1. Introduction
Since the beginning of my journey as a coach I have been interested in working with students as I tried it with my daughter and she found it really beneficial to choose her college. My wife and I decided to offer her this opportunity as she and us, as parents, as well, felt a little bit lost and stuck on what might be the right path for her to choose after Secondary School. On one hand we are in a new country, different from our original one, with different rules, and on the other hand the world that we know won’t be the same in 10 or 15 years. The job that our kids are preparing for doesn’t exist yet. For this reason it is normal that our children, and we parents, feel in a VUCA world.
A few years ago, when I was studying at the Kingstown College, I asked my peer coach in the College (and I will never thank her enough for the great job she did) if she would be interested in helping our daughter (who was in her fifth year at the time – so more than one year was ahead of her to think and do her research) to discover and understand which could be the possible journey that she would like to take after her Leaving Certificate.
The result was amazing. Our daughter, thanks to the fact that she was coached, was able to better understand her values and connect the dots between her dreams and where she is studying now.
2. The importance of the contract and of building the rapport with young coachees
When working with students, especially when under 18 years of age, it is very important to bear in mind that we have :
- To create a safe and balanced relationship (build the rapport) with the coachee-student;
- to use the power that we have in an appropriate way, without taking advantage of the young woman/ man;
- to build a relationship with the parents or the guardians as well: they are the sponsor;
- To abide by the two codes of ethics of coaching: the EMCC and ICF.
As we are working with young minds, the relationship needs to be safe and we need to be very careful, in what we say, how we say it, and the reason why we say it. During the session, if they are minors, I ask the parents to stay around in a different room, and at the end of each session I encourage them to join the conversation so we can “clear the session”. I don’t share anything about what I discussed with the client-student, but I ask the coachee to share anything they want to say with their parents and to tell if there was anything that abashed them or that was unclear during the session. This is to guarantee a safe space and at the same time to avoid that they come back later on and call out something they didn’t have the courage to say during the session. I like to reinforce the message reminding them that if anything connected to the session comes up in the following 24-48 hours, they should not hesitate to contact me as I am always available to clarify and help. Every time I ask them a question or say something, I keep in mind that they are young men and women and they can be a little bit more vulnerable.
We have all been children and it is easy to be tempted to give suggestions and advice, but as coaches, we know that this is not a good practice, at ALL! Nonetheless sometimes, especially at the beginning of the journey, both the parents and the student-coachee expect us to give them advice. This is an important point that needs to be clarified with the coachee and their parents during the chemistry session.
3. A good training to avoid giving advice
I think it is very important to make it clear with the parents at the very start of the journey (since the first meeting or during the chemistry session) that they should avoid sharing with the coach all their thoughts, ideas, concerns, in one word all their biases – about the future of their children as if they were in front of their doctor, waiting for a medical diagnosis. Therefore, before starting any conversion, I ask them how much they know about coaching, mentoring, therapy and the like disciplines and the majority of the time I need to clarify with them that it is vital that they avoid providing any advice, suggestions, ideas, concerns, because this could interfere and jeopardise the coaching process.
We also have to watch out when our student-coachee looks for advice from us, as we have to bear in mind that this is not our job. They can find advice from so many people around them: parents, brothers or sisters, teachers, grandpa and grandma, counsellors, but they need and are longing for their own space where they can think and dream about their future.
Another good reason to avoid giving advice is that it would definitely be out of date: we lived ages ago, we cannot understand … and our piece of advice could be wrong or even harmful.
Why should I be ashamed of my dreams?
Sometimes teenagers are ashamed to share their dreams as they are not aligned with their parents’ “wishes”. This is dramatic as it could impact their next steps, results and maybe their future.
As said earlier, I strongly believe that it is an amazing opportunity for a young woman or a young man to be coached at such an early stage and have the opportunity to clarify, remove some fog from their thoughts and discover their future. Since the first session they actually start to realise that they can share whatever they want with me and that I won’t give them any advice. Instead I ask them very provocative and explorative questions.
