How do I be a good coaching client?
How can I get the most out of this coaching experience
and investment so that I can use it to achieve the results
and benefits that I am seeking by making this investment?
So I really thought that would be a great topic for today.
If you do have questions and want some coaching,
I'm here for that, but in light of those questions coming in through the chat,
I'm going to take this opportunity for all of us to really think about
how to prepare yourself for working with a coach.
I will make a sidestep and say that if you've never worked with a coach,
then I really want to encourage you to make this a personal and a professional priority.
You will be astounded at just how much you're able to accomplish, achieve both internally
as well as in terms of your productivity by having a powerful wind beneath your wings,
which is what I call myself and many coaches will say that they are honored to serve in that way
to support the people that come to them for coaching.
I know that it sounds self-serving for me to encourage you to get a coach.
I don't mean it in that way.
I would be honored to have you sit down with me,
will complete a consult to see if in fact the fit is right between us,
but if not me, then I want to really encourage you to find a way
to make getting coaching a priority for you in your life.
I don't care what it is if you want to focus on a professional goal or a
basically just the overall performance that you have and how you feel
in your relationship to your work or into your family life or both.
A coach can make a world of difference in really helping you navigate in hard times
as well as in times when you are just finding yourself in a really busy period
and you feel like you're taking two steps forward and three steps back.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
Seek support with a professional coach because I promise you the burden,
the heavy, the overwhelm that oftentimes life serves up for us can be mitigated.
It can even be displaced significantly by working with someone who can give you the tools
and the thought work as well as the encouragement that I feel like life doesn't often give us.
So, I've got some notes over here.
I want to make sure that I hit the key points so that together we can really explore the idea
what does it mean to be coachable and more importantly,
how do you show up in a coaching relationship in a way that maximizes the investment
that you will be making in both time and money?
I think the first thing that I just want to recognize and I think the justification for this type of a subject is the idea that
we really, unless you have a history of working with maybe an athletic coach
or you have had some type of a family or maybe a school,
a person who is really influential to you and they served as a mentor or a coach,
most of us really just don't have the experience or the training to really know the benefits of coaching number one
and how much of a difference it can make, which is why I opened this session to describe that and to encourage you.
But I think also we don't really know how to lean in in a way that helps us really maximize the experience.
So the first point that I want to make is it's really incumbent on you as the client to make coaching pay off in terms of driving the changes in thoughts, actions,
and basically habits that will ultimately roll up to create the results that you are aspiring to.
It's really on your shoulders so often I think people will come to me and other coaches and they expect that the coach is going to wave some kind of a magic wand
and be able to all of a sudden bring success, bring results, bring prosperity into your life and in fact that's really just a flawed way of thinking
because it isn't the coach, it's really the responsibility of creating the success really falls on you as the client.
I think it's the first thing that you want to recognize having said that I do want to share with you.
There are primarily three reasons that individuals hesitate, avoid and sometimes don't move forward with bringing a coach into their life.
There's usually just three main reasons.
Number one, it's because they don't believe in coaching and I can tell you that with someone who has had a coach on and off for the last 40 years, I can't even think about how long it has been since I have used the support of a coach
in my life or personal and professional reasons but it's when you have the experience of having a coach that you will begin to understand the impact, the power, the influence and just the overall feeling of being supported, seen.
I just want you to experience that because it really can make all of the difference to get you unstuck at a phase or in a project or at a time when you want something different for your life.
That's how you know you may be in a situation where coaching really is an appropriate, it's an appropriate time for you to lean into a coach.
So the three reasons why people don't move forward with the coaches, number one, they don't really, they're not aware or they don't believe that coaching is the solution.
They may believe that going back and getting another degree or changing jobs or changing spouses or changing cities, they're taking and making external moves when in fact oftentimes what is really required in order to get to the heart of that angst is really making some internal changes.
So not believing in coaching is one step and I think the best remedy to that is find a coach, get a coach, experience the impact and that will absolutely open up the rest of your life and your understanding of the impact that coaching can have.
The second reason that people don't move forward in a situation where they are invited to work with a coach is because they don't believe that that particular coach gets their unique situation problem or challenge.
And I know that many clients come to me or are referred to me within the dental industry because that has been the place that I have called home for the last 30 plus years.
However, there are clients, in fact, one of the clients that I just brought on is from a completely different, basically the hospitality industry and does nothing to do with health care, but she was referred to me from a colleague who has experienced the power and the impact of my unique brand of business coaching.
And so the point is that sometimes that when you and if you are seeking a coach and if the coach and should offer an opportunity for you to get to know them in a consult or a coffee meeting or whatever it is that allows the two of you to connect.
