Coaching Blog

Remember the proverb about the butterfly that flapped its wings and caused a hurricane halfway around the world?

It's been attributed to many sources (An old Chinese proverb, maybe?), but this story often gets quoted as a simple way to explain Systems Theory.

In short, systems theory tells us that large systems (like planet Earth) appear chaotic to the human eye, but actually are mathematically perfect. They are just so complex, that we can't always see the patterns that are at play within them. Everything works together and because it all works together, sometimes tiny actions can catalyze exponential outcomes, like a butterfly's wings causing a hurricane thousands of miles a way.

Of course, a butterly can't actually cause a hurricane, all by itself. There's a huge differential in the amount of energy required, but tiny actions at the right time and place can be leveraged to create incredible outcomes. That's one of the great lessons of systems theory and every great coach has seen it happen again and again.

Computers have made it possible for humans to comprehend complex systems and how mysterious events actually occur. Before computers, systems theory was pretty much just a theory. It was difficult to measure the evidence.

So it is, that especially online, where a seemingly infinite amount of data can be tracked and measured, tiny actions can have been shown to create incredible outcomes, and things as silly as a social networks, like Twitter or Facebook, can be used to fight runaway forest fires or influence the outcome of a Presidential election.

 The Online Social Butterfly has been born and she is powerful, exponentially powerful.

Remember Susan Boyle, of Britain's Got Talent fame, and how she rocketed to stardom for hundreds of millions of YouTube visitors? Even compared to television, the internet is extraordinarily influential. Tiny events can be leveraged to incredible outcomes.

Coaches are in the business of leveraging 'flutterby' activities (a.k.a. baby steps) toward great successes, beautiful lives and even huge fortunes for our clients. And the business of coaching often turns on the tiniest of butterfly activities, like posting a comment on a blog, or tweeting about an event.

Add to that the permanent quality of the internet, which creates a public record of you and your activities for a lifetime and you can see how those activities create your identity, brand and reputation in ways that nothing else can. And it just keeps creating more and more momentum for you.

Your online 'reach' or following makes a difference, of course. But knowing what, where and when to leverage is even more influential. That's what distinguishes true Online Social Butterflies from everyone else.

Are you a true Online Social Butterfly? Or would you like to become one? At School  of Coaching Mastery, we have an actual job description for Online Social Butterflies. Currently, it is a volunteer position for coaches who want to learn how to leverage their actions and monitor their effects, so that they create an impact of tsunami proportions.

If you are interested, go here to apply for the Online Social Butterfly position and learn how to create small actions that change everything.

We've been working on a new digital product for coaches called, Master Coach Demos.

The idea is to let you listen in on coaching sessions with various certified coaches (probably all IAC Certified Coaches) and hear how they demonstrate masterful coaching skills. It could be priceless value for coaches who want to be the very best and have limited time or money to spend.

Here's my conundrum. The more I think about it, the more I want to do with this project. It started out as a CD or MP3 download product, but I'm not sure that would do it justice. I want it to be valuable to coaches and also  come in the format/s they need. It can't be all things to all people, but it can be optimal for most people.

I have a sample recording below that you can listen to, right now. It's uncut. As you listen, notice what you learn - and what you need to learn more from it.  Ask for what you need in the comments area, below. I'll be happy to answer your questions, so other coaches can learn from it, too.

Here are some potential ideas for Master Coach Demos:

• Include full-length masterful coaching sessions with commentary on what's working and why
• Include short coaching snippets of coaching that zero in on specific coaching skills and situations for fast, targeted learning
  
• Verbal and/or written explanation of what's working (and maybe what isn't)
  
• Interviews with the coaches, themselves, and maybe even with the clients, to hear what they experienced in the session, or as a result of it
• Monthly or weekly updates/installments
• Perhaps a membership site
• Video?
  
• Podcasts?
• Hmmm...
  

I could use your help...

Would this product be helpful to you? What would you use it for? (Prep for certification; use it to help you with specific client situations; 'on the fly' learning when you're at the gym or driving your car; etc...)

What format would you prefer? (Monthly membership; one-payment digital product; interactive membership for questions and support; etc...)

As a Thank-you, I'm including this one-hour coaching session for you to listen to right here. It's me coaching a celebrity client. Yes, I hesitate to call my own coaching session a 'Master Coach Demo', because it could always be improved. As I tell my students, 'Even if I screw up, it's a great learning opportunity for you to catch it and learn why something worked or didn't work.'

This recording is uncut. And I'm not offering commentary right here - yet. I'd love for you to listen and ask what you want/need to know in the 'Comments' section. That'll help me understand the precise way to deliver a session like this to you for faster/deeper learning.

