12 Effective Coaching Skills You NEED To Have For Remote Coaching

Learn about the 12 effective skills that are a must-have if you want to become a successful remote coach and learn how to implement these skills.

As a coach, you need to understand that more than ever, working remotely is the future you have to deal with in your industry. 

In fact, it is the now.

Working remotely has many advantages and can do a lot for your career as well as your personal life. 

However, you need to understand what it takes to be able to maximize these advantages, otherwise, you will fall short of your possibilities and get frustrated soon.

Like every worthwhile cause, coaching remotely takes some skills to pull off, and if you are interested in becoming the coach with excellence and success year in and out, then this article is for you.

In this article, we have put together 12 effective coaching skills that you need to have for remote coaching.

The 12 skills you require for effective remote coaching include being professional, listening actively, humility, building trust, having emotional intelligence, having active questioning skills, reflecting on your statements, communicating effectively, providing feedback, being present, being tactful, and managing time. 

These skills will help to take your coaching to a whole new level.

Let’s get some skills!

1. Being Professional

This is the part where we talk about your credibility. 

Why should people come to you or choose you over other coaches?

The keyword here is professionalism.

This involves your ability to meet professional standards and ethical guidelines, as well as establishing a coaching agreement with your clients.

Different ethical guidelines apply to different bodies and you should be able to understand and apply the relevant standards in your industry to your practice or career as a coach.

You should be able to let your client know what they are signing up for, as well as the differences in similar terminologies or fields. 

For instance, let them understand that coaching is different from mentoring or therapy.

Also, let them know what the coaching entails, let them in on the details.

As a professional coach, you should be able to define clear-cut boundaries for the continued relationship between your clients and you, as well as standard fees and coaching timeline.

2. Listening Attentively

This in itself is a skill and not everybody has learned it. 

However, as a coach, it is a must-have

You cannot renegotiate on this one.

Active listening is a skill that can be learned and acquired over time

It takes constant practice and attention, but with the right effort and determination, anyone can achieve it.

Active listening is simply put, listening actively. 

This means you have to be fully concentrated on what is being said instead of just passively ‘hearing’ it.

You must give your full attention to the speaker in this case.

It also means that you must be perceived by the speaker as ‘attentive.’

Anything otherwise would communicate that you are not interested in what is being said.

You can convey interest by using both verbal and non-verbal messages like a simple “yes,” a smile, or a nod. 

Doing these encourages the speaker because they are getting feedback from you and this makes them feel more at ease and makes it easier for them to relax and open up to you as a coach.

Listening is a must-have skill if you must successfully coach remotely.

Remember, listening is intentional and is quite different from hearing.

While hearing is passive, listening is active.

3. Humility

It’s easy to use the leader-boss approach and let them know who’s the coach. 

But take it easy.

You do not want to give off the impression that you are “up there” and your clients are “down here.”

Coaching is a two-way conversation really, and that does not work if one person stands back and barks out orders. 

Turn off the ego and get some feedback.

Humility means standing back and caring enough to listen and feel what your client is feeling too.

They may not be able to see it, but if you can look past your position as the coach and relate with them as a human being to another human being, it’s easier to see what the challenge is and this makes it even easier for you to be able to help them.

Humility puts you in a position of advantage as a coach.

4. Building Trust

As a coach, you must be able to create an environment for trust and build it on professional closeness with the clients. 

This gives you both a safe psychological climate to work together.

It means providing support, respecting commitments, and boundaries, as well as being genuinely there for them, and caring about their well-being.

You must learn and master the ability to maintain a healthy and good coaching presence.

It involves being present, sensitive, as well as great self-management.

5. Emotional Intelligence 

As an effective coach, you must understand the importance of emotional intelligence. 

The most effective coaches make use of skills in social awareness and relationship management to reach, guide, and develop every team member.

This is what you need to learn if you will have a great career coaching remotely.

To help your clients achieve the results they desire or accomplish the things they have in mind or dream of, you must develop a sense of emotional intelligence.

This involves the ability to read people, understand them, and respond to the wide variety of circumstances and situations that are bound to play out as you relate with them.

This skill is non-negotiable. 

You must develop it.

6. Questioning Skills

Questioning helps us to gather information and information is vital to your coaching. 

This information helps you as a coach to learn about your clients, understand them better, and puts you in a position to solve their problems better.

