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- Bad coaching. Play clip from The Office of David Brent doing appraisals.
- Discuss with students what it is that he gets wrong in helping people achieve potential. Alternatively, postpone this clip to the end of the session and use it to see what they have learned.
- Listening exercises. Split group into pairs, A & B. Send B’s out of the room and ask to wait outside. Inform the A’s that whilst they are listening to their partner, every time their partner says something that evokes their “inner voice” i.e. they want to ask a question, makes them think about something etc, they put their hand up for 5 seconds then put it back down. Ask them to do this for the entire conversation – A’s are not allowed to interact with B’s, ask questions, affirm understanding etc; A’s remain silent. Next inform the B’s outside that they are to speak to A’s about something of interest, an experience, their last holiday anything positive that has happened to them in the last 6 months. They have 3 minutes to talk. Ask B’s back into the room, then allow 3 minutes of talking from B’s. At the end of the 3 minutes ask the B’s how they felt whilst talking to A, emotions evoked etc.
- Introduce the idea of listening blocks (on lesson powerpoint). Discuss which of them are familiar. Ask students what we can do to try to overcome listening blocks.
- Give students a topic to discuss. Ask one student to start talking about it. At various points say stop, at which point the next student in line must continue the last student’s sentence starting with their last few words. Once the group gets the hang of this, instead of following the same pattern, name who has to continue next part of the statement, forcing all students to listen closely to what everyone is saying instead of just the person before them.
- Discuss the importance of listening when coaching another person.
- Questioning exercises. Split students into pairs. Ask one of them to talk about their last holiday. The other person can only ask ‘why’ questions. Ask them to swap over. One person talks about their last holiday: the other person cannot ask why questions, only what, where, how, who, when.
- Discuss with students. Is there a difference between the two discussions? Do they know why?
- Coaching exercises. Ask students to identify something they would like to do differently or better. Perhaps use the wheel of life exercise to help. In pairs, ask one person to coach, the other to be coached. Using the prompts on the lesson powerpoint, get the students to work through the coaching process, paying particular attention to the questions ‘what are you going to do differently?’ and ‘how are you going to do it?’
- Discuss the process and also discuss how we can use it on our own to problem solve.