So really, I believe strongly that there needs to be some type of a one on one interaction where you can evaluate the style, the personality, the you're just your overall energetic comfort with this person.
And to the coach is also in a position to determine whether or not from their perspective, you have what they are looking for in individuals that they invite to work with them.
I know I just had somebody yesterday that had come to me and I just didn't think that the fit was right.
I didn't think honestly not that I couldn't have worked with them successfully. I just didn't think they were ready to make the time and the energy and the focus commitment given some of the things that they had expressed to me.
So I think that's another sign is of a really a coach of integrity is it's someone who really is looking at the relationship, the potential relationship in a very clean way.
Looking at it from both sides of the relationship on behalf of what is in the best interest of the client, as well as what is in the best interest for the type of people that the coach is really experienced and comfortable in helping get significant transformation.
So it's figuring out the comfort level, the experience, and I think just to some degree, what I want to call just an energetic connection, do you feel connected to and do you feel that this is someone a coach that you could learn from,
because what you're about to hear in terms of how to be more coachable is going to require that you really open yourself up in an intimate way with a coach.
And if you feel guarded or if you feel like this person is not someone that you can fully be transparent with, then I would say keep on looking.
Okay, the third reason that people don't invest in coaching is because at some level, they don't believe that they have what it takes in order to achieve the results that they're seeking the coaching for the support for that they believe that their issues are too great or are not in alignment with.
The experience that the coach has had or that they somehow have some extenuating circumstances that make them, you know, a more difficult case, it more often than not, I find that if an individual, if I invite an individual to work with me and they choose not to move forward, more often than not, it is because of this.
Because of this very reason that they have decided that they may not will not probably won't get the results that are discussed and promised in the consultation and for the whole reason that they're investing in the coaching.
So to some degree for those of my fellow coaching colleagues out there, to a large degree, it is incumbent on the coach to be able to make a environment comfortable enough and open enough whereby the client is able to bring up their primary concerns or hesitations.
There are hesitations about working together, whether it's money or whether it's that they just feel that they just don't have enough time to dedicate to the coaching effort or their business or whatever it is that they're coming to you for.
I believe that those types of concerns really rest on the shoulder of the coach's responsibility to help the client to understand that those excuses, if you will, or objections are a normal and very expected part of what happens when the human brain is considering
making a big change. You have to remember as a coach that people come to us because they want to make a significant shift in their lives or in their careers.
And the notion of that kind of a significant shift to the reptilian brain is fire is, you know, all hands on deck, stop this person, do not leave the cave, do not do this. This is a terrible idea.
You don't have the money, you need to check with your spouse because they're negative, Nelly, and they'll talk you out of it. Whatever it is that the brain can use, that reptilian part of our brain, that wants to keep us in the same place.
We as coaches have to help our clients and our prospective clients to really get on to what is going on in this situation and to provide the safety and support and the awareness so that they can feel comfortable moving forward to make the investment in themselves, in their results.
Listening to their future self that is calling them to make this decision to invest.
So again, I think that when it comes to the normal and traditional objections and resistance that a coach faces, when the client is experiencing these concerns, we have to create an open dialogue so that we can help educate and make the client aware of this is what's going on.
Now, the fact that you're listening to this podcast, you're recognizing that indeed this is probably what has held you back. I find that about 60% of the individuals that don't move forward with coaching, this is the primary reason.
They just believe that they won't get the results or won't get the return on investment that they expect.
And again, I think that that's that working through those thoughts and those concerns really is part of the responsibility of the coach to be able to help the client understand what's going on.
The next step that I want to talk about is this idea of and this kind of builds on what I've just talked about to be more coachable and to get the most out of your coaching experience with whoever you work with.
I think it's really important that you prepare your mind for the resistance that will indeed naturally show up both at the time that you are trying to decide to make the investment as well as continuously in your coaching active coaching relationship.
The resistance is going to continue to occur. Why? Because you will be by way of the work that you're doing with the coach, you are going to be asking your brain to think in new ways, to do things you've never done before.
To believe in a future you that you have to believe first and then act to be able to create the evidence that it's working and in order to be able to take your brain and your thoughts in a way that will cause you to push through that negativity.
You need to work with someone that is going to help you to do that which leads me to my next point and that is you've got to be committed to decide to go all in.
Basically making the decision that you are no matter what in this you are moving forward and you are going to do whatever it is that your coach and you decide is the best path for moving forward.
Now I promise you that once you get over that initial resistance and hesitation of even signing up with a coach that is just one hurdle that you've mastered but there will be all kinds of other areas where your brain is going to bring up the resistance.
