Coaching Blog

Should Life and Business Coaches Give Advice?

Posted by Julia Stewart

 Coaching_advice.jpg

Most people assume that life, business, and executive coaches give advice, because that's what most professionals do: give expert advice. For instance, if you hire an attorney, s/he gives you legal advice. If you hire a broker, s/he gives you financial advice. And if you go to a hair stylist, you expect some advice on your hair. But coaches really aren't advisors.

By the way, this answers the question posed to me years ago by one coach wannabe, "How do you charge for free advice?" Most new coaches ask some version of this question when they first set up their coaching businesses. The answer is, "You don't." Free advice is everywhere, but that's not what coaches do.

Huh? What do coaches do then, if they don't give advice?

Well, here's one of the most succinct definitions of coaching, from David Rock, who pioneered brain-based coaching. He says, "Coaches help people think better."

"Why would anyone pay hundreds of dollars per hour to have somebody help them thinking better?" you might ask.

That's certainly an understandable question. Because Rock's definition is so simple, it doesn't even hint at the power of coaching. In fact, most coaching definitions don't. Here are two coaching definitions I borrowed from the blog post, "What is Life Coaching?"

School of Coaching Mastery (SCM) definition of coaching: Coaching is a customized conversation that empowers the client to get what s/he wants by thinking and acting more resourcefully.

International Coach Federation (ICF) definition of coaching: Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.

These definitions get closer to what really happens in an effective coaching session, but if you've never been coached, it's still hard to imagine the value, so it's no wonder untrained coaches tend to give advice and then wonder why they don't have more paying coaching clients.

If your "coaching" is really about giving advice, you're not coaching; you're consulting. Sometimes the client needs consulting, so if you're qualified to consult within your specialty, go ahead and consult. But don't call it coaching, because your clients won't know what they're buying.

And don't ever call yourself a coach just to get around the fact that you don't have the credentials to do something else. Coaching is unregulated virtually everywhere, but If you're not qualified to be a counselor, psychotherapist, financial advisor, legal advisor, or health professional, etc.; it's unethical to advise people under the heading of "coach", because coaches don't advise and because calling your service one thing, when it's really something else, is false advertising. And finally, because these specialties are usually regulated.

What coaches really do is shift their clients' mind-states. This is pretty profound, requires skill, and it results in dramatically better outcomes. We don't heal our clients, but we do bring out their personal greatness, which has in common elements from Presence, Flow, Love 2.0, and more.

In short, coaching clients think better. Way better.

When clients think better, they see solutions to problems and pathways to reaching goals. They sometimes realize they don't even have problems (or maybe what they have are really good problems) and they even become grateful for what they already have. Sometimes, they find strengths they'd forgotten, or values they truly treasure that pull them forward. Sometimes they realize they already have the people and resources they need, or that they know where to find them.

And occasionally, they discover a gap that needs filling.

There may be a gap in knowledge, vision, plan, or relationships. In these rare cases, the coach may prompt clients with a few possibilities they didn't know about. The coach might say, "I've seen others try X, Y, or Z in this type of situation and it was effective for them. What do you think?" But a great coach will never say, "You should do X." The first is offering options; the second is giving advice.

Even offering options is ineffective unless it's really needed, which is pretty rare.

Do you know how to help people think better? Do you how to shift people's mind-states so they think and act more resourcefully? Do you know how to elicit people's personal greatness? And when and how to offer options?

If not, or if you're unsure, the upcoming Certified Competent Coach course may be perfect for you. Find out more and download the face sheet, or even register, below.

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Topics: business coach, life coach, executive coach, Coaching Groundwork, consulting, Flow, coaching definition, personal greatness, coaching presence, love 2.0

Coaching Tip: When Validation and Acknowledgment Backfire

Posted by Julia Stewart

Coaching Tip

 

Subtitle this post, 'Coaches Behaving Badly'!

One of the basic coaching skills, which collectively are called the Coaching Foundations, is Validate Everything. I define validation as any appropriate expression of support, whether positive ('That's great!'), or negative ('That sucks!'). There are lots of ways to validate in coaching and one of the most effective, is acknowledgment.

Except when it's not.

Mattison Grey wrote the book on acknowledgment and defines it as a statement about what someone did, or the results they got, shared with a tone of wonderment. She says acknowledgment works when other forms of validation, such as offering compliments, do not, because often, people feel judged when complimented.

I couldn't agree more and Mattison is awesome at acknowledgment, but I've had yucky experiences with compliments, validations, and even acknowledgments, because sometimes, no matter how skilled people are at delivering them, they muck it up, anyway.

