1. Strength - focus: start a new conversation and really explore on focusing on your coachee’s strengths. What are the benefits of this?
Establishing strengths helps the coachee to:
Perform well
Be motivated
Establish strengths they didn’t know they had and use them
Feel valued
Use strengths to develop weaknesses – using your good relation with pupils to build upon intervention in dept.
Use strengths to develop others – using your administrative skills to help support struggling members of staff.

2. Work with a partner with whom you’ve not worked before.
I will observe.
Focus: start a new conversation and really explore on focusing on your coachee’s strengths. What are the benefits of this?
"What are three of your greatest strengths?"  (A simple starter to ease them in!)
"Tell me about some of the biggest challenges in your life? How did you overcome them?"
"What do you like about yourself?"   
"What do you enjoy doing?"   (We usually enjoy what we are good at!)
What do you yearn to do?   (Yearnings suggest possible talents!)
"What are some unusual skills you have?"   (The word 'unusual' forces them to think what's different about themselves - make sure to delve deeper to find the underlying strength/s)
"What are you proud of in your life?"
"Tell me about your first achievement."   (Encourage them to share even it seems boring or small now - this gives pointers to early success - and strengths)
"What would not be like it is - had you not been part of it?"   (eg. a work or volunteer effort)
What do you get complimented on most?   (This is a great question because it assumes they GET complimented - and asks what is most FREQUENTLY mentioned)

3. Target - focus: to establish what a coachee would like to do better and why?. What are the benefits of this?
Setting and exploring your own goals (rather than what a superior or the organisation wants you to achieve) has the following benefits:
- It helps the coachee establish and own what they want to be, to have or to do.
- Having ownership over their goal is motivating for the coachee and enhances their self-confidence.
- It helps the coachee to know when progress is being made and they can use this information to self-adjust more easily.
It gives the coachee self-autonomy over decision-making regards achieving their goal.
The coachee will identify the obstacles and thus ‘plan for injury’ (i.e. how they will overcome them).

4. Work with a partner with whom you’ve not worked before.
I will observe.
Focus: begin the target exploring aspect of the iStride model. What are the benefits of this?
These questions follow a linear line of reasoning:
The goal – what would you like to achieve?
What would you like to achieve?
What would you like to happen that is not happening now, or what would you like not to happen that is happening now?
What outcome would you like from this session/discussion/interaction?
What do you want to achieve long term?
If I could grant you a wish for this session, what would it be?
Exploring the goal -
What would need to happen for you to walk away feeling that this time was well spent?
What does success look like for you?
How much personal control or influence do you have over your goal?
What would be a milestone on the way?
When do you want to achieve it by?
Is that realistic?
Is that positive, challenging, attainable?
Will that be of real value to you?
How will you measure it?
Go ahead to a time in the future when you have achieved your goal:
What is it like?
What will it look like? Sound like? Feel like?
When do you want to have achieved it by?
What excites you about this goal?
Think into the future when you have achieved this. What do you feel like?
How will you know when you have achieved this target? When will you accomplish this target?

5. Reality - focus: to establish the current situation in which the coachee finds their self. What are the benefits of this?
The most important criterion for examining the current situation is objectivity.
Most people think they are objective but in reality they are not. Nobody is. Absolute objectivity doesn’t exist. We can only have partial objectivity. Why is this?
Many things can cloud objectivity, including:
opinions,
expectations,
fear and prejudices.
This is what we call ‘the harsh mirror’, i.e. the reality after emotion and personal bias is stripped away. It is based on what is ‘observable’.
But the more we aim to be objective, the more we will be.
The challenge is to come as close as possible to reality, by-passing as many distortions as possible and thus reach objectivity. As a coach, you should help your coachee to remove as many false assumptions as possible.
Explore the real nature of the problem by asking your coachee to describe their perceived current reality. Too often, people try to solve a problem without fully considering their starting point – and often they are missing some of the information they need to solve the problem effectively.
All too often, as your coachee tells you about their current Reality, the solution starts to emerge.

6. Work with a partner with whom you’ve not worked before.
I will observe.
Focus: begin the reality exploring aspect of the iStride model. What are the benefits of this?
Reality – what is the current situation?
What is the current situation? (reference to your target/goal from last session)
What do you feel about this right now?
What is missing here that you would like to have?
What are the problems that it is causing?
What have you already tried doing to improve things and what were the outcomes?
How does it feel at the moment?
What are the current obstacles to achieving your target?
What resources do you need to overcome your obstacles?
Look at your target. Is it still what you want/need?

