CHAPTER
17

Closure

CLOSURE, OR ENDING THE COACHING ENGAGEMENT, IS NOT SIMPLY A CESSATION OF THE PROCESS; IT IS AN IMPORTANT AND DISTINCT PHASE. IF APPROACHED WITH ATTENTIVENESS AND CARE, IT WILL ANCHOR THE continued development of your client on the basis of the work that you have done together.

Closure is multidimensional and involves all participants in the coaching process:

At its most basic level, it is about what you, the coach, do to prepare your client and sponsors for the end of active coaching and to capitalize on future learning opportunities.

For your client, it can be an opportunity to evaluate a range of issues: What has been accomplished? What areas need continued focus and attention? What new challenges may emerge as growth continues?

Sponsors likely also have opinions about what has been accomplished and what needs more attention. Their role in your client’s development becomes more important as coaching ends.

Development themes and other insights from the coaching process often are reiterated during the ending phase. There is a natural desire to reflect on and review key learning points that have helped your client during the process. Your closure steps can build on that tendency as well as highlight any new insights that emerge. At the same time, you may encounter awkward reactions from your client, including discomfort, humor, and avoidance. Accepting these reactions, while at the same time making closure steps clear, will support a powerful and positive ending to the coaching.

Good endings have important characteristics:

Expectancy of closure (anticipated and planned; not abrupt)

Opportunity for reflection and discussion

Acknowledgment of both closed/resolved and open/unresolved items

Consideration of future support and relationships

Celebration of achievements

Acceptance of feelings of loss

Anticipating Closure

A productive closure process depends on what you do to anticipate and plan for the end of coaching. Usually coaching has an expected time frame that is part of the original contracting. While that time frame may not be rigidly binding, it conveys the notion that coaching is an intervention or a jumpstart and therefore of limited duration. Because of the engagement’s temporary nature, it is important to acknowledge its transience at a relatively early stage in the process. Every beginning anticipates an endpoint, and it is never too early for you to openly refer to that eventuality. Doing so helps to mitigate what might be a more difficult discussion if it came up late in coaching. It also conveys an appropriate challenge to your client to make the most of coaching so that development will have momentum as the formal coaching process concludes.

For most people, endings can be emotionally evocative. They create both obvious and subtle reminders of endings of other relationships, both personal and professional, some of which might have been quite difficult. Strictly speaking, the coaching engagement is ending, but your relationship with your client continues in a different form. You and your client are moving into a phase without the regularity that characterizes active coaching. Depending on how you structure the next phase, with supportive contact scheduled or only provided on an as needed basis, your client may feel nervous, isolated, or even abandoned. Client reactions depend on past experiences of endings. Providing opportunities for these reactions to be discussed can help your client move forward to acknowledge and accept the feelings that are triggered. Waiting until the end of coaching to introduce closure does not provide adequate time to reflect on these feelings and responses to closure.

A complicating factor in closure is determining the right schedule for ending the coaching process. Even with contracts that stipulate a specific time frame of three or six months, the actual last coaching appointment would need to be labeled. By openly referring to an end session during the coaching process, and noting progress as milestones are achieved and passed, you are empowered to suggest a final appointment date. For most clients, this date will be an endpoint consistent with the original contract stipulations. For others, however, additional coaching may be warranted as you anticipate the final session. How much value a formal extension of the process will add is a difficult judgment to make, but you do need to have an opinion about it. Clients may express an interest in continuing and they may ask for your recommendation. Anticipating closure will help you prepare for that question and for the discussion with your client about how to proceed.

In those situations when you and your client agree that an extension of the coaching would be useful, you need to be aligned with your client about how to support the recommendation with sponsors. Usually, the rationale is based on what a particular client needs in order to capitalize on the work the client has already done in coaching. It might relate to the challenges of sustaining the particular behavioral changes in the development plan, the need for more opportunities for the client to practice new behaviors, organizational changes that slowed progress, or anticipated changes the client wants help navigating. After analyzing these or related elements, you and your client will be prepared to propose a possible extension to the sponsors so that everyone can decide together how best to design the structure of the extended coaching. This extension of the coaching engagement would constitute recontracting. As such, it benefits from specifying the process as well as the goals, if they are different from those in the original engagement.

Assuming that an extension is not needed, it is important to set a final session date well in advance. In fact, the ending of the coaching engagement may have a penultimate session that looks backward, while the final session is reserved for looking ahead. While these plans can shift by mutual consent, it is important to avoid letting the final session be a surprise either to the client or to you. Targeting a final session makes the ending tangible and prompts discussion of both plans and feelings about them. With the date set, ending and related issues can be regular topics during the coaching sessions that lead up to the final session.

