Coaching by Phone: Etiquette When the Call Begins

At the beginning of your coaching call, ask, “How much time do we have?” The answer may surprise you.

Sometimes we believe we’ll have an hour, only to have the player respond, “Oh, about twenty minutes.” It’ll happen to you, too.

It doesn't matter if we've previously established the length of the call, things can come up. This happens with in-person sessions, too. By asking the time question, you will find out how much time you will have at the beginning. Therefore, you won’t get “lopped off” at a critical juncture with the player saying, “Oops, gotta run! Bye!”

Knowing how much time you have could restructure your coaching session. You will need to get to the most important topics first or even reschedule the session for a better time.

Thankfully, more often than not, you’ll have the time you need. Now, we ask the player, “What would you like to accomplish on this call?” Add these outcomes to the ones brought to the call.

At some point during the initial part of the call, when appropriate, you’ll want to say, “May I coach you?” Ask permission to coach. We never take for granted that we are speaking to a coach-able player; remember what we've talked about on uncoach-able human beings.

Sometimes the call needs to run past the agreed-upon ending time. Ask for more time now or set up an additional call. If you go past the end time unwittingly, as soon as you notice it, acknowledge it and set a new ending time for the session.

Setting an alarm can easily prevent running over time because if you run over and the player knows it (and you don’t acknowledge it), we guarantee he or she isn't listening. Can a non-listening player be coached? You know the answer to that one. When this happens, the call has ended. You just missed it and kept talking, unaware that any possible further coaching value had evaporated.