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How to Create Coaching Flow for More Ease, Fun, and Success

Posted by Mattison Grey

Mattison Grey

The following post is by Mattison Grey, MMC, master coach, trainer, speaker, and author of The Motivation Myth.

I have a saying…”connection wins.” 

While that might seem understated, it has been shown to be the case over and over in my coaching practice.  Have you ever noticed that coaching is more fun and effective when you have a strong connection with the client?  And that a close connection often leads to flow?  I think we can all agree flow is an awesome place to be with a client! It’s quite magical, sometimes elusive and often fragile. 

Have you ever been trucking along in flow with someone and then BAM, it goes away? 

Yeah, me too. Oops.  What the heck just happened?  Well, there’s a good chance judgment happened.  You see, connection requires trust. While that does seem obvious, and almost as obvious as judgment breaks trust, what is not as clear is that judgment breaks trust…all judgment.  Stay with me…Yes, even judgment that is “good.” 

Yep, judgment good or judgment bad, breaks trust.  So, when you accidentally (or intentionally) add judgment into flow, that flow is interrupted.  Judgment breaks trust, therefore, connection, therefor flow.  This is where the tool of acknowledgment comes in.

Acknowledgment, as I define it, eliminates judgment from our language and provides the opportunity to communicate and maintain flow. You can also use acknowledgment to create flow.  It sounds too simple to work, but it does - almost every time.  Flow seems elusive, but it’s not.  It just requires the coach to get out of and stay out of the way.  Simple yes, easy no. 

So, what is acknowledgment?  It’s probably not what you think. 

 

“Acknowledgement is saying what a person did (completed actions) or the results that the person produced, without judgment or opinion, and it is delivered with a tone of appreciation, curiosity, or surprise.”

The tone implies appreciation. “Wow, you really did something.”

Acknowledgement: “You completed the project on time.”

 

I can hear you now,  “I don’t judge people when I am coaching...”  I’d encourage you to revisit that idea and stay curious. Positive judgment is still judgment and any sort of judgment breaks trust. That is what makes learning and implementing acknowledgment into our coaching so tricky.  The tricky part of acknowledgement is that what you say must be delivered without your opinion or judgment (whether that is positive or negative).  If there is any opinion or judgment in your words or in your tone, whatever you say is no longer an acknowledgement.

Another key component to acknowledgement is that it is not about you. This is amazingly hard for people to get at first.  It sort-of scrambles the brain.  Even when I teach this tool to high-level coaches and “people” people, they struggle at first to take themselves out of the equation and to really make it only about the other person.  If the communication is in any way about you, then it is not acknowledgement, it is something else.

An easy way to begin to understand this distinction is to understand what acknowledgement is not.  It is not complimenting, appreciation, validation, affirmation, thanking, recognition, praise, championing or cheerleading.  There is a time and a place for all of these, and they are not acknowledgement (those things are all about you rather than the other person).

Here is what each of these sounds like:

  • Compliment: “The project is wonderful. You are so smart.”
  • Appreciation: “I really appreciate your completing this project on time.”
  • Validation: “I see that you have given this project a lot of effort and thought.”
  • Affirmation: “I think you deserve all the credit for this successful project.”
  • Thanking: “Thank you for putting all your time and effort into this project.”
  • Recognition: “It is clear you are a very talented project manager.”
  • Praise: “Awesome job.”
  • Championing: “I told the CEO that you were the right person for this project.”
  • Cheerleading: “I knew you could do it.”

 

While these communications sound normal and nice, they are all a judgment of the persons’ actions and are all opinions.  In the course of a normal conversation these types of communications are just fine, and often considered good manners.  However, when trying to create a high-performance environment and achieve and maintain flow, acknowledgment is essential.  

Want to learn more about how to incorporate this tool into your coaching practice?  Specifically, how to use it in conjunction with Active Constructive Response?  Join us for a free Webinar on Monday, February 24th, 2020.

