: Reflect on what you value about your current friendships and what is missing for you, identify how you can meet people or build on existing relationships, make plans for how to build and support the friendships you’re seeking

• Set intentions for a new role: Evaluate your goals for the new role and any goals set by the organization, identify what you know about the role and what you need to learn, set milestones for your learning and deliverables for the first 90 days on the job

• Building in time for recreation and rest: Take stock of the sources of joy and rest in your life, explore how you want to spend your time and whether you need to make changes to bring the balance you want, strategize how to build in time for joy and rest into your lifestyle that feels authentic and sustainable for you

Topic-related doubts

When you are thinking about possible topics, there are some doubts that might creep in to complicate your decision about what to bring into a session. Here I offer some counter-points to help you think through those doubts before you discard your topic idea.

My topic is too big: Does the topic seem overwhelming and too big to tackle? Bringing it to coaching could help you break it into less overwhelming parts. Or could help you narrow down the source of the overwhelm, and make the other pieces feel less fraught. And if a topic is truly too big for one session, then you can always decide to bring in other pieces to future sessions.

My topic is too small: If something is nagging at you, even if it seems like a small thing, then it’s probably worth exploring. You might be telling yourself "I should be able to figure this out for myself". What causes you to assume this topic is something you should be able to do on your own? If you bring it to coaching, what are you worried about that saying about you and your competence? Bringing this "too small topic" could open up a bigger conversation about how you're perceiving yourself and can become an example of how to break out of those self-limiting beliefs.

My topic is too boring: You don’t have to bring in a deep or transformative topic for a coaching session to have value. Making a plan for how to finally reorganize your office space might sound mundane, but exploring it and setting intentions could help reveal some insights or drive some motivation that you might not have had access to. And if it truly ends up as a simple, straightforward plan, that's ok too. Did it give you what you needed to move ahead on something you value? That's a reasonable outcome.

What if I really can’t think of a topic?

If after all this self-reflection you feel like you don’t have a topic for an upcoming session, then I encourage you to reach out to your coach and discuss your options. They might be able to offer topic suggestions based on what you’ve been exploring together. They could suggest activities to help you generate topic ideas that go beyond what I’ve shared here. Or, they might have ideas for creative interventions that can help you generate ideas during the session and gain insight from a different approach to your work together.

If you aren’t in a space where something is alive for you and you’re not ready to invest your energy in it, that can be a good reason to reschedule. A few days or weeks could make all the difference and bring you the inspiration and energy needed for a fruitful session. You and your coach should have already agreed to a cancellation and rebooking policy so that you know how far ahead of a session you need to communicate with them to rebook. (If they haven’t shared their cancellation policy this is something to clarify with them so that you have a shared understanding moving forward.) Change theory points to natural points along a change curve where you might experience periods where you don’t have a lot that you need to talk about related to the changes you’re making. So honor where you are and use coaching when and how it best serves your needs.

Do you have topics in mind that you want to explore through coaching? I’d love to learn more about you and the topics you’re interested in. Book a discovery call so that we can get to know one another and learn how we can work together.