Have you ever felt unsure of yourself as a coach? Scared that you might not have an answer for someone? You have the qualifications to be a coach so what makes you so hesitant? It often all comes down to confidence. What if you have – right now – much more to offer a client than you think? What if you could make a big difference to someone’s life right now?

Here are some valuable things that you can offer a client immediately:

1.) The way you listen

Most people listen in the ‘waiting for my turn to speak’ mode or they are busy noticing whether what they are hearing is boring or entertaining. But the coach listens with undivided attention. A coach listens and thinks, ‘is this moving forward?’, ‘are there actionable steps to take?’ Simply by both of you coming together to look for ways your client can progress, you are  giving your client something he or she doesn’t normally get from a conversation.

2.) Being there each week

It’s amazing how much a person will do because there is someone to hold them accountable. They know next week you are going to ask them, ‘Did you do it?’ Just by being there, you are helping them to discover what is important in their life. It’s like having a running partner. Without your partner there, you might not go very far or even bother to get out of bed to go for a run. With your partner, your attention is focussed on the running and you will run further, faster and with more excitement.

3.) A sounding board

Being able to talk about their issues lends clarity to your clients. Just discussing what has been clanging about their heads all week is valuable. Have you ever tried to solve a problem and got nowhere until you had a chance to talk about it with someone? You are giving your clients an opportunity to do that every week.

4.) A second head

You may be able to see what they are doing in a new light. You may have a different perspective allowing you to see their blind spots. Some things may be obvious to you but don’t even occur to them. You might have different ideas.

These are just a few of your amazing qualities. You can make a difference to the people around you and the best thing you can do right now is to believe this yourself.

By David Wood

Jane Drapkin qualified through The Coaching Academy programme and has enthusiastically agreed to share her coaching experience, so we have put her in the Coaching Hot Seat.

Here is Jane’s story:-

What brought me to coaching?

As a manager working in charities in the international relief and development sector I’d always used a coaching style to support my staff, although at the time I didn’t assign the term coaching to it.

This developed into a more professional approach when I joined a human resource consultancy and began giving 1:1 feedback to clients on psychometric tools which again was coaching, without being called it as such!

The real prompt to move into coaching as a profession came when I had to take several months off sick to recover from major back surgery. I found that although when people came to visit me I was the one lying down, in practice I was often the one listening to other people’s needs, concerns and issues. And, more importantly, I got a real buzz out of helping people to feel better about whatever it was that was bothering them.

Also whilst I was recovering I had a key concern of my own, which was how was I going to earn a living now that I had a back condition that limited the amount of travel I could do?

Consultancy was great fun, very interesting and hugely rewarding, but it involved travelling to wherever the client was – be that in Bristol, Chester, Glasgow or Birmingham, and my back wouldn’t be able to cope with that. I was also not going to be in a position to apply for a job based closer to my home in Windsor until I was fully recovered – and that was likely to take many months if not a couple of years.

So putting together the fact that I loved helping people to sort out their problems, and I needed a new career that enabled me to work at, or close to, home – becoming a professional coach seemed like a great idea!

What did I find most interesting to learn?

For me the most interesting aspect of coaching has been about the way we can control our feelings, and therefore our actions and the outcomes we achieve, by the language we use. I have found this incredibly powerful, and am still startled by the impact this has on me when I consciously apply it to my own way of thinking and talking and on my clients when they do likewise.

What was the most rewarding part of the training/journey? Which bits did you enjoy the most?

If I’m totally honest the most rewarding part was getting great feedback and testimonials from my practice clients!

For me the most enjoyable bits of the training were the coaching sessions.

I loved (and still love)the feeling of making a difference, and I particularly loved the sessions where the client had a tricky or complex issue to work on and I had to be 110% engaged with them and their agenda, responding to their needs as the coaching session developed and helping them to make that ‘breakthrough’ that enabled them to move on.

How did the qualification slot in with my current life? What else did I have to consider whilst qualifying?

When I was training I was on unpaid leave from my employer and I therefore had plenty of time to focus on the qualifications. I trained for the Personal Performance Coach and NLP practitioner at the same time.

I combined with this my ‘back recovery programme’ which involved lots of physio and other medical appointments, regular walking and swimming and a rigorous regime of daily exercises – some of which could be done whilst listening to teleclasses or watching training DVDs!

Where am I now? What is my niche?

I am now in the set up stage of my coaching business. I have some clients already, and am working on a range of ways to increase my visibility and my client base.

My niche seems to be evolving… my passion is to help people that need to make or deal with changes to their lives for health reasons – a subject close to my heart.

More generically my niche is working with clients that are dealing with change, and want to ‘unmuddle’ their heads to enable them to move forwards in their lives or their work.

The best thing that could happen to my coaching business in the next two years is…

That coaching becomes recognised as an effective method of support for people dealing with health issues.

My favourite coaching question is:

“What is your key takeaway from this session?”

It’s not sophisticated, funny or particularly original, but it always makes the client take stock of what they’ve been talking and thinking about, and as well as them taking away actions, it means they are taking away a change in mind-set.

What do I enjoy most about being a coach?