And so it's important for you to decide in advance and to know in advance this resistance is normal.
It's what of course my brain is doing because it's trying to do its job it's trying to keep me safe but now that I know that and that I know that to continue to do what I've been doing is going to get me more of what I've gotten.
And I don't want more of that I want a new plateau I want a new place that I am going I want to expand my life expand myself in a way that takes me higher to a place that comes from my decisions and my intentions for moving forward rather than simply responding to the waves.
And the changes that naturally occur in my relationships in my work and in my family life I want to gain some clear and focused agency in creating that plan and when I do that that is in direct opposition to my reptilian brain that is really keeping me wanting to keep me safe by not wanting to take those steps.
So I you have to prepare yourself to be all in and one of the ways that I recommend for an effect I require it in our coaching agreement.
I ask all of my clients to one of the caveats is that they will have no other coaches while we are actively involved in our coaching relationship.
And the reason that I do that is really very client centric and that is because clients and when you are going through a coaching experience your brain is going to offer that perhaps this particular way of doing things
or this particular approach or this strategy that you are getting from your coach will be opposed by someone else's philosophy or someone else's idea creating increased cognitive dissonance for you leaving you in the middle trying to figure out who is what is the best approach who is the coach I really need to be looking at and looking for
or rather than being all in burning the ships and saying to yourself no this is my coach and my coach is exactly the coach and the coaching and the strategies and the resources that I need for myself and my goals at this time.
Please play that back and listen to it again as part of your homework in preparing yourself to get the most out of your coaching decide that you are committed to whatever coach you are going to work with that they are going to be your one single source of support for the period of time that you commit to.
And during that time when your brain offers you and it will Instagram Facebook the internet all kinds of you will be getting hit with all kinds of distracting confusing and undermining.
Lures for you to turn your eyes away from the focus the plan the coach that you've decided to work with and invest in and use to help you drive the results that you are committed to and I just want you to be prepared for that.
And I want you to know what your response and strategy needs to be and that is something to the tune of this is my coach for my needs we have built my strategy that is going to work to help me achieve the results that I have decided and I am all in I recognize there are other paths that may get me there.
However, this is the path that is going to be and is the optimal path for me at this time.
So promise me that and you will save yourself a tremendous amount of time and aggravation going off on different bunny trails that of course a good coach will call you back and will be able to get you back on track.
But that's a lot of wasted time and energy that I just want to spare you another part of deciding to go all in and burning the ships is.
Oh yes, I will we said we're going to eliminate alternative forms of council which end up being more of a distraction or a derailment you're just going to oh this is this is the other thing that I want to say about the idea of going all in I really want you to consider and be very transparent.
You know, one of the the tools that I recommend for my clients from the very beginning is that they get a coaching notebook and this is a notebook that can be where you capture the great ideas that you are inspired to consider and perhaps work from these are places in which you will capture your notes.
You'll do your daily thought work that for myself as well as many other coaches they assign as part of the protocol of you becoming a new version of yourself who is someone who has already achieved the riddle that you are there to create.
And that requires ongoing daily work and you need a centralized spot to be able to capture those thoughts and ideas and you know basically inspiration that you want to be able to keep together so part of this going all in is really just having almost a talking to yourself.
Prior to or at the start of the coaching relationship that says I am going to show up for not just my live coaching sessions but for all of it for the gaps in between the sessions which is where the implementation the integration the the organization of the thoughts is following.
Following into your own other thoughts of the way you've been doing things and gets organized in a way that you can and will actually use for shaping and evolving into the new version of you.
So I just think it's important that you decide that you are going to be as transparent with your thoughts with your feelings both during the act of coaching session as well as the in the midst of doing some of the post session activities.
If you feel that you have an assignment that you have some negative thoughts about or feel as a waste of your time I think it's really important that part of you showing up in order to get the most out of the coaching experience if you need to offer some of the negative resistance that your brain is offering.
I think it's important that you be transparent enough to seek a different perspective by sharing this with your coach so that your coach can help you with a different perspective that will help you stay the course stay on focus for what it is that you've committed to in the work that you're doing together.
And I just find that too often we just you know clients just don't feel comfortable sharing I think this is dumb or this just feels like a lot of work for me to do when I have so many other things to do.
And if we're easy and anybody could do it right not only to be transparent but that I want you to be vulnerable I want you in your coaching sessions to be able to open yourself up to the new ideas the new possibilities that the coach is helping you to break open for yourself.
That when you were left to your own avail wasn't available to you didn't occur to you yesterday last night I was working with a client who has come up with a wonderful wonderful product and service that she is going to bring to elderly patients I cannot wait until this service is available.
