Icebreaker Collection Icebreakers, Brain Teasers and Exercises to Energize Your Sessions

Coach the Coach There are many kinds of activities that come under the heading of ‘coaching’ ranging from helping someone to learn a basic skill (as in the coaching exercise you'll find in our subscription icebreakers) through mentoring to counselling. Although exercises like the coaching exercise are good for coaching basic skills, they are very limited for the more advanced forms of coaching. A way round this — especially if you feel the trainees are not yet ready to use ‘real life’ examples — is to start off with the basic exercise and then the coaches are coached on their coaching skills. This approach works best in groups of three. In the first round: ‘A’ coaches ‘B’ on a basic skill and ‘C’ observes. ‘C’ coaches ‘A’ on A's coaching of ‘B’ and ‘B’ observes. ‘B’ coaches ‘C’ on C's coaching of ‘A’ and ‘A’. After the last step, ‘A’ gives ‘B’ some feedback on B's coaching of ‘C’. Each subsequent step represents a higher level of coaching. If you want to make sure that everyone has practice at all three levels then run the exercise three times starting with a different basic skill each time. Tables detailing the logistics for this exercise are available to Gold Membership subscribers and on our Icebreaker CD-ROM.

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