This is hard to answer as there are so many aspects of being a coach that I enjoy, but if I did know the answer…. it would be that my interest in ‘what makes people tick ‘ is being continually fed every day!

My top tips for:

- People who are looking at coaching:

Look at it! Give it a go! Think seriously about how you want to use it.

There are many ways to be a coach without actually being a full time coach. To run a coaching business you not only need to be a coach, you also need to run a business.

If this isn’t for you, think about how else you might want to use your coaching skills.

- Those coaches currently in training:

Enjoy the ride! Grasp whatever learning you can – it can come from many directions. And practice what you preach!

Give all the exercises a go, have a coach yourself, set yourself goals, explore your limiting beliefs, get out of that comfort zone….

- Coaches that are about to qualify?

About to…? What are you waiting for? Go ahead and do it!

- People that are in a similar situation to myself?

Get a coach, coach yourself, keep using and implementing all the things you learnt in your coaching training.

And keep checking the R part of your SMART goals – as Bryan Tracy said – if you’re not hitting your goals, it’s not the goals that are unrealistic, it’s your timelines…

Have you ever had a major setback stop you in your tracks? Well, you’re not by yourself. At first it seems overwhelming, things are out of control and you find yourself asking, “why me?” Guess what? It’s not only you.

We all experience setbacks, some more than others, during our lifetime. For me, it was a sudden unexpected event. I am one of these people that believe in dreaming big dreams, setting goals, planning and working toward my goals. I felt like all my ducks were in a row. Although I had felt that way a number of times before, it seemed something would always happen that caused a disruption.

Yeah that’s it! It’s all cyclical. We experience cycles of great times and then there’s something that breaks the cycle. Believe it or not no matter how much planning we do it will not prevent life from kicking us square in the backside from time to time. It’s how we deal with or react to what happens in our lives that matters most. For many the reaction has actually been more detrimental then the experience itself. Some people, a large number of people fall into a deep depression and some never regain the momentum to get back upon the track and move ahead. Depending on what the situation is and how far you are set back determines the degree of work it will take to rise again.

For me the setbacks were severe and many. I felt like I was playing dominos. They were falling fast and I had no way of stopping them. Initially, I had the energy to work toward regaining the momentum. It just seemed like I was hit with one thing after another. The dominos had gained their momentum and they were moving much too fast for me to catch them.

I can testify to the fact that it’s hard work to get back in the game. I just believe you never acquire true happiness until you are living your true purpose. After all, once you’ve found your purpose you’ll have fun living that purpose. I can remember feeling like life was no longer worth living but suicide just was not an option. Just hold on with all your might, do your best everyday and never give up.

I heard Les Brown once say “OQP” (Only Quality People). Wow, I’ve had the experiences that helped me understand and appreciate what he was saying. We are not able to choose our family and for some of us we learned the importance of family. We learned to stick together. Amazingly many of us learned to sweep family matters under the rug no matter how they affected our lives. We often carried some of these lessons over into our close friendships. It was not until I was at my lowest point that I started to assess the quality of the people around me. My brother had a bad habit of being the taker in our relationship. He always seemed needy. During most conversations with him the topic was him and his situation. Over time, that left me feeling like he didn’t value me. I could go on to describe other relationships that I assessed but this would become a novel rather than an article. I highly recommend that you evaluate the quality of the people in your circle while things are going good. Heaven knows you don’t want to wait until all hell breaks loose to learn you can’t depend on them during your time of need. What about emotional support? Is this person honest with you when you need them to be? Is this person helping you grow? Does this person provide constructive criticism? Decide what characteristics are of value to you? Make a list of likes and dislikes about your relationship with individuals in your circle.

Don’t procrastinate another day! Start right now where you are with what you have. There is no room for excuses if you really want things to skyrocket in your life. Go through life everyday with a sense of urgency. Remember to believe in yourself if when others doubt you. Know that I believe in you…YOU CAN DO IT!

The enormous benefit that you experienced during your Coaching Qualification is now going to be available to you post qualification too.

At The Coaching Academy we always listen to what our coaches have to say about their experiences whilst qualifying. Due to an overwhelming number of coaches stating that they feel they would love to have further supervision sessions post qualification, we are delighted to now offer this as part of our ongoing coaching support services.

What a fabulous way to keep your coaching practice fresh and at the same time maintaining your continuous professional development (CPD).

You will no doubt have heard during some of your accelerator days other coaches discussing the ‘practical assessments’ some feeling anxious about booking their first and some stating how much they learnt as a result of the feedback they received wishing they had got stuck into these earlier.

For a small fee you are able to book additional observed supervision sessions whenever you feel that you would like to:

• confirm that you are maintaining great practice
• ensure you are still covering all of the core competencies
• refresh your knowledge and understanding of the goal setting process

So whether you qualified recently or several years ago, now is a great time secure your observed session.

So here’s what you need to do…

Simply contact the office on 0208 4399 440 and request to book your additional observed supervision sessions and one of the assessment team will be in contact to get this scheduled in at your earliest convenience.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Author and Writing Coach Jurgen Wolff explains what American Idol, The Secret, and great athletes can teach you about marketing your coaching company effectively.

When you’re training to be a coach, it seems that developing the skills to help people achieve their most cherished dreams is the hard part of the process. Only later do we realise that the next step—getting clients—can be even more difficult. Here, for your consideration, are three models from other fields that can help.

Model 1: Learn from The Secret
You’ve probably been exposed lately to the phenomenon known as The Secret, a film and now a book that suggests we can have anything we want, if we focus our attention on it. The concept is controversial because it suggests that we attract everything we experience, including all the bad things. But The Secret contains another idea that people are reluctant to admit, and it can give you a short-cut to coaching success: We want what we want, without any effort!
Let’s leave aside for the moment whether or not The Secret is true, the key thing about it for anybody marketing a service is that you have to give clients what they want and to make it as easy for them as possible.

Who has already learned this? CNN is one example: all the news in easily digestible form, repeated every quarter hour. Google has learned it: search the Internet by typing the term you’re looking for. If you’ll allow me a personal plug,

I learned it, too: in my book, Your Writing Coach, I take the reader by the hand through the entire writing process, from overcoming the initial fear of writing all the way through to marketing what they’ve written. On the website that goes with the book, I give the bonus of a dozen video interviews, because that’s an even easier way to process information.

If you want to apply this to your practice, there are three things to do:

• Start with one simple question: What does the client really want? From this article, you want to know how The Secret can help you be a more successful marketer. From a thriller novel, you want entertainment that is full of suspense and surprises. From a coach, people usually want help reaching the goals that are most meaningful to them.
• Make sure your marketing material engages the imagination of the recipient. I’ve seen coaching ads that say, ‘You’ll learn to be much more effective.’ This is kind of an abstract notion. But if you promise me that you’ll help me attain my most cherished goal, first I have to go inside and identify my most cherished goal, and then I will imagine how it would feel to have someone help me get there. Much stronger!
• Be clear how this is going to be an easy and rewarding experience for the client. I’m not suggesting that you pretend it will be effortless, only that you demonstrate how you will make it easier and less fraught. Again, this means going back to what the client wants—for example, to know that when he or she encounters obstacles there will be someone standing by who can help. Also that you will guide them step by step, so they will not be overwhelmed.

When you use this method, other coaches may wonder how you attracted such success—and only you and I will know the secret.

Model 2: Learn from American Idol
American Idol is one of the top-rated shows around the world, spawning similar formats in almost every country. They’re fun to watch, but even more important is the fact that they can teach us something about marketing. Here are the lessons American Idol offers:

People love an underdog. Every season, at least one favourite emerges who has some kind of difficult background or personal issue. Maybe it’s an orphan, or somebody from a very poor background, or someone who overcame a major illness, or who has some kind of handicap. In the UK version, one year the singer who got to second place, Gareth Gates, had a stammer so severe that he could barely talk.

In your marketing material, it can be useful to stress the challenges you have faced and overcome—in many cases, this probably is what drove you to want to help others through coaching.

People love strong personalities. On American Idol it’s not necessarily the best singers who go the distance, it’s the ones who have the most distinctive personalities. Some are funny, some are sexy, some are extremely down-to-earth, but what’s important is that they’re not bland.

Are you projecting a strong personality in your marketing materials? If not, how can you strengthen your image?

People love surprises. Part of the fun of watching American Idol is that the song themes change every week (one week it’s 60s, another week it might be old classics), there are appearances by big singing stars, etc.

Do you give your current clients any unexpected bonuses? What can you do to surprise them in a positive way to keep the experience of working with you fresh and interesting?

Model 3: Learn from top athletes
A lot has been written about what we can learn from the top athletes; one of the most revealing classic studies was described in Scientific American Mind magazine. The study revealed that athletes who qualified for the Olympics had the same levels of anxiety and doubt as their less successful peers. The difference was that the Olympians were better at constantly encouraging themselves.

Forging a career as a coach can be compared with running a marathon or competing in an endurance event: you have to develop both skills and stamina, and you are bound to encounter setbacks. By adopting the techniques used by athletes, you can also increase your chances of winning. Here are six ways to learn from the world of successful athletes in your marketing efforts:

• Pace yourself. Set small goals to work toward. Nobody establishes a reputation overnight, they do it article by article, speech by speech, interview by interview, blog post by blog post.
• Reward yourself for reaching milestones. Have a little celebration when you reach key points in your marketing campaign.
• Make a list of your previous successes. When you doubt that you’re going to achieve your current goal, it’s useful to remember times in the past when you have succeeded. Probably this is something you recommend to clients, but are you doing it yourself?
• Get and give support. Find a coaching buddy or group so you can get constructive feedback, help when you’re stuck, and general encouragement.
• Become aware of your self-talk. If you are saying negative things to yourself, consciously stop and change to positive statements—another one that you may be recommending but forgetting to do.
• Taking a leaf from the book of Olympic athletes, accept that anxiety and doubt are a natural part of the process, not a sign that you should give up.

With teachers like Lance Armstrong, American Idol, and The Secret you may soon find your marketing efforts rocketing you to greater success than ever before.

By Jurgen Wolff