Delivering Consistent High Impact Coaching: Introducing the 4x4 Coaching Methodology

by Thuy Sindell, PhD. and Milo Sindell, MS.

The benefits derived from executive coaching are many including - higher functioning leaders, higher performing companies, and better performing stock price. Whether you are just starting out learning to coach as a new manager or a seasoned coach, what you’ll find in the executive coaching world is a lack of consistency how coaching is deployed and how the success of the engagement is measured. To overcome this obstacle, I created the “4x4 Coaching Methodology.” This methodology ensures a coaching experience is consistent and hits the objectives you (both coachee and organization) have identified.

The main interaction and vehicle for the coaching relationship is through conversations. In my years of coaching and managing coaches, it has become apparent that coaching conversations can vary from very free flowing and unstructured to overly rigorous. To ensure consistent, scalable results, whether you are a manager or a coach, coaching conversations should follow a consistent process.

The overall framework for where the coaching should go is to ensure the coachee is gaining:

• Foundational skills
• Building on their skills
• Refining their skills
• Sustaining their skills

Then in the context of each conversation, whether you are in the Foundational stage of building your skills or in the in process of learning how to Sustain your skills, the following must take place in order to ensure a high-impact conversation that yields results:

1. Explore and confirm what are the critical priorities in your world.
2. Prescribe and provide our expertise including relevant skills, behaviors, and thinking to help you build your skills.
3. Reflect on how those skills, behaviors, and thinking currently work for you (or don’t) for you.
4. Act on your learning and reflection by creating commitments and executing on them.

At the end of the coaching experience, the coachee will have built skills that will serve them for the rest of your professional career. In addition, there will be tangible, measurable results for both participant and company.