And in a beautiful example of transparency we were working on the product itself and she looked at me with big eyes and she said do you really think this is a good idea because I go from one minute thinking this is so awesome that this is going to be available.
And then I think a few minutes later this is an awful idea nobody's going to buy this this is not going to go anywhere I'm just kidding myself what do you think and so being coachable is about being vulnerable enough to be able to ask that question to be able to borrow the belief from your coach until and in so far as you have built up.
Your muscle of belief through much of the work that you will be doing with a good coach so yes but you need to be able to express those thoughts those fears those concerns with the coach that you're working with you have to be willing to let the intimacy of that relationship allow you to be vulnerable and transparent enough.
It's not like any other relationship that you have and that is going to be dependent upon your willingness to go there and to let yourself be able to lean in to that type of transparency that I think is is what makes those individuals so much more successful and use the coaching to really create.
A rapid deep and lasting transformation that other people who resist it don't necessarily get so burning the ships is a really just deciding with blind trust that you that this is your coach and you are all in for all of the coaching and all of the advice even if you don't believe in or understand it.
That you're going to go there and your belief will catch up the second thing in being all in or burning the ships that you want to eliminate alternative distractions and other teachers that may delay impede or detour you getting where you can go and will go if you just stay the course.
And then third and final as far as the going all in I think one of the very best what I guess I would call mechanical strategies for keeping yourself accountable for being all in is to pay for the coaching all at once in one lump sum.
You know many coaches require for this in order that they will have clients that are literally all in because the investment for coaches varies as widely as the skill levels and experience levels are of the coaches out there.
But oftentimes it's a significant investment and so many coaches will use the strategy of financially getting their client to be all in upfront when their enthusiasm is high in order that they would use that investment and the pain associated with that investment in order to keep their client engaged.
Involved and actively participating in the coaching relationship and it's a strategy that works I know myself when I use a personal trainer who is a form of a coach I have to pay for all of those sessions up front and if I don't show up I pay anyway.
And I have found on more than one occasion that it's that very principle that I've paid and if I don't show up I'm going to pay I get myself out of bed of 430 and I go and I work with the with the trainer.
I personally want to work with individuals who for one reason or the other and not access the lump sum option to work with me.
My monthly investment is one that is significant for a lot of people and I don't make any apologies for that that in part is part of my strategy for making sure that when you pay you pay attention and I want people who are going to not just pay attention
but who are not interested in making changes in their life they are committed to really up leveling their life and I have come up with an investment level on a monthly basis that really especially because I work with with many entrepreneurs and business people it's not a huge chunk of money.
It's fraction frankly a very small fraction of what it is that we are creating together so they're happy to pay that money every month because they in a very short period of time see the return on that investment but it is an investment nonetheless that requires them to pay and pay attention in order that they get the kind of return on investment financially.
If no for no other way the financial as well as the time ROI that I help guide them in holding the coaching relationship accountable for but again as I said in the beginning the onus and the responsibility of extracting that ROI.
It isn't on the coaches shoulders it is on the shoulders of you as the client and that's why I wanted to have this conversation and I wanted to share these strategies with you.
Another idea that I want to make sure that you get is to ensure that you give yourself enough time to be able to get your results to get caught up with your belief that you are transforming into someone who is able and has completed
and has achieved the level of results that you have sought the coaching support for. I have had a very small number of individuals who started to work with me and in a very short period of time one client it was after three months another client it was after two months.
Another client it was three months but that was for a good reason because she had already blown away all of her ten goals that she had she had done them instead of six months she did them in three months and she wanted the bandwidth of time and focus to be directed to the new life she had created.
So that was a little different reason and I still think about Jesus if we would have continued for the additional three more months what kind of additional ideas and results would she have been able to accomplish but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do was to release her from that responsibility.
But the other two individuals who quit on themselves quit on their dreams quit on their belief that they could create a transformation for their lives as well as for their business and the people that work for them they quit on them.
And I just can't tell you for somebody that you know I we as coaches are in this because we genuinely want to contribute in a positive way to the lives of individuals and when people quit on themselves too soon it is just it just greaves me.
And so this is the reason that I want to be able to encourage you that whatever your commitment is in the upfront it usually is dictated by the coaches experience and if not I would ask that for what is a time commitment a minimum time commitment that makes the most sense for you given where you are and where you want to go.
For some clients it's six months other clients it's a year other clients it's even 18 months the answer really is as unique as you and your situation I believe that a season coach will have an opinion and will have a requirement a minimum requirement in order to help hold the client in the relationship
hold I say with gentle with gentle hands gentle gloves hold them so that they can transform have enough time to where they can transform in the relationship as they begin to see the results that they're actually creating.
