Professional Coaches » professional coaches

When Good Help is Bad

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:32:45 +0000

As a professional coach, you have some expertise in your particular subject matter or industry: Time management, productivity, family life, business, whatever. But a lot of coaching involves psychology and helping to guide a client through the psychological complexities of the particular area you are coaching in. There is one part of coaching that we coaches face all the time which we are not really prepared to address, but which psychologists deal with frequently: Enablers.

An enabler is someone whose actions or words make it possible for your client – or even encourages them – to do something that they shouldn't do. A classic example is the parent who believes that disciplining their child will only hamper their ability to grow creatively and thus they encourage and enable their children towards bad behavior because the children crave the attention and loving guidance they need from their parents.

Your clients have enablers, too. Maybe you have a client with poor time management skills who has a friend that calls them up and needs help through crises. That friend's crises – which seem critically urgent – enable your client to put aside anything scheduled for the seemingly more important crisis. Or maybe you have a client who is scared to sell and has come to you for help. Perhaps they have a friend who is also a weak salesperson and has a million reasons ("excuses") why their sales are not very good.

Spotting these enablers is not easy and breaking their hold on your client is even harder. These enablers are often people who are very close to your client and who are highly trusted. And their advice seems to your client like very wise advice. To spot these enablers, talk to your clients about the times that they want to do something but don't and listen for the same names to come up again and again. Obviously the mere mention of the name isn't an indicator itself, so you need to find out who your client is close to and explore the impact they have on your client's ability to act: How do those friends influence a client. Remember: An enabler will be perceived to be a positive influence on a client's life even though their enabling is often having a negative consequence.

Dealing with these enablers. You won't be successful at dealing with these enablers by telling your client that their friends are enablers. In fact, you'll probably drive clients away. Instead, you should help them to create boundaries and a framework of responses and reactions when an enabler guides them incorrectly. Help them to trust themselves first and foremost and to build a filter through which they accept all advice.

For example, in the time management situation mentioned above, you might consider helping your client to find ways of saying "I can't speak right now. Can we talk later?" Or in the sales example, consider showing your client how their own successes aren't matching with what their friend is saying.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

It’s Not Me, It’s You

admin — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:13:59 +0000

I recently ended a coaching relationship with a client. It's not something I want to do but it needs to happen from time to time. Let me tell you the details:

Just over a year ago, I had a client approach me and ask me to coach them in their businesses. They owned three small businesses but weren't seeing success in any of them. We met every other week and spent the first couple of months figuring out what his goals were and what was going on in his business.

By the end of the first two months, we had a game plan mapped out and the plan was to implement it, making small tweaks along the way. Month after month we'd meet and it was always the same: There was some reason why he couldn't quite keep up to the plan we'd mapped out. He was busy with his day-job. Christmas. Spring break. His car broke down. He and his family went on vacation. Month after month. We tweaked his plan, made adjustments, but the story was always the same.

Due to some family commitments, he couldn't meet over the summer. So when we met again at the end of September, almost a year after our first meeting, there was no noticeable difference in his businesses. "We need to update the plan," he told me in a recent meeting.

And that's when I told him what the real problem was. I said, "We have a plan – it's a good one. I know it works because I've coached many others to success using a similar plan. The problem is with implementation." He tried to counter with various excuses and, as professionally as possible, I pointed out that they were just excuses.

We talked about how to fix it and I promised that I would coach him through implementing his plan but he needed to commit to action.

He said he would. But, two months later, he hadn't done a thing. At our last meeting he pointed out that Halloween was busy for him and he wasn't sure he'd be able to do anything until after Thanksgiving. And that's when I decided enough was enough.

As coaches, our job is to help our clients. I know that most of you would bend over backwards to help your clients achieve their goals. But we also have a responsibility to our clients in another way, too: If they are wasting their money and their time, we need to tell them. A coach is still a coach if he or she ends the relationship with someone they can no longer help. In some cases, you might pass on their name to another coach who specializes in a different area, or you might follow up with them 3 months later with the view of signing them on in the future if they need your help again. But, as professional coaches, we have a responsibility to our clients to help them – either by coaching them or by NOT coaching them!

