Coaching Blog

If you want to become a coach, your next question is: How?

There are thousands of ways to do it, but getting some coach training will help. Depending on the type of training and the source, it may help a lot.

You could get your training on the cheap via YouTube, Podcasts, MOOCs, and other free coach training. This is usually the path chosen by coaching tourists and coaching tourists don't get coaching clients. If you want to coach as a hobby, that's fine. But if you're like most coaches,you need a well-designed program that gives you the skills, knowledge, and professional experience you need to step into professional coaching quickly and attract plenty of clients.

This leaves you with a choice between joining a professional coach training school or a graduate school that teaches some coaching. A prospective coach asked me about this choice the other day and here's a comparison chart. Some coaches actually choose to do both.

PROFESSIONAL COACH TRAINING SCHOOL	GRADUATE SCHOOL COACHING PROGRAM
Usually costs under $10,000	Usually costs over $10,000
Prepares coaches for professional coaching quickly	Educates students and gives some professional preparation
Usually offers coach certification	Usually offers a degree or certificate
Usually takes a year or so of part-time work	Usually takes a year or so of full-time work.
You can build your business or career while training	You may not have time for a business or career
Should be approved for at least 100 hours by the ICF	Should be approved for at least 100 hours by the ICF

Here are important questions to ask yourself:

• How much money do I want to invest in my career?
• How soon do I want to be coaching professionally?
• What's the school's track record for graduating coaches with successful careers?
• If certification is the preferred credential in coaching, do I still need/want a degree?
• Can I afford to take time off from work to study coaching?
• How much will it cost me to delay my coaching career?
• Is my training program approved by the leading accreditor of coach training schools (ICF) for at least 100 hours?
• Are there any travel expenses I need to consider in order to graduate from this coach training program?
• If I want both professional training and grad school, which will give me what I want right now?

To get more questions answered, download the free Become a Coach eBook.

It offers tips on choosing the best coach training school for you:

 

There is a broad assumption in our society that many, if not most people need to heal, as in restore health or be made whole. And while healing is a phenomenal process that can restore life to millions of people, and for which I am most grateful, I believe we are increasingly moving into a "post-healing society" and I'm not alone.

Post-healing is itself an extraordinary milestone in human evolution, which deserves to be talked about and clarified, so we all know when we are experiencing it and so we can have more of it.

I'm sometimes surprised by people who are unaware of even the possibility of a post-healing society.

So what am I talking about when I say, "post-healing society?" I'm calling it "post-healing", because at the start of something that is this complex and revolutionary, it's helpful to make a distinction between newly emerging conditions and that which went before, gave rise to the new, and is now distinct from it. Over time, I believe a different name will emerge that describes more fully what "post-healing" really is, but for now, let's look at how it is different from healing society.

Post-healing society and healing society currently overlap and will do so for the foreseeable future.

I'm talking largely about psychological healing here, but body, mind, heart, and spirit are so entwined that that distinction may not be altogether important. In fact, appreciating the inherent wholeness and interconnectedness of body, mind, heart, and spirit is a feature of post-healing.

From a psychological perspective, healing society arose and reached its zenith in the second half of the 20th Century when defining mental illnesses, cataloging their symptoms, and finding effective treatments for them became the primary focus of the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry. As treatments became more effective, the impact on society was seismic. People started to understand their own differences and difficulties, as well as those of others, learned to ask for what they needed, began to experience wellness, spoke up for their rights to be treated equally and with respect, and for many, to a large degree, suffering was diminished.

When there is less suffering, new possibilities emerge.

But by the end of the 20th Century, many professionals seemed to believe there was something psychologically wrong with us all. I heard one psychologist say that everyone had something, either a neurosis, personality disorder, or psychosis; or else they had addictions, brain damage, or other neurological disorders. Another told me that in therapy, neurotic is what you want to be, because everything else is worse.

So what is healthy if everyone is ill, including apparently (since everyone has something), the therapists, themselves?

I wasn't the only one wondering about this, because positive psychology officially emerged in the 1990's as a sub-specialty of psychological research. Positive psychology is specifically concerned with studying people who are doing well, who enjoy well-being and are flourishing, so that others can learn from them and enjoy greater well-being, also.

The pioneers of positive psychology, notably Martin Seligman, went so far as to declare that the goal of positive psychology was to render itself obsolete. In other words, that the larger field of psychology would return to its original intent and cover the entire range of human behavior, rather than just focusing on what was wrong.