 

Attend this free one-time-only master class with Mattison Grey and Julia Stewart on how to use acknowledgment to create Flow in your coaching. Register now:

 

Attend this Free Master Class on Coaching Flow

 

Topics: free coach training, webinar, acknowledgment, Flow, IAPPC

The 8 Secrets Emerging Coaches Need to Know

Posted by Mattison Grey

Coach Mattison GreyMattison Grey is professional business and leadership coach and the founder of  Greystone Guides,  a high performance coaching and consulting firm.  Her clients and fans enjoy her contrarian views and her courage to be provocative in a way that challenges the status quo.  Mattison is fascinated by the gap between high performers and low performers and what it takes to go from mediocre to masterful in a chosen endeavor.  

Coaching is a popular choice of profession for people right now. 

Seems like everyone is a coach or is becoming a coach, doesn’t it?  That is no secret.  The trouble is there are secrets about coaching and having a coaching business.  Secrets no one is telling beginning or emerging coaches. 

The coaching schools won’t tell you – you might not sign up; coaching organizations won’t tell you – it’s not their role.   So who has the guts to tell you?  Julia Stewart, the gutsy-ist coach in America, has asked me to expose some of those secrets and share with you what I think are the biggest myths about coaching and starting a coaching practice.  Here we go with the 8 biggest myths many emerging coaches believe. 

MYTH #1, 2 and 3:  Everyone needs a coach; coaching is for everyone; or everyone is a prospect.  Sure everyone has room for improvement, but not everyone wants it.  Learning to identify who is curious about coaching and who is not takes quite a bit of practice, and assuming everyone is a prospect can get in the way of accurate sorting.

MYTH #4:  Coaching fixes problems.  In fact, if you approach coaching with that mentality you will drive people away.  Even though few people’s lives are perfect, they will resist coaching if you “come from” something’s wrong.  

I often say, Amateur Coaching fixes problems.  Masterful Coaching creates them.

What do I mean by that?  If you take the client’s problem or challenge at face value, you will be missing a huge opportunity to really move them toward their greatness.   Behind the presented challenge is always a bigger issue.  Most of us know that.  What masterful coaches know is that you don’t have to find that issue and solve it.  You have to help the client find a project or game that is so interesting, fun and engaging that the previous issue magically disappears or is solved by the new game.  

Here is a real life example:  A few years ago, I was bored with my coaching business and not having much fun anymore.  That was a pretty big problem.   I asked Julia for a coaching session.   Long story short, as a result of the coaching, I decided to DOUBLE my coaching fees.  Never mind my fee was already pretty substantial.  Doubling it would, with the exception of celebrity coaches, put it near the top tier of coaching fees in the world.  WOW, now I had a HUGE “PROBLEM” but boy was I excited about it, and instantaneously my boredom went away and the fun returned.  

MYTH # 5:  You have been coaching your entire life.  Even if you have been a great listener and confidant all your life, that doesn’t mean what you were doing is coaching or that you were meant to be a coach.   When you get really good professional training it will become obvious that, while what you were doing may have been helpful for people, it wasn’t really professional coaching. 

MYTH #6:  You can make a great living in the beginning.  You can’t charge high fees in the beginning.  Beginner coaches get beginner clients, who pay beginner fees.  That is true in most professions.  The more experience you have under your belt, the higher fee you can charge. 

MYTH #7:  Internet marketing is coaching.   This is a huge misconception and my biggest pet peeve.   You can be a coach who uses internet marketing, or you can be an internet marketer who coaches.   Trying to be both or not being clear about this distinction is a big mistake that beginners make.   Either way is fine, but to really make it work you have to choose. 

Finally the biggest myth in coaching today:

MYTH #8:  You can have a successful coaching business without learning to sell.   I hate to be the one to break it to you, but to fill your coaching practice you must learn to sell.   This has never been more of a reality than in today’s extremely competitive market. With a coach on every corner, the only coaches that will make it will be the ones who can sell in a graceful authentic way.  

 

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Topics: coaching business, Coaching, become a coach, Coaches, coaching clients, make a living as a life coach, Mattison Grey, Masterful Coaching, Julia Stewart, reasons to become a coach

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