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

When Clients Have Poisonous Peers

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:27:30 +0000

I am currently coaching a business owner who works hard in her business and has been successful in the past. She came to me because her business had started to decline and she wasn’t sure why. We explored a number of things and, in every case, she had been doing the right things for a while then everything went downhill at once: Her offerings dramatically diminished in quality. Her marketing diminished in effectiveness and quantity. Her service was no longer stellar. We slowly worked backwards from her current lack of success to where things started to fall off of the cliff. And I’m sorry to report that the reason stems from a single person.

This client has a friend who is pure poison. This friend means well. She is friendly to my client. They get along. They talk on the phone. They visit occasionally. But she has single-handedly decimated my client’s business.

My client trusts her friend and this friend is eager to give lots of advice. Unfortunately the advice isn’t very good. It’s not based on sound judgment or experience. (This friend owned 3 businesses and all 3 of them went bust for a variety of reasons). Worse yet, this friend actively (I’d say aggressively) follows up with my client to make sure that the advice given is being followed.

As you read this, you’re probably as galled as I am by writing it, but it’s been far more subtle and spread over a period of years. And, without a doubt, this friend is also a nice person and very loyal in many ways so the poisonous business advice is sporadic compared to the good times they have together doing other things.

This leaves me and my client in a conundrum. My advice is that my client have a serious talk with her friend. My client, obviously, doesn’t want to. And I don’t blame her. Those "tough talks" are NOT pleasant. (Been there, done that).

There is another option, of course, and that is that my client simply doesn’t follow the advice of her friend. But, in my opinion, this will still lead to the same conversation; it will just be delayed.

I realize this post is a bit of a rant – it’s one of those coaching situations where you’d love to wave your magic wand and fix the difficult situation – but I do have a point:

After talking to my client about her poisonous peer, I realized that I had one in my life, too. I simply didn’t see it before until we started to uncover some of my client’s friend’s tactics. Which means that I need to have a "tough talk" in my life shortly too.

The motivator I use in these situations is to remind myself that a few minutes of pain in the conversation will yield a far happier and brighter future afterward.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

What’s Your Coaching Style?

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:04:56 +0000

Each one of us is unique: Our personalities, experience, education, and successes all contribute to give us a coaching style. What’s yours? I’ve given some thought to some of the more prominent coaching styles I’ve seen and have listed them here. It’s not an exhaustive list, nor have I tried to provide a balanced look of good points and bad points. These are a collection of observations.

It’s helpful to gaze into the mirror occasionally and think about how you do things. That doesn’t mean you need to change, but this mirror-gazing can help us to leverage our strengths and mitigate our weaknesses.

The director. You tell people what to do. You listen to their situation and then you outline what needs to happen and you pass the list back to them. You may provide ongoing director-style coaching as they follow your list (or you may not; I’ve seen both). This kind of coach is in demand because people like to be told what to do (even if they don’t think they do).

The peer. You sit on the same side of the table as your client. You nod understandingly and share from your own experiences. You tend to prefer referring to your work as "collaboration" rather than "coaching". You coach your client with a "let’s do this together" attitude that often helps the client to feel like they’re not alone in the effort. People respond well to this kind of coaching but there are times (like during payment) when you need to be professional so it can get challenging.

The bucket. You see each client as a deep well of potential and your job is to draw the answers out of them. Your coaching style includes plenty of probing questions and invitations to "explore those thoughts further". Clients explore their situations and use discussion with you to uncover the answer within themselves. This is a very client-centric model and can be quite empowering to clients. However, they may one day decide that you aren’t actually giving them "advice".

The librarian. You have a vast list of resources and tools at your fingertips. As soon as a client explains their challenge to you, you pull a book off your shelf and call up a list of websites to give them. This kind of coaching can be very empowering for clients but you may find that your clients are "spinning their wheels" because they are overwhelmed with information and lack the ability to act on it.