Here's a real-world example of post-healing. Seligman was asked by the United States Armed Services to help returning servicemen and women who have developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a debilitating illness that is particularly difficult to heal. After surveying a large number of soldiers, Seligman's team found that a small percentage, who had been exposed to many of the same horrors of war as those who developed PTSD, actually seemed to grow through the experience.

The key to growth rather than illness? It was the story they told themselves about it, in other words, the meaning they attached to the event. If a soldier told him or herself that they were at fault for the deaths of their buddies, or that they should have been able to save a friend, they were more likely to develop PTSD. If on the other hand, they told themselves that they must have been spared for a reason and that now they had an important purpose to serve with their lives, they were more likely to experience what Seligman calls, Post Traumatic Growth.

Now there is training for soldiers that can help them grow through trauma, instead of being damaged by it.

We could call this pre-healing, since it precedes the need for healing. I call it a post-healing intervention, because it comes from a mindset that sees the limitations of healing and, instead of allowing a problem to continue and then waiting to heal people from it, it has found a solution that eliminates the need for healing (An even more advanced post-healing society would eliminate the need for war.)

As an aside, I want to mention that 20th Century psychology has focused, from a scientific and medical standpoint, on many of the same issues that were once thought to belong to the realm of spirit, spirituality, and religion. Afterall, its name is derived from the Greek, "psykhe", meaning soul, spirit, or mind.

Today's "spiritual-but-not-religious" movement focuses on healing almost as much as the psychological field.

But modern spirituality also focuses on the transcendent, trans-personal, upon enlightenment, and other lofty states. Like the field of psychology that is envisioned by Seligman, spirituality focuses on the full range of human behaviors and experiences.

An example of post-healing spirituality is Zen Master, Genpo Roshi's, brilliant integration of voice dialogue therapy with modern Zen, called Big Mind. The goal of Big Mind isn't healing, but Buddhist enlightenment. It begins with the assumption that the student is already whole, complete, and perfect; including the parts s/he would like to eliminate!

An example is what Roshi calls a "disowned voice", a part of us that we judge negatively and may want to eliminate and that can become a problematic shadow. One such voice is what he calls, "The Damage". Most of us who seek out healing would love to eliminate what we consider damaged in ourselves. Some of us go from therapist to therapist, spiritual healer to spiritual healer, for years hoping to finally be healed.

Don't go to Roshi for healing, though. Instead, he completely reframes the role of The Damage. He will tell you that you are already whole, complete, and perfect, including The Damage, which is perfectly damaged. It's perfect, because it has accepted all the slings and arrows of your life, so the rest of you can remain undamaged. No more, no less.

What would you call someone who took a bullet for you? Your hero?

The Damage is a hero who accepts all the damage we would otherwise endure, allowing the rest of our selves to remain whole, complete, and perfect. It deserves to be honored and embraced. Instead, we cause suffering for ourselves by framing it as imperfect, not good enough, broken, or sick. When we go through life believing we need to heal, we sometimes keep old wounds open, we feel less than, we sometimes give away our power to healers, or we may use our condition to be less than fully responsible for ourselves.

Once you embrace that you're whole, complete, and perfect, there are no more excuses.

I'm not suggesting that these two examples of what I call, post-healing, are what everyone needs. Remember, both the healing society and post-healing society will exist side-by-side for quite a while, if not forever. I am suggesting that healing has opened the door to post-healing.

I'll use myself as another example. As someone who grew up in the proverbial dysfunctional family, I worked with a number of therapists over the years, believing there was something wrong with me. They made a big difference. But one of the most dramatic shifts that I made with any therapist was with the last, who at one point said, "Read my lips, you're healthy." Accepting that there was nothing seriously wrong with me was like waking from a dream. Suddenly, so much more was possible. I felt confident and believed in myself.

Of course, I wouldn't have gotten there without the help of some wonderful healers. And that's my point. Therapy got me ready for post-healing. And it got me ready for coaching, too.

Life coaching is, as far as I know, the first and perhaps only profession that is completely post-healing.

Life coaching and its siblings, including business coaching, executive coaching, and more, don't focus on healing clients, but rather assist clients to shift into more resourceful, and some would say, transformative mind-states that help them see solutions to problems and pathways to goals, while inspiring them to take action and create the outcomes that are best for themselves and others.

