Six Coaching Questions - Focus

Coaching as an approach may be one of ony a few pause points in the course of a week for an

individual, team or group. Today's blog post includes a few more than six coaching questions you may want to be asking the people you are supporting:

1. What's important to you right now?
2. What does success look like?
3 Who can help you focus on this?
4. What do you need to say NO to order to be successful?
5. What could get in the way of your focus?
6. if you look at the big picture/or 30,000 foot view, what's in focus? What's not?
7. If there was one thing you could add or take away to help with your focus, what would it be?

If you enjoyed this post on coaching questions for focus, you may want to check out these other Six Questions posts including:
Six powerful questions to deepen awareness in groups - read it here.
Six coaching questions to strengthen connection in groups and teams - read it here
Six coaching questions for business building - read it here.
Six coaching questions around priorities and time management - read it here

Have a great start to your week!

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
GroupCoachingEssentials.com | Potentials Realized
Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2009) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
Phone: 416-996-8326

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Coaching Business Builder: Getting Clear on Where You Want to Focus

This week's post is a Coaching Business Builder post, geared for coaches who are growing their own business, or are considering starting their own business down the road. Later this week my business turns ten. Over the last month, as I have been approaching this milestone I have been very reflective on the past ten years, what's worked, what hasn't and what's next.

Research continues to show that some of the most successful entrepreneurs are those that take risks and aren't afraid to try things out, even in the face of failure or things that don't work so well. On a practical note, I think one of the biggest benefits to trying things out is getting clear on where you want to focus.

Here's a quick activity to try out:
On a plain piece of paper draw a large circle. Over the span of one to two minutes, write down everything that comes to mind about what you want to focus on. Your words might include:

• clients, 
• types of work, 
• themes or topic areas you want to work around
• what else?

 At the two minute mark, shift your attention to what's outside of the circle. Here, write down what you DO NOT want to focus on. Again, consider items like type of work you would say no to, themes/topics you do not want to work around. Give yourself two minutes to do this.

At the end of two minutes, keeping in mind what you have said no to, return back to the inner circle and add any other focus areas you do want to put attention around. Once you have captured all of these, grab a pen/pencil of another color and circle those you want to put immediate attention around. You may also want to get a second color and circle those in the medium term (whatever your medium term is), and a third color for those in the long term.

Returning back to your immediate attention areas, prioritize them. What do you want to focus on first? What are the next steps take? AND most importantly, WHY is this important/exciting/energizing for you?

I would invite you to also adapt this activity in the work that you do with clients. It's also a great activity to do with groups of business owners.

Enjoy!

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, MES, CPT, PCC
Group Coaching Essentials | Potentials Realized

Author of Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2010) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013)
(416)996-8326