Each of these coaching styles presents opportunities and challenges. And it doesn’t hurt to think about who you are and how you might bring in aspects from other styles into your coaching.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

The Tipping Point To Acquire New Clients

admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:13:15 +0000

In the journey that a prospect takes towards becoming a customer, they are in control and receive free information to help them make a decision. But there comes a point in this timeline when the prospect hands over their money to you, the coach, and entrusts you to do your job and deliver what you say you are going to deliver. I call this the tipping point. The point where a prospect tips into being a client. It’s a difficult decision to make. Just think about the last time you made a major purchase like a house or a car. House hunting or car shopping was fun: You saw new things and you dreamed about the possibilities. But it felt like there was an invisible hand holding you back from handing over your cash!

That tipping point is a difficult one to make for new clients because it represents a major commitment on their part: A commitment of time and a commitment to part with the money they’ve worked so hard to earn.

One of the ways that you can get more clients is to ease that tipping point for them. Here are a few ways to do that:

1. Provide a free trial. You need to show people that the service you provide is high value. You can do that with a free trial. Offer the first hour free or the first 3 sessions free (or whatever is appropriate for your situation).

2. Provide a guarantee of some kind. For example, provide a full refund within the first 30 days of your coaching/client relationship if the client is not completely satisfied with the results to that point. This tends to scare off coaches because they’re afraid that people will take advantage of them, but it can work and fewer people will take advantage of the guarantee than is thought.

3. Give them limited access. If your coaching is in a group over the phone, such as in a mastermind group, provide your "tipping point" client with limited access: To listen in on a call but not participate, for example.

4. Provide bonuses. People love free bonuses and, ironically, are willing to pay more to get free bonuses. So, create plenty of free bonuses and offer them to new clients. This might include pre-recorded teleseminars or webinars, or it might include ebooks or print books. It might even include a coupon to purchase your book for a limited price on Amazon.

5. Create smaller purchasable segments so they don’t have to commit to as much all at once. If you normally coach for 3 hour sessions, why not offer special half-hour introductory sessions. These seem less daunting to your new client. You don’t have to offer them to everyone; just offer them as special introductory offers. Either make the first session or the first 3 sessions a half hour each, with all other sessions the full 3 hours if the client finds those first sessions useful.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

4 Things that High School Taught Me About Coaching

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:54:20 +0000

When I look outside of my office window around 8AM and around 3PM, I see herds of high school students wandering first to school then home again. It takes me back a few (okay more than a few) years to my high school days. And while I’m thinking about it, it inspired this blog. So, here are 4 things that high school taught me about coaching.

1. High school students seem to be always just one Facebook Wall post away from a crisis: Sam was seen with Brenda, what could that mean? Or, Joe didn’t say hello to April, it’s the end of the world. The same holds true for some of our coaching clients: They are in a potential state of near crisis. I do mean this humorously but not disrespectfully. Our clients don’t know the stuff that we’re working with them in. It is a big deal with them. Our job is to navigate the situation with some sanity.

2. High school students need to balance dreams with reality. They might aspire to be a teacher or cop or rocket scientist but they also need to face reality. Do they have the marks to make it? Do they have the dedication? You don’t want to crush their dreams but you also don’t want them to run down a futile path. Again, that’s like our job as coaches. We need to help our clients understand their dream of (for example) creating the next Twitter with the reality that (for example) they have no social networking experience. Our job is to help them find a real path that will take them close to their dream.

3. There are a lot of things competing for the attention of high school students: Their school work, an after school job, a budding romance, friends, and all that kind of stuff. These take on a priority in the student’s mind and it’s hard for the lower prioritized stuff to get the attention it needs. It’s the same as a coach: We can give plenty of advice and guidance to our clients, but we’re only speaking into their lives for an hour or two a week. The rest of the time they’ve got work to do, family life to live, the dog to walk, and the garbage needs to be taken to the curb. Our job, then, is to help them follow through on the advice we give (obviously we don’t want to do the work for them) but to make it easy for them.