Providing several coaching sessions to discuss closure is typical. You can use this time to ask your client to reflect on a number of issues:

What has your client learned during the coaching engagement?

What worked and what could have worked better?

What was accomplished, and what items are still open?

What experiences has the client internalized?

What issues will the client continue to work on in the short, middle, and long term?

How will the client continue to focus on development in the future?

What learning resources are available for the client to access in the future to support growth?

How can the manager and HR sponsor support the client’s future developmental opportunities?

What role, if any, will the coach play in the client’s future?

How will the ending of the coaching engagement be clearly noted for the client, stakeholders, and coach?

An important consideration is your client’s future willingness to ask for feedback and help. Hopefully, coaching has removed some of the hesitation to seek help. Your clients can become more successful learners after coaching if, during the closure process, you reflect on how they learn when they get stuck, and how they continue growth. Using ideas from these considerations, you can use the concluding phase of coaching to help the organization support the future development of their employee, your client.

Part of that support involves you. Whether ending within the expected time frame or not, you need to consider what type of follow-up support would be useful with each client you work with (including the frequency and type of contact). Some coaches meet with clients quarterly for a session or two, schedule phone calls, or just rely on ever-present e-mail communications. Although you will have your own perspectives, your client’s follow-up needs and how to address them should be discussed with your clients and appropriate sponsors so that a consensus can be reached about the support that you can provide after regular coaching meetings have concluded.

Another element that is sometimes planned to mark the end of coaching is a meeting that involves you, the client, the client’s manager, and sometimes the HR representative. This program review meeting mirrors the development planning meeting (discussed in Chapter 11) in the earlier stages of coaching. The goal is to acknowledge progress openly, encourage the continuity of changes that have been made, and anticipate future support that would be useful to your client. Part of that discussion could also involve contracting how to structure an extension (if that has been agreed to) or how to provide appropriate follow-up support to the client. Whether you propose this meeting or it is built into the process, it can be a useful conclusion to coaching and formally re-engage the manager-client developmental partnership.

Endings demand self-management from you, demonstrating an example for your client to follow. Both of you may find some discomfort when thinking about ending the coaching engagement and what shape the relationship might take in the future. It is important to discuss endings to allow concerns about setbacks and obstacles to surface so that they can be discussed. Addressing these issues supports your client’s resilience and energizes the strategies the client has used to stay active and focused in challenging situations. Accepting ambiguity, uncertainty, and unexpected emotion is important in all phases of coaching, but especially important during the ending phase.

Ending coaching is also an opportunity for you to reflect on your own experience. Everyone has feelings about endings; therefore, your self-awareness and self-monitoring are important so that any fears or concerns you are having are not inadvertently projected onto your client’s particular experience of closure. Among other ways these emotions may influence your behavior is to cause you to try to forestall the ending. While the appeal of staying actively involved with the client is natural, it is both inconsistent with the typical coaching contract and may inadvertently convey a lack of confidence in the client, or even in yourself as a coach. You would never want your own needs or insecurities to suggest that the client should continue in a coaching relationship with you.

Ideally, the ending point is an opportunity for your own development. It is a chance for you to reflect on your growth as a coach, identify gaps in your abilities, and consider future experiences you would like to have. These reflections are likely to be tied to perceptions about your client’s relative success and what you might have done to make it a stronger experience. While under some circumstances you may discuss some of these observations with clients, they are topics best discussed with your case supervisor or coaching mentor. Your openness about endings presents a real opportunity for your own development, reflecting a parallel with the process established between you and your client.

Other Considerations

As mentioned previously, be sure to provide adequate time in the coaching process to accommodate your client’s possible reactions to the ending. Some clients prefer a definitive break, while others want to know that there will be follow-up contact. You also need to negotiate what form the follow-up will take. Some coaches like to build in follow-up contact(s), by phone or in person, within one to three months to ease the transition and provide the client an opportunity for course adjustment; others invite the client to reach out to them on a more ad hoc basis.

While contact will be significantly reduced after formal coaching has concluded, it is important for you to continually maintain the role and confidentiality boundaries established during the engagement. If you feel a pull to shift your relationship with a client in a different professional or even a personal direction, you should discuss this with your case supervisor. In any helping profession, deviating from the boundaries of a contracted relationship is fraught with complexities and should be avoided, even if it has been a long time since the engagement ended.

These boundaries may be especially difficult to monitor and maintain in the age of social media. Clients may ask coaches to be linked in various networks to keep in touch or be part of the client’s social media contact list. While some amount of social networking involvement may be harmless, coaches need to be self-aware and mindful about such contacts with clients. There are no definitive answers about where coaches should be in the client’s list of contacts, but there is a growing concern about becoming a friend or a buddy on various websites or online networks. It is easy to see how these connections, however innocent, could erode boundaries and diminish the value you had in your client’s professional life, not to mention potential violations of confidentiality.