4. Tools and models for young coachees
The coaching toolkit that I learnt during my studies at the Kingstown College, on the Advanced Diploma in Personal Leadership and Executive Coaching and on the DIploma in Corporate Wellbeing, is very effective and powerful. Although the tools and models have been conceived to coach adults in life and/or business coaching situations, I was able to adapt some of them for my young clients.
I actually know that regardless of the models or the tools that we learn, we coaches are lucky enough to be able to use two important muscles: listening and powerful questions.
Listening and powerful questions
When we ask a question, especially to a young person, it is important to avoid inquisitive questions starting with “Why” … These are actually strictly connected to their present, “Why didn’t you finish your homework / food … and so on?”, maybe their teachers, their parents, grandparents start a lot of their questions in this way and they are very inquisitorial and make them feel guilty. So this is not a nice way to create or build a relationship with them.
Moreover we live in a society where unfortunately adults have no time to listen to their children. For this reason as soon as you are going to start your first session with a young student, you can see how their facial expression changes, when no one is interrupting and judging, but simply listening to what they want to say.
When we ask questions we need to keep in mind that they have more opportunities than experience. So their legacy is in the future and not in the past. When we choose the tools we can readapt them for our young coachees. For instance I transformed the biography into the dream-graphy, the wheel of life in the wheel of subjects and instead of using the matrix of Eisenhower, I use the matrix of the opportunities.
There are of course tools that work very well as they are. For instance the VIA Value in Action from Peter Seligman, the Force Field Analysis, the GROW, CIA and the SOAR Model. I would like to spend a few words on the SOAR model which I think is perfect to work with young people, as it is based on the Appreciative inquiry model and guides the clients to discover and unlock their potential and creativity.
Another tool which I like to use with young students is what I call the FUTURE model which I use to coach them outside of the fog when I feel they are really stuck.
The dreamography
Young students’ life experience is very short, so I prefer to ask them to spend time reflecting about their future. I therefore transformed the autobiography into a different tool which I call dreamography. I ask them to describe “Where and how they can see themselves in 5, 10 or 15 years’ time. This is one of my favourite intro tools that I use in my programme with them. I ask my young clients to write a dreamography before their first session.
I know it is not an easy exercise, but this can give them space to think about themselves, about how it will be, without anyone judging or telling them what they should do. I explain to them to write down what comes up to their mind without thinking too much, “using the free flow”. In a second moment they can read what they wrote more carefully and change it, if they feel like. I suggest that they can keep the two versions of the script as a record, if they want.
Depending on how committed they are, I might ask them to write even more than one dreamgraphy. Think about it, we have just one autobiography, but we can have thousands of dreamographies. The limit is our imagination and fantasy. Every time I read one I think that it is a great gift to be part of their dreams.
Only once my client didn’t write his dreamgraphy in advance. I asked him what was stopping him from writing it and I discovered that he was put off by the fact that he had to write it in first person. After this I suggest to my coachees to put it down either in first or third person as they prefer. I really recommend this tool if you are working with young adults.
Values and Strengths
When I work with my young clients I find it very beneficial to discuss with them the importance of becoming aware of one’s own strengths and values. Many times they know their weaknesses very well, but they struggle a bit to acknowledge or become aware of their strengths. The VIA of Seligman is an amazing tool to use for this. Their website is very rich and there is a useful area for professionals working with the youth as well as interesting research findings.
Another model which can be used before the VIA or as an alternative to it is Dearbhla Kelly’s “Which kind of personality are you?” tool, which the author presents in her book: Career coach.
According to her, people can be divided into six kinds of personality: Realistic, Conventional, Investigative, Enterprising, Artistic and Social.
I generally use it in combination with a wheel of subjects.
The wheel of subjects and limiting beliefs
When my young coaches are stuck and lost with the choice of their third level studies, one of my favourite tools is the Wheel of subjects. I created it to help them to focus on the subject area they like the most and ponder on the path they wish to take: technical, scientific or humanistic, linguistic etc. The wheel shown below has six wedges, but you can personalise it by adding more wedges or changing the subjects.