They just can't help it!

Most of my yucky experiences occurred with newish coaches, who most likely were just making mistakes with a new skill set and that's understandable. But sometimes it came from veteran coaches and then it looks like a character issue. As in, poor personal development, or lack of integrity.

Here are a couple of examples:

I used to work for a coach training company that called validation, championing. All the coaches there went about championing each other, because that's what good coaches do, right?

One of my coaching colleagues there used to champion me so lavishly that, one day, I asked her to stop, because I felt increasingly uncomfortable. I really didn't need, nor want to hear, over and over, what a great coach I was, what a fantastic coach trainer, how impressive my success was, nor how amazing was my devotion and commitment to my coaching clients and students. Ugh.

The next day though, she made several remarks that called into question my honesty and integrity regarding the coaching profession. Hmm, really? The same person's saying these things? It communicated to me that although she usually said over-the-top positive things to me, underneath she was judging me negatively on some major stuff.

She later apologized, which is great, but I never felt I could trust her. She had shown that regardless how syrupy her validations were, she was really thinking something else. In fact, to me, she was a suck up. 

She left me feeling uncomfortable, insulted, and annoyed. That's how I still remember her.

You know, the IAC certification scorecard measures, among other things, whether the coach demonstrates consistency (a.k.a. integrity) between words and actions. If you validate, champion, acknowledge, or whatever you call it, and then demonstrate that you don't really believe what you said, you damage trust with the client.

Not validating enough during coaching is a mistake. Validating, but not meaning it, is an even more destructive mistake.

One of the problems with coach training is that sometimes we emphasize the 'how', instead of the 'who'. Thomas Leonard used to tell coaches to champion, because that's just who we are. If you do it for any other reason, you're manipulating. And the person you're manipulating will smell a rat.

I call dishonest validation, schmoozing. That's an Americanism, derived from Yiddish, that means to gossip or chat with someone, in an intimate manner, in order to manipulate, flatter, or impress them.

But you could just as well call it, INvalidation, because that's the effect it has.

Then there was the colleague from the past, who showed up in one of my classes at SCM. I was surprised she signed up, because I knew she had been coaching at least as long as I. The first day of class, she delivered some schmoozy validations of me, as a coach and coach trainer. Then she referenced her own great coaching skill and left a pause. I got the feeling I was supposed to reciprocate by acknowledging her prowess as a coach. Problem was, I had no memory of ever hearing her coach. Well, that was a little awkward!

There were any number of ways I could have navigated that awkward moment, but something blocked me. As my mind searched for any memory I had of her and her coaching, only one memory was vivid: She once called me up, offered me an interesting opportunity to teach coaching in a college, and said lots of nice, schmoozy things about how I was such a great coach and trainer and she knew I was the right person for the job, which basically involved coaching eight hours per day, at a college that was three hours away. The pay? $100 per day!! I don't consider myself to be thin skinned, but yes, I was insulted. It would have been better if she had asked me to volunteer for free.

Not surprisingly, she dropped the SCM course in a huff, before it was over. That's the kind of thing people do when they want you to acknowledge them and you don't do it. She also said some pretty nasty things about me and my training ability in an email.

And then, right on time, I opened an email from a coach I really admire. It began with a quote from Maya Angelou: 

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time."

The takeaway? Schmoozers schmooze. They can't be trusted, much less deliver great coaching, because great isn't fake.

Of course, nobody has to be a schmoozer for life. I've caught myself being fake, and try to remember it when schmoozy folks cross my path. Like the time I got an email from a coach I didn't like and forwarded it to a friend with a snarky comment. Then I saw the disliked coach at a coaching function. He offered a hug, so I hugged him. The next day, he emailed me. I'd hit, 'reply' instead of 'forward', so he got the snarky comment, instead of my friend! How fake was that to criticize him in private, then hug him in public? That memory is an embarrassing reminder that I'm still a work in progress, like everybody else. I've used it to upgrade my own behavior.

But once again, Maya Angelou says it best:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said; people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

If you're going to validate, acknowledge, or champion, do it because that's who you are and it's what you really believe. Otherwise, you may succeed at making someone feel good at first, but your behavior will give you away, and the contrast will make your judgmental behavior even uglier to the other person. That feels yucky and that's how they'll always remember you.

How do you become someone who champions just because that's who you are, and not because you're manipulative? Like anything else, practice. Get a coach. And work tirelessly on your personal development. Learn to get your ego out of the way and trust the process. 

Otherwise, you may be remembered as a schmoozer.

