Our Coaching Model – SPARKLE

Our coaches are highly skilled professionals with years of experience. Most of us have earned ICF accreditation and have significant business knowledge. Many are former executive leaders of multi-national company or owners of independent businesses.

We offer coaching in the following languages: Hungarian and English. We provide coaching via Skype globally for international partners.

We use the SPARKLE coaching model, which divides a typical coaching process into seven stages.

In the Situation stage, the coach and the coachee assess the starting point, the challenges faced by the client. To properly evaluate the current situation, you can choose from among multiple methods and a vast number of tools. First of all, however, it is essential to win the client’s confidence so that he/she knows that he/she is not being badgered with questions (questioning technique), “spied upon” (shadowing), “investigated” (360 degree assessment) out of sheer curiosity, but rather this is all done to help him/her. The diagnosis stage should include assessing the coachee’s openness and secret zones that are best avoided (for example, in business coaching, the coachee may stipulate that no personal issues will be covered). If you are aware of taboos, then you can employ opening methods and then perform detailed research based on this. Coaching tools coupled with some psychological background as well as different creative writing techniques may be utilized in this stage. With all means at his or her disposal, the coach will effectively use the tools of active listening and questioning techniques.

In the Positioning phase: Based on the input defined above the client will be able to specify the key focus(es) of the coaching process. The client, assisted by the coach, defines his desired vision, dictates the direction and the aim – Positions himself. Here, the coach basically helps the client decide upon a reasonable objective that can be achieved (a SMART goal). Tools used in this stage can be divided into two large groups depending on how visual the client is. For instance, resuming the previous stage, montage, wheel of life, old house – new house techniques or heraldry may be used.

In the Alternatives phase: We focus on identifying and drafting options and possibilities to be able to determine how the aim could be accomplished. The importance of this stage lies in consideration. Instead of jumping to make a decision, the client should be able to consider several options and make a well-informed decision in the next stage. The coach can inspire brainstorming using various tools such as reversals, magnification, encyclopedia, Ideal people, action plan, or the CREATE framework, although he might also achieve a satisfactory result using spontaneous questioning technique or considering best practice and his role modells’ solutions. For example if the focus is on finding  the proper motivation person by person, then here we can use motivation tests.

In the Route phase: The coach will support the client in making a choice from among the available alternatives. The best way to help is to use a pros and cons analysis, but other options in the coach’s toolkit should be also offered. You can deploy the Mercedes symbol or the CHOICE model if you have not used them in a previous stage, but it might be sufficient to project yourself as a challenging and confrontative coach. At the end of this phase the coachee will have an action plan describing what to do, when and how.

 Key obstacles: the coach supports the client in going the distance on the selected route to ensure that he/she would accomplish his/her aim instead of retreating upon meeting the first Obstacle. Until this point, clients usually enjoy the coaching sessions. In general, neither the diagnosis (Situation), the goal-setting (Positioning), the working out of Alternatives, nor the Route definition are “painful” for them. No later than at this point, however, the client is required to leave his/her comfort zone. He/she may even start cancelling regular appointments. In this case, a coach should not take offense. It is a completely natural process, and it is advisable to make the coachee aware of it. To do so, a skilled coach has his or her tools, such as the Sailing-ship, Magic shop, rubber band, buckets/balloons provided they were not already deployed in the Positioning stage.

In Leverage phase coaches support their clients taming self-defeating behaviors. There are plenty of useful tricks and tools to utilize when clients start thinking about giving up but there is no excuse they have to go on if they want to reach their desired outcome. Role plays and positive self talk may help a lot in moving forward such as the pause point technique.

Evaluation: A coaching engagement ideally comes to an end when the client has accomplished his or her goal. In this case, the coach celebrates the accomplishment together with the client, and this is the point where they both report to the client’s manager on the joint efforts taken if its a corporate assignment. Simple summary patterns and conclusion lists work pretty well.