4. Fashion is a ridiculously important element in high school. (I guess it’s important outside of high school, too, actually, but it seems to be more critically urgent in high school because of the impact that it can have on peer relationships). This kind of "cool" also appears in our work, too. I don’t know about you, but I often get clients who come to our sessions with the latest, most fashionable flavor of marketing idea to implement in their business. My job, in these cases, is to help them weigh the value and determine whether or not it’s truly going to help their business. As mom said, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s right.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

Coaches on Coaching

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:44:14 +0000

This is a great video about coaching. It’s actually just a 3 minute teaser for a much longer (paid) coaching video but it’s still a fantastic synopsis about what coaching is from different perspectives. But it’s not just a video for beginner coaches: I’m a coach and every time I watch this I think "hey, that’s a great way to think about coaching". It gives me a new perspective and "refreshes" my thinking on what my opportunities are with my clients.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

Succeeding With Two Tools You Were Born With

admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 04:22:22 +0000

The amazing thing about life is that we’re born with tools that can help us achieve great success. Some people are skilled with their hands and become craftsmen (and women), others are skilled with their voices and become great orators. We’ve also been gifted with a couple of ears and our ability to listen will help us dramatically succeed if we work at truly listening to what other people are saying.

Recently, I found a blog post that talked about succeeding by listening. To be honest, I almost missed this post all together because it appeared on a website that helps people as they work at improving their careers. The particular post in question was written to help employees increase their likelihood of a new job and / or promotion by listening.

So, since it was on this career site, I just about missed it. But I happened to click on it and was really impressed with the content for two reasons:

First, the article can be read by anyone, anywhere to help them become better listeners (and more successful people as a result).

Second, the article could be used as a tool for coaches to help their clients to become better listeners. I don’t care if you’re an executive career coach, business coach, a productivity coach, a family coach, a lifestyle coach, a relationship coach, a religious coach, a dieting and wellness coach… it doesn’t matter. Listening is a relevant and valuable exercise that EVERYONE can be better at doing.

The blog was written by Andy Robinson, a career success coach and personal branding specialist. It’s called "Listen Up! 10 Ways to Use Your Ears to Advance Your Career". His gems include:

Listen for ideas
Judge content, not delivery
Concentrate and resist distraction
… and more. Read the full article here: http://www.careerealism.com/listen-up-10-ways-to-use-your-ears/

Read the article and think about how it applies first to you and second to your clients.

Ask yourself: Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my clients? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my market? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my employees? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to my family? Am I listening as effectively as I could be to myself? Apply the skills you learn in the article to each group of people listed in this paragraph and watch how your life will be completely transformed.

Then, bring it into your coaching sessions. Ask your clients similar questions: Are you listening as effectively as you could be?

Take yourself and then your clients through each of the ten points (or alter them slightly if it’s more appropriate for your clients.

If your clients are responsive to this type of study, take one of Robinson’s ten points and cover it during each of ten sessions. By the end of those ten sessions, your clients will be expert listeners and they’ll HEAR huge opportunities and greater success as a result.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter. Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

Marketing Isn’t Enough

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:33:18 +0000

Recently, I received a call from someone who operates a fairly new coaching practice. He reported that had done quite a bit of marketing and sales but hadn’t acquired any more clients. I asked him to describe his efforts to me to see if we could discover where he was falling short.

He described his efforts in great detail. They included a number of very good practices including Twitter, website work, blogging, and more. In frustration he pointed out that he had done all of this sales and marketing work and was getting new clients. He was getting so many people coming to his site and his blog from various sources and they were calling his office to ask questions but none of them had become clients.

That’s when I broke the news to him: He had done a good job marketing his work. However, he was missing a critical component – sales. Marketing is an activity that involves positioning, branding, broadcasting, and announcing who you are and what you do. Selling is an activity that involves taking people who have responded favorably to your marketing and "closing the deal" so that they become clients.

For most people, marketing is a fun, energizing activity that is easy to do a lot of. It feels like you’re very productive. Selling, on the other hand, can feel demoralizing to many people and is an activity that is often low on the list to-do list. Selling doesn’t have to be the negative effort it feels like, but it often is.