Get coach training and personal development here:


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Topics: Coaching, Coaching Groundwork, Thomas Leonard, Mattison Grey, Coaching Tip, acknowledgment

Why I Love Mentor Coaching My Coaching Students

Posted by Julia Stewart

Tailored coach training

Written by Julia Stewart

If you're a high achiever, then one of your main stumbling blocks to becoming a coach is taking the time you need to master your new profession. Your time is precious, because you're already successful at something else.

Degree programs and coach training schools really won't really work for you, because they're:

1. Time consuming.
2. One-size-fits-all.
3. Don't cover exactly what you need, when you need it.

 

What you want is learning that is tailored to what you need, when you need it, no more, no less. Someone who could curate the thousands of learning tools out there, so you don't waste time on the superfluous, would be awesome. There are plenty of mentor coaches who claim they can give that to you, but coaching and training are two different professions and coaching is a lot pricier. So what do you do?

 

What you probably need, but may not realize it, is someone who can get you unstuck when your fears, insecurities and the 'voice of reason', that vampire that stalks every entrepreneur who dares to chase a dream, start harrassing you, because they will.

 

You need two things:

 

  1. A systematic method for closing your knowledge gaps and getting the experience you need. That's what training is.
  2. A process for becoming who you need to be, day by day, despite your fears. That's what coaching does.
I started School of Coaching Mastery in 2007, because as a certified mentor coach, I was tired of working with people who wanted to become coaches, but had little or no training. They simply didn't know what they needed to know. But I also get frustrated by students who get training, but no coaching, because they're starting their businesses with an unnecessary handicap.

 

What I really love is mentoring my coaching students. They get exactly what they need and I enjoy hearing how much stinking fun they're having with their new coaching businesses. I've been mentoring coaches for over a decade, but I made it official when I launched Elite Mentor Coaching for High Achievers last year. It includes private mentor coaching and access to the SCM modules and programs you want, like Coaching Groundwork Advanced, Master Coach Training, Positive Psychology, Group Coaching, and more, when you want them, no more, no less. Maybe I should call it, Stewart's Tailored Coach Training!

 

Here are a couple of testimonials from recent clients:

"Results are what you’ll see what you take full advantage of the Elite Mentoring Program for High Achievers. Working with Master Coach Julia Stewart, I found the clarity I needed and the insights that inspired me to take action and keep working. Within weeks, I doubled the number of coaching clients I work with, expanded my professional speaking business by adding three new clients and launched my website. Within months, I designed and delivered a nationwide professional development program for a new client and launched a popular group coaching program. Trust Julia with your highest aspirations. Stay open to new possibilities. Do the work and you will create what you really want, and more." - Nancy McCabe, Coach, Trainer, Speaker and Founder of Results Business Coaching


"When I hired Julia as my mentor coach, I wasn't entirely sure I needed it. I had quite a bit of education and experience already and the industry does not require certified coaching credentials to be recognized as a coach. I wasn't sure it would be a good investment for the money. After coaching for 3 months with Julia and taking several classes at SCM, I can say that not only was this a great investment but possibly the best investment I have made in my career. I would recommend this to experienced coaches as well as inexperienced coaches. The value of the service far exceeds the cost, which makes this a savvy investment in YOU!" - Patrice Swenson, CCC, Life and Business Coach and Founder of Rainbow in the Puddle

 

I have an opening for one new client, right now. I may have one or two openings in early January. If you're ready to succeed at becoming a coach, or want to be added to my mailing list, click below to find out more and fill out the form, while you're there:

 

ELITE MENTOR COACHING FOR HIGH ACHIEVERS

Topics: group coaching, become a coach, Coaching Groundwork, coaching success, Become a Masterful Coach, Mentor Coaching, coach training schools, Master Coach Training, Positive Psychology

How to Get Coaching from the Universe in Three Steps

Posted by Julia Stewart

LabyrinthEach year, on Good Friday, The Center for Spiritual Living in St. Louis, spreads a huge canvas with a labyrinth printed on it (See photo at right, by Aperte at Flickr Commons) on the floor of their hall.

Last year, I walked it for the first time, and followed The Center's directions by setting an intention before I began. I didn't know I needed an intention before hand, so I hastily scribbled a quick intention on a slip of paper.

My intention was that my then, one-year old coaching school, would introduce coaching skills to at least 100 people within the year. That might not sound like a big goal, but we are not one of those giant coaching schools. In fact, I was still our only coaching instructor, at that time (now we have two more).