We see our clients as whole, complete, and perfect. We believe in them from the very start. We help them reframe limiting beliefs, integrate disowned voices, and experience their interconnectedness with others. As a result, they become more confident, believe in themselves, evolve into who they want to be, and create valuable changes for themselves and others. It's both an honor and an interdevelopmental experience to work with people who are discovering their true selves for the very first time.

They step into their greatness and go on to change the world for the better.

Imagine a world where all people not only heal, but reach their full potential and are inspired to transform the world. It's not a dream. Because of the good work done by healers, clients are becoming ready for post-healing and coaches go on to make transformative possibilities real everyday.

Would you like to join the post-healing society?

Find a coach here. Or become a coach. Your first step toward professional coaching might be to download the  FREE Become a Coach eBook.

Every positive psychology coach understands the importance of positivity, but the great ones know how negativity can boost coaching outcomes, amazingly.

If you've been reading this blog (subscribe upper right), you know about positivity theory and the positivity ratio (Fredrickson, 2006). The research is clear: Positivity changes lives and delivers wellbeing. But that's not all. People who experience at least three times as much positivity as negativity aren't just happier, they're more successful, more generous, healthier, and have more harmonious relationships. Who doesn't want more of all that?

So how can negativity help?

Here's a story: I once knew a coach, let's call her Wanda, who was new to positive psychology coaching. One of Wanda's first clients was a mid-level manager at a toy company, who wanted to move up the company ladder. Wanda coached him with loads of positivity and he accomplished one step after another toward his goal, until they were both certain he was on the brink of success. Then he got fired. Yep, fired.

How'd that happen? Wanda's client had some inter-personal issues he wasn't aware of. Wanda noticed them during coaching sessions, but didn't want to focus on the negative, so she never brought them up. Too bad. Those issues got on his boss's nerves, disrupted the whole department, and even made his team less productive. One person can cause a workplace to spiral so deeply into negativity, that the whole company suffers. That's toxic.

Positive thinking can't magically fix a toxic situation unless the toxicity is fully addressed. That means you need to deal with the negativity.

Remember that positivity ratio of three to one?

Another way of saying it is 75% positivity to 25% negativity is the gateway to flourishing. You can go higher, say, 90% positivity, but much beyond that and you and your clients will tip into a multitude of unnecessary problems.

What sorts of problems?

• Obliviousness. Negativity wakes us up when something is wrong (Boyatzis, 2011), but incessent positivity lets us waltz straight into our worst nightmares, just like Wanda's client did.
• Missed details. Positivity broadens our awareness, but negativity narrows our focus on what needs to be done (Boyatzis, 2011). Details matter.
• Complacency. People who are constantly positive sometimes coast when they need to work. For example: Children who are told they need to work, make better grades than children who are told they are smart, because the "smart" kids often don't try as hard (Dweck, 2006).

How can negativity help?

• Resilience. Negativity toughens us up and helps us develop grit. People who persevere through difficulties, are more likely to succeed (Duckworth, 2016).
• Needs satisfaction. Negativity is designed to drive us toward getting our needs met, so we can survive. While positivity is more useful at helping us reach for growth and ideals (Boyatizis, 2011). Interpersonal problems often arise from unmet needs (Maslow, 1962).
• Survival comes before growth. We need to reach a critical mass when satisfying our needs before we can effectively focus on growth (Maslow, 1962).

How could Wanda have succeeded better with her client?

• Be a coach who is naturally positive, but never steps over concerns.
• Help the client get their needs met, sustainably.
• Ask the client challenging questions, the ones they're afraid to ask themselves (and the ones nobody else will mention).
• Help the client bring positivity into their relationships. Train them to ask more, listen more, and look for what's working before focusing on what's not, unless it's an emergency.
• Be honest. Holding back your observations is never fair to your clients.
• Help the client grow beyond their immediate goals. Once needs are met, growth becomes available and that's what propels clients into amazing success.

These are just a few ways Wanda could have upgraded the value of her positive psychology coaching, immensely.

Imagine what her hard-working client could have accomplished if he had adjusted his relationship skills in time to win the promotion he passionately desired.

This focus on the importance of negativity is sometimes called the second wave in positive psychology, but it isn't new. Emotional intelligence has always studied the entire gamut of emotions to help people be more successful in their relationships and work. That's especially important for leaders, because they influence all the people they lead. But let's be clear: Everybody is a leader sometime and humans, who are the most social of animals, all need emotional intelligence to navigate harmonious relationships.

