What to Expect From a Coaching
Session with
Lynette M. Robbins
Coaching Begins With a Conversation
People come to coaching for different reasons. Some know exactly what they want to change. Others sense that there is more they want to create in their life, career or relationships, but cannot yet see the path clearly.
Lynette M. Robbins begins by listening and asking questions. She believes people have more within them than they may yet know how to access. Her role is to assist them in discovering their own answers, seeing new possibilities, and choosing how to move toward the future they want to create.
“I am the question for their discovery within themselves,” Lynette says.
First, Trust
One of the first questions Lynette asks a new client is, “How do I win your trust?”
For Lynette, trust is the foundation of an honest coaching conversation. A client may share ambitions they have barely spoken aloud, along with fears, disappointments and patterns they are beginning to recognize. Lynette wants them to know that the conversation belongs to them. She is there to assist in their discovery, not to decide what their life should look like.
That respect for choice shapes the questions she asks. Rather than directing a client toward her answer, she may ask, “Would you be open to looking at this?” The decision remains theirs. As Lynette puts it, dignity lives in the power of choice.
The Power of “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know”
Lynette believes there is freedom in saying, “I don’t know yet.” It opens the door to questions: What am I assuming? What do I want? What else might be possible? Often, we don’t know what we don’t know and therefore have no questions and when we don’t have a question we don’t have power.
For her, coaching is a conversation of discovery. She does not claim to have someone else’s answers. She asks questions that assist people in discovering their own answers, then invites them to consider what they want to do with what they have learned.
Looking Back From the Future
Lynette often invites clients to imagine that a year has passed and to look back at what they created during that time.
What changed? What did they accomplish? Where are they living, what are they doing, and who is around them? What are they proud of?
Seeing that future in detail can turn a vague wish into a clearer picture. From there, Lynette and the client can explore the choices that might move them toward it.
Looking at the Whole Person
A goal rarely exists in isolation. Lynette may invite a client to look at seven areas of life: mental, physical, spiritual, family, financial, social and career. Then she asks which three deserve the most attention right now.
This creates focus. A person does not have to change everything at once. They can begin with the areas that would make the greatest difference to the life they want to create.
Getting Crystal Clear
Lynette frequently returns to three questions:
How much? How many? By when?“I want to travel more” expresses a desire. “I want to take two international trips in the next eighteen months” gives that desire shape. The same principle can apply to a business goal, a personal project or a change in daily life.
Lynette calls this
Crystal Clear Clarity. She encourages clients to write down what they want and describe it in enough detail that they can recognize it when it begins to take form. Her Dream Book is one way of doing that. As the picture becomes clearer, it becomes easier to see which choices support it.
Discovering the Thinking Behind the Behavior
Knowing what to do and doing it are different things. A person may know they want to exercise, write a book, make an important call or change careers, yet find themselves repeating a familiar pattern.
Lynette asks questions that bring those patterns into view. She sometimes calls this an already-always way of thinking: an assumption so familiar that it feels like the only way to see a situation. The purpose is awareness, not judgment. Once a client recognizes a pattern, they have an opportunity to choose what comes next.
Coaching Changes as You Grow
Lynette’s involvement changes as a client grows. She draws on the Five Stages of Learning and Mastery, a framework she has used for decades to recognize when someone needs guidance, practice, encouragement or room to act independently.
“I need to know when to step in, when to challenge, when to encourage,” Lynette says, “and when to back away and let someone ride the bicycle on their own.”
The aim is for each client’s own thinking and abilities to become stronger over time.
The Goal Is Independence
Lynette does not measure successful coaching by how long someone continues to work with her. She wants clients to develop the awareness and confidence to make their own choices and keep creating after their sessions end.
“Ultimately, I do not want people dependent on me,” she says. “I want them to develop the awareness, confidence and mastery to continue creating without me. That is success.”
Is Coaching With Lynette Right for You?
You do not need a finished plan before you begin. You may know what you want, or you may only know that something is ready to change. Bring your curiosity, your willingness to look honestly at where you are, and your openness to what could come next.
A coaching conversation can begin with one question: What do you want?