Walking the labyrinth has three distinct steps:

  1. Enter the sacred space with a question in mind.
  2. Open your mind to the infinite to receive instructions.
  3. Feel gratitude for the divine gift downloaded to you.

My question in that sacred space way, 'How could I introduce coaching to 100 more people this year?' The answer came immediately: Offer our new coach training course for free. No problem; I was ready to do it.

Then a more nuanced instruction came: "Why not ask each participant to make a contribution to a good charity?" I could immediately see the added value. "Free" is ubiquitous on the internet, but as attractive as free stuff is, the added fulfillment of giving was both unique and a huge upgrade. 

As a result of that inspiration, I've offered our signature coaching skills course, Coaching Groundwork three times, each for the different charity including,  The Campaign for Tibet, The Hunger Site, and Habitat for Humanity. I've also tithed back to the Center for Spiritual Living.

This year, I set a much larger and more detailed intention: 250 new students, 100 Certified Mastery Coaches, more instructors and a rather large amount of money earned by the school. 

As I drove away from the Center today, it occurred to me that I more than reached last year's goal, despite the economy. It didn't always show up the way I thought it should or when I thought it should, but it absolutely manifested. I'm equally certain that my intentions for this year are already coming true. 

The Universe is a wonderful coach. To find a labyrinth in your community, do an online search for New Thought Churches, such as Science of Mind and Unity.

 

Topics: Coaching, coaching school, coach training, Coaching Groundwork, coach, coaching schools

School of Coaching Mastery

Posted by Julia Stewart

School of Coaching Mastery LogoOkay, there it is. The new School of Coaching Mastery logo. Putting it out here on my blog is an announcement of sorts. SCM has been a kind of brain child for several months. Maybe longer. I think it was gestating for a couple of years, while I was saying, "I don't want to start another coaching school, there are too many out there, already."

I didn't choose SCM though, it chose me.

For about a year now, people have been coming to me from all over the world saying, "I think I might want to become a coach. How can I find out? Where should I train? Can you help me?" I felt at a loss, because most of the schools I have direct knowledge of, where I trained and where I taught, I have reservations about and I can't recommend the ones I don't know about. I did have programs to offer, like the beginner-skills Coaching Groundwork and the client-attraction Experienced Coach Program, but these people were looking for more than just a program.

Other beginner coaches would ask to join the Seven Secrets of Certification, which is really for intermediate coaches who are preparing for IAC Certification via coaching mastery. That can work, but sometimes the coach really needs more tools, first.

I've got too many programs with too many gaps between them. That confuses people.

What if I shaped it all into one school? What if that school prepared coaches for IAC certification (and beyond) from the very beginning? Hmmm...

That's the certification that I believe in and that's the only approach to coach training that makes sense to me. Most coach training schools base their training on coaching models that were developed in the 90's. Coaching has already evolved way past that.

Other schools are a little too commercial for my taste and/or they're based on values that aren't that useful for solving 21st Century problems.

Maybe the world really does need another coaching school.

If I weave together the programs I already have and fill in the gaps, I can create that school fairly easily. That's inspiring ~ maybe I've really been designing this school all along.

What would the ideal coaching school look like to me? That question has become a fun toy to play with. Time to invite others to play, as well. Over the next four months, I will be meeting with advisers, colleagues, clients and students to get their input on what kind of coaching school the world really needs, as of 2007, and where this school may need to grow in the future.

What will it look like? I don't really know yet, but I'm thinking small classes and targeted training with a lot of practice coaching from the very beginning ~ a "boutique" approach. Gifted coaches learn fast, when given the opportunity and attention they need.

I'm also thinking the trainers should be genuine experts with a real gift for coaching and teaching. (Right now, that would just be me ~ sorry ~ but perhaps not for long.) So many coaching schools are staffed by students or recent graduates of their own programs. Sometimes the instructors aren't even paid. That's just not good enough. You need excellence to teach excellence. This ideal school will be staffed by a well-rounded assortment of expert coach/trainers.

I think the program needs to be flexible, so coaches can get what they need, without being tied down to unnecessary requirements. That just instills a culture of mediocrity and cynicism and isn't useful in a world that needs inspired leaders who can stay ahead of constant change.

Live training? Teleclasses? Webinars? Practicums? MP3's? Video? Probably all of these ~ and whatever else works best, as well.

In the meantime, I will continue offering the programs I do have, while I design what is next. And I'll get to work on the new website, while keeping an SCM web presence at www.yourlifepart2.com.

Topics: coach training, School of Coaching Mastery, Coaching Groundwork, coaching schools, IAC, coach training school

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