That's why School of Coaching Mastery is launching its exciting Master Certified Positive Psychology Coach program with an advanced course on Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Coaching. 

This is what's next for professional coaching, in general, and positive psychology coaching, specifically.

Learn more about becoming a positive psychology coach. Get the free eBook:

Fifteen years ago, I found myself in a hotel lounge chatting with a group of coach trainers about our coaching students. We were all there as certifiers for a live coach certification event for the largest coach training school in the world and someone brought up an odd coaching phenomenon that we had all noticed...

Thousands of people have fun dabbling with coaching, but never fully commit. That's fine, but most of them seem to think they are seriously building businesses, but they don't make much progress. It reminded me of a recent trip to Hawaii that I'd taken where I noticed how different a tourist's experience of the islands was from a Hawaiian resident's.

I said, "Yeah, it's like they're coaching tourists."

There is nothing wrong with being a tourist, but it gets expensive and it rarely builds a real business. If you want to get coaching clients, it's important that you know when it's okay to play (and for how long) and when it's time to get down to business.

So I designed an assessment that'll give you an idea whether you're just a tourist in the land of coaching or whether you really live here. I hope it helps!

The scoring key is below. The higher your score the more you're acting like a tourist rather than a coach who is building a successful business. Learn what to do about this and get on the path to success now.

0 is a perfect score. No problems here!
5-15% is very good. Why not upgrade to great by working with a coach?
20-45% is okay if you're just getting started with a good coach or training program. But don't delay.
50-100% You're definitely are a tourist. Unless you're independently wealthy, you probably should either do something else for a living or get more serious about building you coaching business.

Take this free life coach assessment:

 

I asked Houston Business Coach, Mattison Grey, if I could interview her, because after 20 years of success, I knew she had insights that other coaches would want to know.

A few weeks ago, Mattison celebrated her 20th "Coachaversary", meaning she's been coaching professionally - and blowing minds - for 20 years. I traveled to Houston, along with many of her current and former clients, to attend the impressive celebration, followed by a mysterious "quest collage" workshop, the next day.

Here pictured are several of us at the workshop (No, we're not on jury duty!). You may recognize three current/former SCM students, Matt Connor middle front, Eric LeJeune, who's taking the selfie, and Nancy McCabe between them, way in the back. Mattison is half-hidden, third from the left (appropriate because coaching is all about your clients). I'm at the far right. Also pictured from left are Gika Rector, Sarah Shah, and Kathi Crawford.

The 42-minute interview recording is below. We cover topics like...

• What was it like way back in the olden days of coaching?
• How did she succeed so well when some coaches struggle?
• What's a typical week like for Mattison?
• How to distinguish yourself from other coaches.
• Why saying things like, "My life is my certification," will drive away potential clients.
• What does the future hold for coaching?
• A whole lot more. Listen below...

Mattison has an awesome offer for you and it's free:

Acknowledgement Hotline - Do you want to be fully acknowledged for something?

March 2 - December 28, 2018 3PM Eastern/NY Time (UTC-5)

[UPDATE: This is a new number. If you copied the old number it won't work.]

Dail in # +1 712-832-8321
Participant Access Code: 1432672

The acknowledgement is free, but you may have to pay long-distance fees, depending on your carrier. Learn more about acknowledgement with the book, The Motivation Myth by Mattison Grey and Jonathon Manske

Get acknowledged by a trained acknowledgement expert including Mattison, Eric Lejeune, Sarah Shah, and Kathi Crawford.

 

Listen here to the video interview online (no need to call in)

 

 Would you like to tell people the secrets to your success, someday?

Coach 100 has been helping coaches fill up their coaching practices for 14 years. You could be one of them. Download the free eBook here:

 

What's the difference between a professional coach and an entrepreneurial coach and why does it matter?

I recently received a couple of emails from someone on my mailing list who asked questions such as these. He took issue with a lead-nurturing (a type of marketing) email he received from us in which I frankly advise new coaches to get good coach training and reputable coach certification.

