Being a coach is no small undertaking – we want the best results for our clients.
To achieve this you want to be the very best you can be.
Helping your clients to get results is two-fold and this is the key to any thriving coaching practice. Successful coaches want their clients to get better results for two reasons:
- You want your client’s to be successful in their goals.
- You want your business to be successful and make money.
The first makes the second one possible (You want your coaching business to make money, right?! 🙂)
An in-demand coach creates transformational and lasting change because they are the catalyst for significant client results. At the same time, they are generating a consistent flow of word-of-mouth referrals.
Yet, many coaches struggle to achieve both because they unconsciously reach the edge of their coaching limitations and can’t see how to coach beyond the level they are currently working.
They stay stuck.
They don’t grow and therefore, their business doesn’t grow and their income doesn’t grow.
Our coaching processes will only take us so far…
Most people learn how to coach by focusing on developing their competency and skillsets, and by defining their coaching process. These are the basic essentials for any coach, whatever the context of your work.
Taking a coaching certification or accreditation will help you with your confidence and competence to become a coach, but it will only take you so far…
Great coaching reaches far beyond simply what works and quick fixes.
So how do you identify your coaching limitations to get better results for your clients and make your business more successful?
Let me share with you how I’ve done this by creating two very successful coaching businesses from the ground up…
How do you help your clients get brilliant results?
I use three entry points when I’m coach-mentoring clients.
This holistic approach helps me to pay attention to the strategies and perspectives that will best support my client in achieving their desired outcomes and goals.
Using these intuitively helps me deeply understand my client and coach them from where they are…
Acknowledging and working with clients as whole human beings.
It is widely known that human beings have three primary centers of intelligence: Thinking, Feeling, and Doing.
But did you know that most coaches have an unconscious bias toward one of these centers and possibly a blindspot in another?
Psychologists agree there are three parts to the mind with separate domains for thinking, feeling, and doing.
Each of these centers is an entry point for coaching.
Coaching from a combination of all three parts of the mind is essential if you want your clients to have the most successful results from working with you.
Do you coach from all three?
Why is this important?
A client’s unique ability is where all three parts of the mind fit together. When they are fully present and grow in these three centers – they flourish!
Everyone has an equal amount of mental energy for engaging the thinking (Cognitive) and feeling (Affective) parts of the mind to produce purposeful doing and taking action (Conative)…
If you don’t coach to balance energy in these three areas then it’s like riding a tricycle with a wobbly wheel – your client is going to struggle to reach their destination, and may even go around in circles!
It is IMPORTANT to recognize coaches can unconsciously have a bias toward one of these centers.
If you don’t do the inner work to develop all three of these centers for yourself, your coaching results will be limited… (you have your own wobbly wheel 🙂).
I coach intuitively with each center (or centers) that my client needs to pay attention to and become more aware of, in order to grow. This may change as our coaching develops.
Here’s a brief description of each center.
(OBSERVATION: Notice if you have any bias towards a center or if you sense you have one center that you have a limited capacity to coach from.)
The Head Center – Cognitive – Thinking
This part of the mind relates to your learned behaviors and skills. What you know. What you can do, how you learn, and the skills you need to develop.
This is your capability, intelligence, learning style, skills, experience, and education.
From a coaching perspective, you might be coach-mentoring your clients to develop their knowledge, skills, and expertise in a particular topic. E.g. I mentor and teach clients how to coach, or how to market their business.
What skills and knowledge does your client need to achieve their goals?
If unaddressed, your client would be limited to what they already know and what has got them this far. They may stay stuck in their own head trying to figure it out.
What knowledge, skills, experience, and expertise do you bring to your coach-mentoring? How do you coach your clients to develop their skills?
The Heart Center – Affective – Feeling
This part of the mind relates to your feelings. What do you like to do? What do you want to do? How do you self-sabotage? What is your personality?
This relates to your emotions, feelings, personality, desires, values and beliefs, attitude, and motivation.
From a coaching perspective, you might be coaching your client through his/her fears or self-doubt so they can take action and get results. They might have unconscious limiting beliefs holding them back and keeping them stuck.
What unconscious personality patterns are holding your clients back from taking real action to achieve their goals? How well do you understand personality and behavior especially when they are different from your own?
What coaching support do your clients need in this center?
If not addressed, there is no motivation or desire to take action and they won’t have the courage to develop their skills. Self-doubt and limiting beliefs will prevail and your client might always be getting ready to be ready…
How does your personality (and unconscious patterns) undermine your coaching?
IMPORTANT: Also understanding this helps you in your marketing and sales conversations, because you deeply understand people’s behaviors and can be authentic and congruent…
The Gut/Instinctive Center – Conative – Doing
This part of the mind relates to your natural working style – how you do things.
We all have our own way of working that drives what we will and won’t do. This relates to your mental energy, drive, urges, necessity, and innate force.
It is your instinctive way of working when you are thriving. You get energy from your instincts when you are working with the flow and not against it.
From a coaching perspective, how are you helping this person develop in this Center? Do you understand your client’s working style?
For example, you are helping them use their natural strengths to problem solve and make decisions most effectively. This frees up their mental energy to take action and get results. They get to do it their way!
If not addressed, your client will stay stuck. Everything will feel like hard work because they are working against their natural way of doing things. Their instincts will become dormant as unused potential. They’ll procrastinate and nothing happens.
The missing piece for most coaches
If you are a coach-mentor, the person who needs your help isn’t going to work with you just because you have good information. Someone will work with you because you can help them get results.
This is IMPORTANT work…
If you want to engage your clients in a more in-depth process of self-exploration and discovery, so they can recognize their own automatic patterns, then you have to develop a more intimate, trusting, coaching-client relationship.
When all three centers are engaged your clients are most open, flexible, healthy, and expansive. Understanding this combination of energy and coaching appropriately to each of these three centers will transform lives and get results.
…AND you will be more successful in your coaching business too!
Do you have a wobbly wheel in your coaching?
It’s time to fix that! 🙂
Reach out if you’d like help to discover your biases and blindspots in your coaching business…
Elaine, Thank you for another excellent blog. You are always right on point and so helpful. Coaching to the whole person and addressing the 3 centers of the brain are such important things to do .
Judy, thanks so much for letting me know. Absolutely! It’s so important to coach from these deeper levels if you truly want to get the best results for your clients and grow your business.