Often your client’s general self-efficacy is enhanced through coaching, even though it is not an overt goal. As part of the closure process, consider asking your clients what attitudes and beliefs have strengthened during coaching that will allow them to better weather the ups and downs of organizational life. You might encourage clients to reflect on what self-perceived limitations have been confronted and disarmed, or what client characteristics have been empowered to face future challenges better. Such questions tap into implicit learning from coaching and support the client’s future resilience.

Another aspect of closure may be considerations involving your client’s legacy. Depending on your client’s life and career stage, coaching can trigger a pull toward leaving a stronger legacy. Clients further along in their careers may also wonder how they can foster others’ growth and give back more to those they care about. These feelings may reflect a shift in the client’s priorities as a side effect of coaching and raise questions about who the beneficiaries of that shift should be. Not all clients will want to reflect on these legacy issues, but for those who might, you should be prepared to facilitate their thinking and capitalize on the moment.

Involving Sponsors

You can also help sponsors, and especially the client’s manager, anticipate the end of coaching by being transparent about the coaching process. As coaching moves toward closure, your contacts with sponsors can anticipate questions about challenges to future development, the post-coaching relationship between you and the client, and ad hoc follow-up support. As mentioned, you can structure and then facilitate a closing meeting with the client and sponsors to encourage open discussion of these same questions with everyone present. Usually, such a meeting will focus on acknowledging the employee’s progress, but it should also identify areas needing more work and engage the sponsors in actively supporting your client’s continuing development. Sponsors appreciate your initiative in scheduling such events because, unless these meetings are built into the process, they may not feel empowered to call for them. It is in both your immediate and longer-term interests to build and maintain positive relationships with sponsors, and ending provides an opportunity to do so.

Ending is a phase of coaching that is challenging in several respects, yet is very important to both the integrity of the process and the affirmation of the gains the client has made. As a coach, get in touch with your own feelings about endings, both positive and negative. Use these reactions to create an ending process with clients that instills positive closure, confidence in the future, and a support structure that encourages continuing development.

Supervisor’s Observations

Both coach and client had the best of intentions in planning the coaching process and scheduling the last session well in advance. However, the client’s work life interfered with their schedule and there had not been enough contact between them to adjust and plan a new ending date. As a result, they were in different places as the last scheduled coaching meeting began. While the coach assumed that they could extend to another session to deal with closure issues, the client preempted him by pushing to keep to their original schedule. Meredith’s behavior also confused, and possibly hurt, Josh, which gave him a lot to deal with. We may wonder why a client might want to end coaching prematurely, but there are many reasons, especially when a client is feeling overwhelmed by work and sees the end of coaching as one less thing to schedule. Even though she had a very positive experience in coaching, Meredith’s absence from the process for several weeks and other pressures led her to put the utility of a quick closure ahead of the value of a good closure process.

There are many things Josh could have done to reassert the need for a more productive end to coaching. Before he could decide what to do, however, he had to listen to his own feelings. He knew Meredith had exerted unexpected control over the last session, and his general tendency was to try to accommodate a client’s preferences. But he also became more certain that ending without adequate discussion was not in her best interests, not to mention his own. He also reminded himself that he had a positive and trusting relationship with Meredith that he could draw on. He could have made these points directly with Meredith, and this might have been successful. Instead, however, he felt that a more indirect, rhetorical method would help him to persuade her. So, he spontaneously introduced two questions designed to get the client to draw new conclusions. This tactic bought him time and gave Meredith insight into Josh’s concerns. Their appropriate recontracting gave Josh the process he was seeking and slowed Meredith down to remind her of what was truly important.

Takeaways

Closure is a definitive step in the engagement that coaches plan for, and it is best if understood and anticipated from the beginning.

Closure provides a clear opportunity for celebrating success, considering extensions of the coaching, and for handing off development from the coach to the client’s manager.

The closure process needs to include honest discussion of progress, gaps, and the challenges of post-coaching growth.

Clients interested in extending the coaching must gain agreement with you and the sponsors about how extended coaching will work.

Endings may be emotionally evocative and demand heightened self-awareness and self-management from you as well as from the client.

Be sure you are clear about post-coaching supportive contacts with clients. These contacts may be planned or ad hoc in nature, but they must always maintain the boundaries and the professionalism of the relationship.

It is important for you to thank and obtain feedback from the client and sponsors and reflect on your own learning from each case.