Powerful Leadership Through Coaching

2The Simpson 3Ds Coaching Model: The “How to” of Coaching

Often it only takes small changes in the behavior or viewpoint of a manager to create amazing changes in a team’s performance.

—Alan Sockwell, private and public board of directors advisor

The skillset of an effective coach starts with an effective coaching model. Like the One Ring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, you need “one coaching model to rule them all.”

There are as many coaching models as there are coaches, of course, but most are structured according to the same basic process. You want a step-by-step approach to any coaching opportunity—a performance challenge, a career-path opportunity, mindset or behavior change, a human relations issue—because much of your success as a coach will come from mastering the coaching process. Great coaching requires the coach to ask the right question, the right way, at the right time.

Over the years, I’ve studied many influential models that coaches use to unleash great performance and potential.¹ To paraphrase Tolkien, all coaching models have their worth, and each contributes to the worth of the others. From the many models I’ve studied, I’ve sought to simplify coaching into a very basic framework I call the Simpson 3Ds Coaching Model: a simple, interrelated process anyone can use to coach people no matter what issue they face. In this chapter, I provide an overview of the 3Ds Coaching Model and associated tools, which you can access or download online at www.simpsonexecutivecoaching.com ...