The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.

Client:  Such a huge combination of things – coaching – isn’t it?

David: It really can be, and I told you that I was going to give you three models, but I want to give a fourth one. This is perhaps the most important, and it’s the scariest. So I can understand coaches not using it – well, they have to use it, but not wanting to rely on it – but it’s really fundamental, and that’s simply sharing what comes up for you to share.

This is the ultimate model. What you do is speak the truth, so if the client says, ‘I want to leave my husband.’ you look at what comes up. What comes up might be, ‘Oh, you sounded so happy. Really, I don’t understand. You sounded happy, but you want to leave. Can you say more about that?’ Now that’s not a coaching technique, that’s just intuition. That’s what came up for you. If something comes up like, ‘Oh, are you okay? You know, are you feeling okay? Are you stressed?’ If that’s what comes up, you might ask that. Of course, there are hundreds of things that could come up for you. You may be thinking…

Client: Yeah, I’ll never anticipate everything. So I’ve stopped even trying.

David: That’s the point. The point is, you see what’s natural for you to say – the human being. You will have intuition and things coming up. What stops most coaches doing powerful coaching is they don’t trust that. They think that there should be some magic formula or some magic question that I should ask right now, instead of just being a human being.