7. Ideas - focus: establishing a plan and adhering to it.
What are the benefits of this?
What does the info graphic tell you about the relationship between coaching and mentoring?
Why is it helpful to remember this relationship at the ideas stage?
As a coach you may have a wealth of useful experience that you can share with your coachee. Mentoring and coaching is part of a spectrum and so making suggestions (guiding and advising( based on your wisdom may at least get the creative juices flowing.

8. I will observe your coaching and give feedback.
Work with a partner with whom you’ve not worked before. Think back to your target from week two.
I will observe your coaching and give feedback.
Focus: establishing a plan and adhering to it.
What are the benefits of this?
Ideas – establishing a plan and adhering to it.
what have you tried?
What worked?
What didn’t work?
How would you move yourself just one step forward now?
What could you do if you didn’t have to explain it to anyone else? How would that feel?
What could you do if resources/time/parents/school/teacher/students/friend and so on were not blocks here? (Insert the limitation they have identified.)
What could you do if you did not have to live with the results of your actions?
Brainstorm one of the options you have come up with. What other ideas are sparked off?
If you secretly knew what the answer was, what would it be?
If you had answers lurking just below the surface and you shared them now, what might you share? And what else?
From your options, which is the quickest/easiest/cheapest/most comfortable/least comfortable/most effective thing to do?
Now go through each option. Remind yourself of your target. How will the option you have chosen move you closer to your target?
What is the benefit of doing the thing that you have chosen?
What impact will it have on you/your colleagues/your role/students and so on?

9. Decision - focus: forming decisions and acting on them.
What are the benefits of this?
What decision making processes do you typically use from the blue list?
How does this compare to your coaching partners?
What new methods could you trial?
As a coach you may have to help your coachee assess the effectiveness of their decision making processes.
Techniques for making decisions we tend to use:
pros and cons list
weighing the benefits of a set decision versus losses of not making that decision
prioritising in lists and ranks, e.g. according to highest probability of working out
polar opposite consideration, where the opposite decision is considered and evaluated
coin flip or other technique to emphasise randomness
giving up responsibility for decision making by relying on or allowing others to decide on our behalf.
“If you chase two rabbits, both will escape”- Unknown author
“Choices are the hinges of destiny” – Pythagoras
“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely
uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”– Ghandi

10. Work with your coaching partner.
Focus: forming decisions and acting on them.
Decision – thinking forward and planning.
What good past decisions have you made that have shaped the course of your teaching/career/leadership?
Had you not taken them where might you be with this now?
What would you like to focus on today?
Think about where you currently stand. What are 5 decisions you could put on the table at this stage to move forward?
(Coach – give time for them to think of ideas 4 and 5, these
are usually more innovative/ones they’ve resisted
taking…)
Which of those could be most risky/beneficial/innovative?
Which course of action will you now settle upon?
What is the smallest step to take now?
What are the long terms steps that it’s important to think about?
What are the benefits of taking these longer term steps?
What can you do to ensure you get there?
How will you /the pupils/other staff feel if you succeed?
What’s been a high point for you in this coaching conversation today?

11. Evaluation - focus: evaluation of effectiveness.
What are the benefits of this?
Do you look for evidence to support your self- understanding of where you’ve been effective?
Do you challenge yourself to discover new truths about your own performance (in a certain area of focus)?
As a coach you should seek to uncover your client’s “blindspots” from the above.
We should seek to triangulate evidence of effectiveness (to avoid looking for evidence to support want we want to see!) Evidence should come from varied sources to help us hold up an honest mirror to ourselves…

12. Work with your coaching partner.
Focus: considering if and how it worked.
Evaluation– assessing the potential impact and considering effectiveness.
If this is the start of the journey (point at one end of a wall), and this is the end of it (point at other end) once you’ve achieved everything you want to, where are you now?
All things considered, have you been generally successful? Have you taken steps forward?
How specifically have you moved forward?
What evidence could you’ve also moved forward in other ways?
What’s not gone as planned?
What did you learn from this?
What have you already tried doing to improve things and what were the outcomes?
How does it feel at the moment?
Think back to your past hopes and aims. Is it still what you want/need or has the aim changed?
How so?
What is one magic moment for you?