In my experience this tool helps the coachee to discover and challenge their self limiting beliefs. I find it particularly useful with technical skills, arts or languages. If we are able to help them to understand how they can modify and remove their biases, a lot of new opportunities will be available to them.
The matrix of opportunities
How can a student understand and discover: “What they would like to study? or “What would they like to become?” Sometimes they have so many options and at the same time they have no clue. So many inputs from parents, friends, teachers, social media and augmented reality. Sometimes it is different what we perceive (what we can see in Instagram, Facebook, tiktok and other social media), from reality.
Back again … how can they understand “What is important to them?”, “What are they looking for?”, “What are their values?’, “Which are their strengths?” and “Which kind of achievement would they like to reach in 5 years or 10 years?”.
The idea is to give the young clients the opportunity to visualise different scenarios and options, representing them into a bidimensional matrix with numbers. Of course it is a simplification of reality, but is a great starting point.
In the rows we represent the different options: name and type of University for instance: Electronic or Mechanical Engineering in UCD or Medicine in Trinity College or Arts in Paris.
In the columns we add the different information that the client wants to examine and compare, for example:
- Which are the future work opportunities from the client perspective?
- How do these course options and/or Colleges meet their passions and interests?
- How they feel and think will be the effort required to accomplish the path (Complexity of the course)?
- Is there an admission test or a portfolio, an extra subject to study during the senior cycle? And in such a case how complex will it be?
I realised that it was very useful to start with grading, each of these activities with a simple scale for example from 1 to 5, where 1 is the minimum and 5 the maximum, or when comparing costs it could be worth assigning a grade in the opposite way 1 high and 5 low. This matrix helps them to better understand what they need to focus on, what requires further research and it fosters reflective analysis.
It is by the way important to keep in mind that it is the client who leads the contents, therefore I encourage them to add and change or remove any column that they want: for instance the cost/fee, the distance from where they live and the university, etc.
In the example above all the columns have the same weight, but if the client feels that each component needs to be weighed differently, you can modify the matrix accordingly and the final results will take this into account.
The FUTURE Model
The GROW model created by Sir John Whitmore is amazing and I think that we, as coaches, could live with this model, but I wanted something different and especially targeted for my young clients, something related and inspired to the Appreciative Inquiry. After a few months one morning, I thought to the FUTURE Model:
Feeling – What is your state now, your feeling about the future?
Understand – What is clear at the moment and what is not clear?
Thoughts – What are your thoughts, concerns and motivations?
Unlock – What can you uncover, reveal, unleash
Result – What is your mission, ambition, objective?
Enjoy and Emotion – What makes you happy and have fun? How do you feel if you reach your goal in a SMART way?
5. When is the best moment to start?
When is the best moment to start a coaching program for a student who is choosing his/her college? Coaching is non-toxic and non-addictive, so the earlier the better, but in my experience, the best moment to start is at the beginning of the senior cycle in Ireland and during the 4th year in Italy: this allows plenty of time for the student to think and research with no stress. Starting the program later is risky as during the last year of Secondary school the students need to focus on the final exams and won’t be 100% connected with their coach and concentrated. As for the length of the program I believe that generally speaking 4 to 6 sessions will do.
And remember the very simple but powerful Timothy Gallwey’s equations Performance (p) = potential (P) – interference (I)
p = P – I
Without interference performance would equal potential but as we all know that’s not always the case.
6. Bibliography and webliography
- Dearbhla Kelly, Career coach (2015)
- Sir John Whitmore, Coaching for performance (2017)
- Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Ultimate Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance (2015)
- The VIA Character Strengths www.viacharacter.org/professionals/youth by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman
About the author
Fabio Garganego is a Faculty Member at Kingstown College and a Life and Career Coach with a particular interest in Corporate Well-Being and team coaching. He has over 10 years experience in coaching and mentoring teams in different organisations. Fabio is a native of Italy, fluent in French, English. He has been working and living in Ireland for the last 7 years.
He has a Master degree in Electronic Engineering and a Master in Organisation, Management and Innovation. He is the co-founder of Pentago, a team coaching company that operates in Ireland, UK and Italy.