But it takes a little time particularly depending on where you come from if you've come from and in the situation of the two individuals that had quit working with me they've never had someone love them enough support them enough to believe and hold their dreams for them.
And so they continue to break those promises to themselves break their promises to their own business and they continue doing what they've always done and that is move forward without the support that they ultimately really need in order to create that new life and transform transformation that they desire.
And I don't want that to be you so as part of you being coachable know that whatever the time commitment is that you are going to hold yourself to that time period so that you are able to get the results and see the results chasing you down as you are working through the program using the other.
Other strategies that I talked about and the last thing I want to share as we wrap up is I think it's really important that as you enter into a coaching relationship that you have done the due diligence of identifying the time blocks that you are going to need.
In order to have your active one one coaching period which usually is scheduled at a time that works for both of you.
And so that's sort of put in your calendar what I would say if you need it is to make that live coaching time sacred make it the time that you are going in to the most important appointment.
That you would not break that promise for yourself for almost anything.
And I know that you know many of us have different hats different responsibilities different commitments that we that we make and especially as a woman and as a mom it's so easy to break the relationship or the commitments that are for just you and for your dreams.
And for your future and I really want you to when you schedule your coaching time to make it sacred and make that time organize yourself in such a way to where you let very little to nothing getting the way of that commitment.
I'm thinking about one client who was just really got this and she actually flew out of the country and still maintained I didn't even know she was so committed to our coaching sessions that she was calling me at two o'clock in the morning in her time zone in Japan.
And that just it just made me smile because this person was a superstar through and through but this was such a perfect example of what those high performance individuals do to support the commitments that they make to them self.
And this is what I want you to find that expansion that growth that really that inner strength and pride that comes from you fulfilling the promises that you make from yourself and not looking for ways to get out of them or to deflect them or to reschedule them to really like make that commitment.
Having said this I also respect and understand and certainly good coaches make accommodations for changes and schedules that you allow you to book or bank your sessions in a way to where you can still use that time at another time that works.
But I think and hopefully you understand the gist of really making that commitment making the time not just for the live coaching but also the commitment that you need on a daily a weekly and even in a monthly situation where you are like I know myself I have a time slot every morning that I commit to doing my thought work.
And I there's very little that gets in the way of that I don't care if I'm on vacation or if I'm in this state or another state it doesn't matter I am committed to that thought work and to that self care that is such a critical part of how I show up and do this work with the kind of enthusiasm.
And at the level that I do it and this is what I want you to really think about now you don't have to have all that mapped out before you join with a coach a good coach is going to give you the tools and the resources and the support and the ideas on how you can fit this into your life.
And so again I'm not suggesting you work all that out in advance but make sure that you're prepared to be able to carve out the time even if it means that you get up a little earlier stay up a little later in order for you to have that that time to do the work of implementation.
You know one of the biggest surprises for me I was 20 I was 24 years old true I was the youngest member of the executive MBA program at the University of Houston and it was as you may know with executive programs they're very accelerated you do.
So basically full coursework in a condensed period of two days and I think our schedule was we met all day Friday every Friday and then every other Saturday or something like that anyway I was when did my undergraduate work as a dental hygienist so I didn't have any business classes.
There I found myself in ex a graduate level accounting classes at an accelerated level the statistics class I mean I have a whole funny story I can tell you about statistics how I got through the MBA version of statistics it's like classic Anita but my point was what I didn't budget for in my timeline when I made the commitment to start that program was.
All of the hours of group work and coursework and study work I at the time was responsible for a five state region and I was trying to balance that I mean I could do the class work because I did block that time out because half of it was on my personal time but what I didn't budget for what I didn't account for was all much more time it was going to take for me to get the homework.
And the classwork and the research done and this is what I'm talking about with regards to coaching coaching is going to work for you if you are committed to move and change and edit and ask for some support for you to have the bandwidth to be able to apply the implementation and time that it's going to take for you to truly create the results that you've sought.
So those are really my high level ideas on what I have observed those clients that I've been so honored to serve who have absolutely crushed it in very short periods of time they have followed these principles and as well as the
coaches perspective the advice and counsel that I would give to you if you are considering working with a coach again I would be honored to sit down and talk with you shoot me a note at Anita at dental industry insider dot com if you are interested in coaching otherwise save this episode so that when you take on a coaching.
The relationship that you can really prepare yourself in a way that will cause you to get the most out of it so for now that's all I've got for you have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you next week.