This also helps you to make decisions easily and help you to understand yourselves, both your client and you.

Without questioning skills, your relationship with your clients is bound to fail.

Questioning skill is fundamental to successful coaching and helps to create engagement.

Often, the difference between successful and effective coaches and those who fall short often lies in the ability to maximize their questioning skills.

Great questioning skills also involve asking at the right time and also knowing when to not ask or answer.

Questions are verbal in nature, but they can also be non-verbal. 

If you raise your brows in a coaching session, that could well pass for a question.

Facial expressions ask questions too and they come in different ways and contexts and you must look out for them and maximize them to your advantage as a coach.

7. Reflecting

Apart from having good listening skills, another skill you must master by all means is reflection.

You should develop the ability to reflect on the words spoken and clarify them for what they are.

You also need to understand that you and your client must be on the same page or the same level of understanding as to the meaning of something that was said, and this can only be achieved through reflection.

It is important for you as a coach to understand the emotions of your client in the context in which they are communicated.

What this means is that you must understand the content, and the feeling that accompanies the message.

What then is reflecting?

Reflecting is the process in which you as a coach paraphrase and restate the feelings and words communicated by your client.

You need reflection to actually hear beyond what is being said, as well as for the purpose of helping you to perceive the world as they see it and understand their viewpoints too.

You also need to learn how to reflect so you can help and encourage your client to keep sharing and responding as they learn and are guided by you.

Reflection does not necessarily mean that you need to ask any new question or introduce a fresh topic.

It simply serves the purpose of redirecting your focus to the ideas being communicated and helps to improve the relationship between you and your client.

8. Communicating Effectively

This is as obvious as obvious goes, but many people still miss it, coaches included.

Having good communication skills can help to make the entire coaching process more effective, as well as improve the interpersonal relationship between your client and you as the coach.

It’s easier for a coach with solid communication skills to gather relevant information about the client than a coach who does not have good communication skills.

This will also help you to identify and understand your client’s motivation and morale, provide feedback, and establish support.

Some great and effective ways to build great communication skills are to have active listening skills and use powerful questioning.

9. Providing Feedback

Feedback is fundamental to your coaching. 

You need to have that support or criticism to keep a healthy coaching business. 

This will help to build and increase your self-confidence as a coach, increase your self-esteem and boost your competence as well. 

The same thing goes for your client.

Your client needs to have feedback too.

Feedback is just a heads-up way to let them know how they’re doing and how you’re doing.

In fact, according to research, athletes whose coaches provided them with higher feedback frequencies performed better than those who barely got feedback.

Feedback helps your client to do better. 

Feedback does not have to be critical or controlling, in fact, caring and genuine feedback can be motivating, even to the seemingly most impossible client.

Do you want to keep your clients motivated? 

Then you need to give them constant feedback and try to let them hear the positive feedback well.

10. Being Present

Any kind of coaching in any area requires plenty of focus. 

You must be there in it. 

This is where the challenge comes in. 

When you are coaching remotely, there’s the temptation to multitask.

Here’s what you need to know: a virtual coaching program uses a special interaction that is different from others.

This involves paying attention to the tiniest details. 

However, this is not a reality when we allow ourselves to get distracted easily.

If you pay more attention, you would notice subtle changes in facial expression and tone of voice.

Also, you must look out for your own emotional state as well as the emotional responses that they elicit.

11. Time Management

Too many times, we see a coach take more time than planned, only to come off at the end and rush through the rest of the lesson.

This is not right.

In every meeting, you should include every aspect of the event and allocate time to each.

You can set up a timer to help you minimize distractions and help you stop at the best point to do so.

Remember, it’s not in the length, it’s in the quality of the conversation.

12. Being Tactical

Another skill that is indispensable to you as a coach is the ability to be diplomatic and tactful, especially when a negotiation is being done. 

This also means attempting to be persuasive or assertive.

The use of tact and diplomacy can save your relationship with your client and help you to have improved relationships with people.

It is also a great way to build and develop mutual respect between you and the client and this, in turn, can lead to more effective and successful outcomes.

Being tactful means you have to be aware and sensitive to other people’s feelings and emotional states per time.

Conclusion

These are the top 12 effective coaching skills you need to have for successful remote coaching.

We hope you found this article helpful.

Let us know in the comments!

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