I’ve recently attended a training program that involves receiving content, working on the content, and being coached to improve the result. This experience of mine was not based on stories and being coached on how to create effective ones, but I will use the development and improvement of stories as an example. The content was good, the exercise was good, but the coaching skills of the instructor were deplorable. Here are a few areas where he seemed to lose his way:

1. The goal of coaching is to assist the person being coached in the acquisition of skills and behaviors leading to success. In other words, the focus is on the student and helping them.
2. This process requires a process that first recognizes what the student did well. “I really liked this part and that part.” Criticism, which is part of coaching, is best received when the student understands that the coach isn’t only seeing what is wrong or needs improvement.
3. The delivery of the critique, or what you feel needs to be changed, is best heard by the student when it is couched in non-threatening language and a non-threatening approach, “Is there anything about your story that you feel could be improved?”
4. If they think it is fine, but it obviously isn’t, you could continue, “Let’s word it the following way and see if you like it better.”

Coaching is an art most easily mastered by a person who is secure and comfortable in their own skin. But the coach who is out to prove how he is right, or how he is smarter than everyone else, is one who will never master the art of coaching until he masters a little self-control.