Have you ever met this person? You know, the one who convinces you they can help solve all your problems and then make a pretty shoddy job of it.

As the festive season is almost upon us we thought we’d give you the gift of wisdom – 12 traits of the worst coach ever. Read and enjoy!

1. The worst coach will spend the first half of the initial session talking about their own credentials, experience and approach to coaching, before they ask any questions about you and your goals and challenges.
2. Have they bothered to be formally trained as a professional coach? They may well have consultancy, adviser or past management roles and think coaching is just more of the same, but with you doing the implementation. Quite frankly, it’s not that simple!
3. The worst coach will easily slip into an advisor role – they may call it mentoring, but it isn’t really! This usually means that they’ve given up on helping you find your own solutions because it requires a key coaching skill that they don’t possess.
4. If your coach doesn’t take notes, they’ll soon forget the important details and you may find yourself repeating points, wasting time, and the thread of your conversation.
5. The worst coach may be tempted to help you when you actually need a trained therapist. The intentions may be good, but the outcome potentially harmful.
6. If your coach requests regular update conversations with your boss and HR, without you being present, alarm bells should ring. Your sessions should be entirely confidential, and one to one only.
7. An untrained coach may well shy away from challenging you for fear of sounding critical and offending you. Personal change is uncomfortable so expect to be challenged.
8. A poor coach will want to be the centre of attention. When you talk about something that happened to you, they’ll be quick to share a similar but much more dramatic and interesting story. This one-upmanship makes for interesting conversations in ordinary life, but it’s definitely not appropriate in a coaching session.
9. The worst coach will take pride in making you cry. They will not believe that they have really got to the bottom of it until you have cried at least once (and yes I have met more than one coach who has said this to me. Frightening isn’t it?).
10. If your coach has the next question ready before you are finished answering the previous question take note: they are not really listening to you or responding to what you say appropriately.
11. The worst coach will help you create the goal they think you should be achieving which may not align with the best outcome for you.
12. After they have closed the coaching session, the worst coach may well offer advice: “here is what I think you should do…” – in effect dismissing your solution and undermining the whole coaching process.

‘Tis the season to be jolly so please don’t despair, and certainly don’t give up on your dream of choosing a coach.

A good coach can be the catalyst for change that gives you direction, motivation and clarity over your future path. They can be a confidential sounding board, relieving you from feelings of isolation whilst empowering you to take action. They will help you grow your business, improve your team’s performance and enhance your own impact and effectiveness. All good positive stuff.

Choosing the right coach could be a great way to start 2017, we’d be happy to help!

Do you have other examples of the “worst coach” behaviours? Please send me an email with your stories.