The writer identified himself as an entrepreneur, who offers coaching as one of his services, so I answered him in language I thought he would understand:

I said we were very clear who our ideal student is and he probably wouldn't resonate with our messages, since they are targeted at people who want to become professional coaches, rather than entrepreneurial coaches. I wasn't interested in arguing the relative merits of professionals vs. entrepreneurs, so I neglected to add that I have a strong bias toward professional coaches, for whom training and certification are a must, as opposed to entrepreneurial coaches who generally rely their reputations, experience, and instincts, to coach. That, by the way, is why I started a coach training school that certifies coaches.

A coach used to be considered half professional and half entrepreneur, 15-to-20 years ago, and the Founder of the Coaching Profession, Thomas Leonard, was a perfect example. He started multiple coaching schools and professional organizations, in his lifetime, but was a classic entrepreneur who embodied the creativity, drive, productivity, and ongoing dialogue with his customers, that entrepreneurs are known for. That said, his major contribution to coaching was the turn toward professionalism and he embodied a stellar reputation for integrity, ethics, quality, and service that went way beyond profits.

The two photos above show, on the left, a professional coach who displays an openness and willingness to serve clients. On the right, shows an entrepreneur who's burning with his vision for designing a successful business. Both may be useful to coach with depending on what you want to work on. Neither is automatically better, but the professional coach is more thoroughly defined and has qualities that can be more easily recognized and evaluated.

Since Thomas' death in 2003, a leadership vacuum opened up. Much of it was filled by entrepreneurs who were focused more on marketing and sales gimmicks that drive profitability, than on helping clients grow and reach their goals. There are still a few good entrepreneurial coaches, but unfortunately they are increasingly outnumbered by scam artists and well-meaning wannabe's who may give bad advice.

I've known quite a few people whose lives have been transformed for the better by working with professional coaches. I also have known a handful of people whose lives have been ruined by entrepreneurial coaches. That doesn't mean all professional coaches are great, or that all entrepreneurial coaches are bad. Sometimes the opposite is true. It just isn't that simple, but over the years, I've moved away from the "half-professional/half-entrepreneurial" approach to coaching in favor of primarily being a professional and I advise my students to do the same, because it appears increasingly that professional coaches tend to deliver better results for clients and professional coaching is also a better model for coaching success. 

I've been clarifying the distinction between professional coaches and entrepreneurs with my Coach 100 students for over a decade and realized that it could be helpful to many of our blog readers too, so here goes.

Whether you are a professional coach or entrepreneurial coach isn't really an either/or choice; it's both/and. Because coaching is still not regulated, so there is tremendous freedom for practitioners. But at the same time, it's the professional side of coaching that is driving much of coaching's positive reputation.

If you're looking for a coach, you may want to use the above table to determine how professional your potential coach is. You have a bit more knowledge and power, because professional organizations define what you can expect. Also, if your coach is a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), you can file a complaint against a coach-member who fails to uphold the ICF's Code of Ethics.

Remember that lead-nurturing email from above, that advises good training and certification?

Recent research by the ICF found that coaches who get good training are more successful and less likely to quit the profession, while coaching clients say, all else being equal, they prefer to work with certified coaches. If you're new to coaching, my advice is that you get both coach training and certification to increase your confidence and success.

Positive psychology and positive psychology coaching are associated with positive thinking, but that's erroneous.

Positive psychology is about resilience, or the ability to "bounce back" from adversity. You cannot have resilience without adversity and the emotions that go with it: the so-called negative emotions like grief, anger, frustration, etc. We have these negative emotions because they tell us what is working for us and what is not. When we learn to respond to negative emotions instead of stuffing them down, we start having better lives (and fewer negative emotions.) Resilience requires flexibility.

Rigid positive thinking is a trap that can lead to failure and despair.

This morning, one of the founders of the Institute of Coaching, Susan David, announced that her TED Talk, The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage, just went live. The Institute of Coaching has done perhaps more than any other organization to promote research and education about positive psychology, coaching, and emotional intelligence. The latter goes hand-in-hand with positive psychology coaching, because it teaches that flexibility part: how to identify one's own feelings and those of others and navigate the emotional landscape within ourselves and with others. Coaches, like most leaders, must have emotional intelligence to be fully effective. We teach about that in Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Coaching.

Coaches need emotional intelligence to coach with positive psychology, which is why I became a Founding Fellow of the Institute of Coaching.

So I'm pleased to share with you the wisdom of Emotional Agility via Susan David and TED:

 

 

If you'd like to learn more about positive psychology, coaching, and emotional intelligence, please download the free Become a Positive Psychology Coach eBook: