When having a tutorial with a tutee, personal tutors can adopt a coaching style of conversation. This will typically be:

  • Structured conversation, e.g. through goal setting, exploration, generation of options and action planning
  • Future-focussed
  • Solution-focussed
  • Tutee-focussed

Listening, summarising and questioning

An important element of having a productive coaching conversation is to ensure active listening. Being attentive to your tutee and listening out for repeated words, hesitations, emotional words such as “it is a struggle”, “I am battling with…”, can help you to tune in fully to what your tutee is really saying.

When summarising you might use "So you're saying to me that..." as a way of ensuring you’ve understood what it is that your tutee has said.

When asking your tutee questions, you are likely to have a more productive tutorial if you use open-ended questions to expand the discussion e.g. “How?” and “What?”,  rather than closed questions which require only a “Yes, no” answer.

An important element of having a productive coaching conversation is to ensure active listening. Being attentive to your tutee and listening out for repeated words, hesitations, emotional words such as “it is a struggle”, “I am battling with…”, can help you to tune in fully to what your tutee is really saying.

When summarising you might use "So you're saying to me that..." as a way of ensuring you’ve understood what it is that your tutee has said. 

When asking your tutee questions, you are likely to have a more productive tutorial if you use open-ended questions to expand the discussion e.g. “How?” and “What?” rather than closed questions which require only a “Yes, no” answer. 

About this content

This guide has been co-developed by the EDU and Dr Arti Maini, an accredited coach, Deputy Director and Coaching Theme Lead for the Medical Education, Innovation and Research Centre (MEdIC) in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London.