Collaborative Partnership Skills
There are 4 main competencies associated with Practice-based Coaching. Each competency represents a set of skills involved in successfully demonstrating competence.
Here are the competencies and their skills:
SELF-AWARENESS (click to toggle description and skills)
A foundational competency that is mainly unobservable involves accurately recognizing one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior. Accurately recognize and label one’s emotions leads to awareness of one’s strengths and limitations, as well as a sense of confidence, optimism, and a “growth mindset.”
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
| Awareness of one’s own emotions | Focus one’s attention on noticing and sensing one’s own emotions. |
| Confidence | Act with a sense of empowerment to try out new ideas or approaches to coaching. Have a sense of self-efficacy and openness to new situations. |
| Humility | Be or put oneself in a state of freedom from pride or arrogance. |
| Identifies one’s own emotions | Accurately identify and label one’s own emotions. |
| Identifies one’s own culture | Recognize, identify and label one’s own cultural values and beliefs. |
| Recognizes strengths | Identify and label one’s own strengths in thinking or behavior. |
| Self-reflection | Engage in serious thought about one’s character, actions, motivations, and learning process. |
SELF-MANAGEMENT (click to toggle description and skills)
A foundational competency that can be either non-behavioral (e.g., using thoughts to manage feelings) or behavioral (taking a deep breath) and that involves successfully regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations.
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
| Fully present | Put one’s full attention on the person with whom one is interacting. |
| Goal-directed behavior | Set goals that are appropriate, realistic and relevant for one’s job. |
| Impulse Control | Manage impulses that interfere with achieving one’s goals. Impulses are strong reactions to thoughts or events. |
| Maintain attention and focus | Positively maintain one’s attention and focus on a goal or the task at hand, including preventing distractions from interfering with goal-directed behavior. |
| Organization and planning | Identify and prioritize steps or the process involved in achieving a goal effectively and efficiently. |
RELATIONSHIPS (click to toggle description and skills)
Establish and maintain healthy and rewarding coaching relationships with diverse individuals and groups.
| Skill | Description |
|---|---|
| Authenticity | Respectfully express one’s true self within the coaching relationship. |
| Beginner’s Mind | Maintain the stance that one never achieves perfection or expertise for the sake of achievement alone. The position that one is always learning, growing, and open to new experiences of learning by oneself or from others. |
| Communication | Communicate clearly and directly. |
| Identifies strengths in others | Use authentic praise and compliments that flow from objectively noticing the strengths of others. |
| Instructive feedback | Provide feedback that reframes understanding and extends learning of a practice. |
| Mindful listening | Set aside one’s own agenda and distractions to put one’s full attention on the person who is talking. |
| Motivates others | Encourage verbally and non-verbally (smiling, thumbs up, nodding) the thoughts or actions of others to engage and extend learning. |
| Negotiates conflicts constructively | Demonstrate a collaborative process in resolving conflict. |
| Non-judgmental | Demonstrate non-judgmental actions or speech in interpersonal interactions. |
| Open-ended inquiry | Verbally demonstrate the use of questions that invite open-ended and reflective responses. |
| Reflection strategies | Demonstrate the use of simple and perceptive statements that serve to reflect what a client is communicating. |
| Resourceful | Demonstrate skills and best practices relevant to a client’s needs and within their zone of proximal development (being supportive without taking over the skills being practiced). |
| Supportive feedback | Use reflective and perceptive statements that encourage, empower, and promote understanding of best practices. |
| Warmth and positivity | Demonstrate a caring attitude and actions within the coaching relationship with the aim of maintaining engagement and motivating the client. |
On the following pages, we provide video examples of some of the skills.
SOCIAL AWARENESS (click to toggle description and skills)
Take the perspective of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures. Understand the social and ethical norms for behavior and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.
Cultural Responsiveness Behavior Video Example
Empathy Video Example
Perspective-Taking Video Example