ICF: AWARENESS
In the 2021 video Updated ICF Core Competency 7: Evokes Awareness by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), Giuseppe Totino, MCC, discusses the updates to the competency. Totino explains that the coach is able to transform the coaching conversation into something meaningful for the client. ICF defines the competency as “facilitates client insight and learning by using tools and techniques such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor, and analogy.” The subcompetencies are:
1. Considers client experience when deciding what might be most useful
2. Challenges the client as a way to evoke awareness or insight
3. Asks questions about the client, such as their way of thinking, values, needs, wants and beliefs 4. Asks questions that help the client explore beyond current thinking
5. Invites the client to share more about their experience in the moment
6. Notices what is working to enhance client progress
7. Adjusts the coaching approach in response to the client's needs
8. Helps the client identify factors that influence current and future patterns of behavior, thinking or emotion
9. Invites the client to generate ideas about how they can move forward and what they are willing or able to do
10. Supports the client in reframing perspectives
11. Shares observations, insights and feelings, without attachment, that have the potential to create new learning for the client
According to Totino, this competency is about helping the client move through learning for themselves, the situation they are presenting, or the outcome they are looking to achieve in the session or the coaching program. The update to the competency has to do with connecting to powerful questioning, creating awareness, and direct communication, as they were previously called.
Totino says when a coach has mastered this competency they know how to ask questions that allow the client to go beyond their current story and to think of their situation and its outcomes in ways that they have not thought of before. This is seen when the client pauses before they respond to a question, for example, which is the essence of evoking awareness. The client does this sharing without attachment. Another component is that the client feels they can respond in any way that they choose to in the moment. The coach may use silence in communication to allow the client to talk until they are done, or to hold the space for the client to fully complete their thoughts.
A coach struggling with this core competency the coach is interrupting the client, almost being impatient, the coach may even talk more than the client, the questions are delivered more in an interview style, and the questions may not support the client in going beyond. The communication may also be done where the coach has a lot of attachment to their belief instead of opening the space up to the client to discover their own. The host reminded that this competency is not about asking for information.
