This is a model that, quite often our coaching doctors have already come across before they join our transformational coaching diploma, usually if they’ve been involved in mentor training.
In episode 13, when we asked, is it ever okay to mentor during a coaching session?
Whilst coaching and mentoring are different, if you’re contracting to coach someone, then you really need to stick to coaching and not veer off into a mentoring space. But if you are putting yourself forward as a mentor, coaching skills are really helpful to help someone think about their own problems and their own situation. But you have to expect to give your wisdom and experience in the mentoring room, because that’s what people will expect if they’ve been told they’re going to get some mentoring.
What’s really interesting is that, despite being put forward as a model for mentoring, the Egan skilled helper model, when you look at it, is really a coaching model. There isn’t a model for mentoring. Because it’s about giving advice.
Egan’s skilled helper model actually comes from the therapeutic space, as most coaching models do. It was developed within solution focused counselling, and we’ll see as we explore it, it has elements of the solution focused approach within it.
Gerard Egan, in the mid-70s, was a psychologist and professor emeritus at Loyola University in Chicago developed this model. His aim was to help counselling clients develop problem solving abilities and opportunity development strategies.
Let’s explore the different elements of the model
The philosophy behind the model is one of active listening. Egan talked about attentiveness, playing close attention to verbal content and verbal cues, empathy, trying to understand the client’s perspective from their view, genuineness, being authentic and transparent in the helping relationship. He also talked about respect, valuing the client’s autonomy and potential, a non judgmental attitude, paraphrasing and summarising and reflecting feelings. So, acknowledging and asking about the client’s emotions to help them get some more perspective on their situation.
This is all very much like coaching, but it’s also very person centred. He was clearly heavily influenced by Carl Rogers work in that area.
We talk a little more about this area of the model in our podcast on the same topic. https://yourcoachingjourney.com/project/145-coaching-model-egans-skilled-helper-model/
There’s lots of different graphics on this online, we’ve used this one as it was shared in a piece of research around mentoring in the NHS.
Egan’s Skilled Helper Model
The idea is that you can use the Egan skilled helper model when helping someone manage problems and develop opportunities. It’s quite flexible, but it’s a three stage process.
- The first stage is exploring the current picture. What’s going on?
- The second stage is the preferred picture. What do you want?
- The third stage is the way forward, how to achieve what you’re looking to achieve.
And within each stage there are three stages, so there’s nine steps in total.
The first stage: exploring the current picture
Story: what’s going on, what are the real issues that the client needs to focus on. So we ask them to tell their story
New Perspectives: we help them to find new awareness, new perspectives, discover blind spots, think about their problems, and think about unexplored opportunity
Leverage: choosing the right problems and opportunities to work on.
It’s looking at the whole picture, but then honing in and asking, where is it that we need to focus?
And in the model it talks about using open questions, empathy, playing back to facilitate the conversation.
The second stage: the preferred picture.
Possibilities: help our clients explore their possibilities for their better future
Change Agenda: For the future that they want, what realistic challenges and elements do they want to focus on?
Commitment: help them to find the incentives within this so that they can then commit to it.
The third stage: the way forward
What possible actions could they take?
What’s the best fit strategies for what they want to achieve?
What’s the plan? Let’s take all of that and let’s make a plan.
If you look at the visual, there are arrows that flow back and forth to each different phase, so everything can be explored, then re-assessed, going back to previous elements. So, if you’re looking at your possible actions and then you realise, actually that’s not where I want to go, you might change your agenda, you might change where you’re going to focus, so, it’s quite flexible.
On that visual, you’ll also see that underlying the three stages is an arrow from left to right and that says action leading to valued outcomes. So the nine steps all revolve around planning, thinking it through, finding a way forward. But that arrow reminds people that actually taking action to get where you want to be is needed in order to achieve it.
This model is very solution focussed and therefore, very action orientated, and very practical.
One of the things that’s not on the graphic of the model, is that Egan encouraged some evaluation at the end of, perhaps each session, or, every few sessions, like a summary of what they’re going to do and what you’ve talked about. Helping clients to understand what ground they’ve covered during the session and what they want to do, what they’ve picked out that will inspire and motivate them to help them keep moving forward.
Have You Been Inspired By Egan’s Skilled Helper Model?
We have found that some doctors who have come across this model and have done a little bit of an introduction to coaching, whether in the mentoring world or otherwise, it’s really inspired them to then come and find us and to join our diploma course.
If you have had some mentor training and you’ve used the Egan Skilled Helper Model, it is a great introduction to coaching because all of the skills that are talked about are relevant in coaching. It sets you up well to come to a coaching course and you’re already in that zone anyway, so you will find it much easier to switch from being very advice driven, to actually helping the person come up with their own answers. It’s a great sort of precursor to doing some transformational coaching training.
Our transformational coaching diploma starts with the basics of coaching, and offers something that is much deeper and richer than a very solution focused model where you just go through the steps. We build on that and we introduce you to different approaches within coaching which are going to take your conversations much deeper and open up the emotional and psychological world of your coachee.
To find out more about our Doctors’ Transformational Coaching Diploma click through here