As soon as we discovered the situation for this new coach, we outlined a regimen that balanced marketing AND sales. He could continue doing the excellent marketing efforts that he performed, but he needed to have a series of steps that followed up with those who came to him through a marketing channel.

First, he needed to understand what ground they had covered through is marketing channel and what questions they still had. So we outlined some of the most frequently asked questions he received on the phone.

From those questions we were able to put together a profile of the person who was inquiring. This helped us to know where they were in the process. Since many were asking about rates and availability, for example, we could safely assume that his marketing was doing a good job of convincing them of the value he offered. But since some people were asking more about what he offered, we had to also build a profile for those who wanted more over-the-phone information.

Knowing those two profiles helped us to know what needed to happen next to convince them to become customers. The first profile – those who were asking for rates and availability – needed to be prompted to try out the service and see the value of his coaching. The second profile – those who were asking about his services – were contacting him a little earlier in the process and needed assurances that his services were a good fit for them.

Then we created a bit of a phone script. Nothing elaborate or "mechanical" to deliver, but rather a few bullet points that he would definitely want to cover, depending on which of the two profiles called him.

And, most importantly, I encouraged him to ask for the appointment. This might seem strange to coaches who have never been in sales but if you ask any salesperson they will tell you that ASKING for the order (or the appointment) is a key to getting the sale. Failing to ask will result in lost sales. That’s because potential customers need to be taken by the hand and guided through the interaction and asking for the appointment is the way that guides them to the sale.

In your coaching practice, are you marketing yourself aggressively but lacking customers? Perhaps it’s because you aren’t selling enough.

Contemporary VA

@contemporaryva on Twitter. Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy:

Overcoming Procrastination: For You and Your Clients

admin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:08:53 +0000

This is an account of a colleague of mine (who gave permission for this to be posted). She had been asked a series of questions about various aspects of productivity and this was her response to a question about procrastination.

"… I used to be a procrastinator. I admit it. As someone who is connected to the web all day long, it was easy to surf. I had friends who sent me links to funny news stories, hilarious videos, humorous pictures, etc. And I shared back with plenty of things. I had a list of blogs that I read faithfully every day. I browsed social networking sites incessantly. If Twitter was around then (this was a couple of years ago now) I would have been on it constantly, too. Email was always open in front of me. And I had bookmarked a number of magazines whose online editions I read diligently.

In short, I would end a busy day with the realization that I had done very little. My busy day was just a façade. It was busy, but not with anything truly productive. I had little to show for each day. I still earned pretty good money and I did run a successful practice, so it was hard to notice.

But slowly, that procrastination eroded my effectiveness. It’s hard to believe now but I slowly and imperceptibly marketed less; I slowly lost clients; I slowly started to erode my business. It never got to the point where I was in dire straits, but in retrospect, my practice diminished.

I’d like to point to a time when I woke up and said "enough is enough" but it didn’t happen overnight. It was over the course of a few months when I realized that I had let things go and I needed to get back on track. I can’t point to a single catalyst but I can point to a few months in which I came back from the brink.

That was about 3 years ago. Since then, I’ve made dramatic changes: I limit my time on sites like Facebook and Twitter. I culled my blog reading to just a few minutes a day and only AFTER I’ve accomplished a pre-set list of tasks. I picked 3 favorite magazines and I read them when I’m not at work. While those were helpful strategies, the most effective thing I did was to make a covenant with myself that I would not become distracted during my work hours.

And it worked. I haven’t been this productive in a long, long time. It’s a good feeling to be focused again.

It seems to me to be a lot like a garden I once kept. It was a beautiful flower garden at the side of my house. But then I went away on vacation and when I returned I had a family emergency that took my attention away for a couple of weeks. When I finally returned to my garden it was a bed of weeds and it took a long time to work through those weeds and take control of the garden again."

Contemporary VA

@contemporaryva on Twitter. Follow us to stay updated with our many resources that include business, accounting and bookkeeping, social media, and much more!

Similar Posts:

Share and Enjoy: