The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
1. Pick a goal that excites you – not something you think you SHOULD have.
2. Would you choose this if you only had 12 months to live? Reassess your priorities.
3. Make it real by being specific: by when will you have it? How many, what colour? How will you feel?
4. Will this goal fulfil you, or just be another thing to have? Is it thing related, or people related? Spiritual? Something which expresses who you really are?
5. What are the key milestones to achieve along the way. Again, be specific.
6. Work out how to make it fun – be creative. e.g. a picture of the dream body you will become on your wall.
7. Broadcast it. Commit to this by telling three key people you will do this, announcing it via email, and putting a display up on your wall. (If you’re concerned about failure or how you’ll look, work with a coach).
8. Don’t play Lone Ranger. Write your list of what who and what you have access to which could help you.
9. Write your list of what needs to be done to achieve the first milestone.
10. Put your support structures in place to help you achieve this (e.g. a buddy doing the same thing, a coach, diarised action steps at specific times)
The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
Instead of floundering around, you’re actually working on some exciting, inspiring goals. So, you start with what do you want, and help them. Some questions you can ask that might help elicit that are things like, ‘What’s one thing you’d love to change?’ ‘Is there anything in your life that you hate?’ ‘Is there anything in your life that you’d really love to have more of?’ Another good one is, ‘If there was a goal that might be even too big for you to achieve – but if you could have anything in the world, you’d probably go for it – what would that be?
Client: OK, yeah.
David: OK, now another way to break that down when people are having trouble, is to ask them about different areas of their life and go through the standard areas; relationships, finances, health, career. Go through that and just ask them to maybe score each one out of ten. That will tell you pretty quickly if the client is saying, ‘Oh, I just have no idea what I’d work on with a coach.’ That will tell you pretty quickly which area is not so hot.
Client: Yeah.
David: Then you can work with them on creating a goal. Now a lot of people can tell you what they don’t want. Part of your job is to spin it around. Haven them tell you what they do want that could replace that. So, no negative goals – no, ‘Oh, I want to get rid of my partner, or my relationship.’ You want to turn that around…
The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
1. Make eye contact twice as often as you normally do.
2. Say “hello” to people on the street.
3. Introduce yourself ~first~ (don’t wait for them – they might be waiting for you!)
4. Hang out where the types of people you want to meet hang out.
5. Hang out with people who have lots of friends and associates!
6. Find out about them, not the other way around (OK, it’s obvious, but….)
7. Get their contact details, not the other way around.
8. If you want to build a relationship (business or personal), follow up with a call or email!
9. Organise get-togethers for your neighbours and friends
10. Remember, if you do get what looks like a negative reaction, it’s their stuff – it’s not about you!
The following is an excerpt from Top Coaching Techniques.
Client: Such a huge combination of things – coaching – isn’t it?
David: It really can be, and I told you that I was going to give you three models, but I want to give a fourth one. This is perhaps the most important, and it’s the scariest. So I can understand coaches not using it – well, they have to use it, but not wanting to rely on it – but it’s really fundamental, and that’s simply sharing what comes up for you to share.
This is the ultimate model. What you do is speak the truth, so if the client says, ‘I want to leave my husband.’ you look at what comes up. What comes up might be, ‘Oh, you sounded so happy. Really, I don’t understand. You sounded happy, but you want to leave. Can you say more about that?’ Now that’s not a coaching technique, that’s just intuition. That’s what came up for you. If something comes up like, ‘Oh, are you okay? You know, are you feeling okay? Are you stressed?’ If that’s what comes up, you might ask that. Of course, there are hundreds of things that could come up for you. You may be thinking…
Client: Yeah, I’ll never anticipate everything. So I’ve stopped even trying.
David: That’s the point. The point is, you see what’s natural for you to say – the human being. You will have intuition and things coming up. What stops most coaches doing powerful coaching is they don’t trust that. They think that there should be some magic formula or some magic question that I should ask right now, instead of just being a human being.
The following is an excerpt from the CoachStart Manual.
Public speaking is a great way to get clients. You speak to local clubs or organisations (usually for free, or you get a nice pen) and give their members a 30-minute talk at their regular meeting. You help them with a particular issue they might be facing, you’re positioned as an expert, and they get a strong sense of who you are.
If you make it easy for them to give you their information, you can follow up and build a relationship; e.g., through your ezine.
Some in the audience will want to have you speak at their club or company, and it may not be long before you’re starting to charge a fee.
And, when you have a great talk, you can record it and sell it on CD!
I gained several long-term clients, and my first paid corporate speeches, out of free speaking on the local club circuit.
So, when I talked before about 50 trial sessions in 50 days, I saw some strange looks – it was really funny. Right, but can you now get to see that when we reframe it so that it’s an exploration instead of an “I have to have you as a client”, you can get your one-liner, so you get connected again to really why you want to coach. It’s not all about you. And when you start finding a reason, for the people in your life, to call them and actually say “Let’s do a session” then this starts to look a lot easier. And for you it might be a hundred days instead of fifty, or you might say “I’m going to do twenty-five sessions”.
There’s something else I wanted to say – you don’t have to call your friends and coach them. And you don’t have to call your colleagues and coach them. You can set up web sites. You can go and do public speaking. You can try advertising. There’s a number of things you can do. But I have found time and time again the quickest way to get your confidence is to use your network and coach them. I’m not even talking about referrals yet. Just talking about getting your confidence in your practice. That’s why we’re talking so much about this approach.