Listen now:

I spent last weekend in Denver at the Vast Sky Conference with Zen Master Genpo Roshi, Ken Wilber, Bill Harris and Bernie Glassman Roshi.

Mind blowing doesn't begin to describe it. For me, the two highlights were:

There aren't many companies that I would write a love letter to or about

Here is just one that I thought I would share with you, because you'd probably love them, too. And even if you aren't in the market for their service, you might as well try it out, because it's free and trust me, you'll find cool ways to use it.

Here's my experience.

As the owner of a "cutting edge" coaching school, I went on a mission last year to find the perfect way to share coach training. Something that would combine the intense experience of live training with the convenience and cost-savings of teleclasses. I knew there had to be something better than teleclasses. I was right, but it took a long time to find it.

I explored every software out there from WebEx, to GoToMeeting, to InstantTeleseminar and a whole bunch you've never even heard of. You know what I found out? They are all expensive, clunky, sometimes hard to use and they almost always require participants to wait while the system downloads something to their computers, before they can even join the class.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty leery about downloading anything that I don't already understand and I hate to wait.

My clients and students are the same way. I bet you are too. And I bet your friends, family, clients, customers and/or students are, too.

Somebody finally answered my prayers (Thank you, Seth Godin, for pointing the way). Less than a year ago, I discovered a brand new company that had set their sights on turning the business of webinars upside down.

You're not interested in doing webinars? Well, do you...

• Wish you could visit with family and friends, like they were in the room with you (smiling faces and all)?
• Do you wish you could watch your favorite videos with your faraway friends and chat and laugh like you were together?
• Do you ever have long-distance phone meetings where you're all trying to follow they same notes, contracts, reports, etc.?
• Do you ever wish you could stop driving/flying/training and spending time, money, fuel and what's left of the environment, just so you could do your work with others?

In other words, if you could use this service for nothing, then why on Earth wouldn't you? The only reason I can think of is that you just don't know about it, yet.

So I'm telling you: Get Dimdim.

It's as close to perfect as it comes. You can meet freely. And easily. And do lots of cool stuff with the people you love, no matter where they are.

Yes, you can do more if you pay something (An annual subscription is a fraction of what WebEx costs for one month), but for most people, the free account is all you'll ever need and it's not a free trial. It's free forever!

And yes, Dimdim has offered to expand my service if I tell my friends about it, so that's my selfish reason for writing, but I already brag about Dimdim to everyone I know. So.

Last week I wrote about how competitive the Best  Coaching Blogs 2009 contest had become.

Thousands of votes; lots of excitement. Well, we seem to have turned a corner with that. One blog recently got more votes in a period of a few hours than the number of visitors to our entire website! Hmm...if each person is supposed to vote once, then...

Today, I also received an email from someone who says she's been bombarded by bloggers who are asking her to vote multiple times for their blogs. Not cool. Not cool at all.

The voting software is designed to prevent anyone from voting more than once, but any system can be "gamed". How naive I must be to think that coaches would be above all that!

When I first caught wind of some cut-throat activity, I started watching my web analytics for irregularities and they revealed mostly positive behavior, plus some that I wasn't so sure about. I made some mental notes about how to change the contest for next year, but it meant that possibly I had missed some activities that should have disqualified a few blogs this year and it was too late to be sure. That's not good.

Now I'm thinking that I can't guarantee the fairness of this contest. That makes me really sad, but I'm not one to stand around sniffling. 

Clearly, some changes need to be made. And although I was hoping for a "People's Choice" award for coaching blogs, I think it would be much fairer to let all of the bloggers vote for each other, including those who didn't make the previous two cuts. The web "votes" will now be for "entertainment" purposes,only.

I'm asking myself what I've learned here. Should I have tested the software with a mock contest? I don't think a mock contest would have elicited this result. Maybe experience really is the best teacher.

Perhaps the real lesson is that temptation can get the better of even good people, so it's best not to tempt them. Or judge them.

My hero in all of this, though, is the coach who disqualified herself and withdrew from the contest. She said it was the negative vote option that was her downfall. She did the right stuff to bring people to the site to vote for her, but others kept voting her back down, so she started adding the votes back in. As she said,

The Best Coaching Blogs 2009 Contest is in full swing.

The Qualifying Round ended with 19 blogs being cut. Now the more competive blogs are jockeying for the first page and top positions. The option to vote a blog up or down, makes the competition particularly fluid. Not sure we'll keep that option for next year, since voting a blog down feels a little un-coach-like, but it makes the contest fun!

With 16,000 hits to the contest page in the last few weeks, votes and positions are changing rapidly, especially between the top five blogs. 

The most common question that I get from owners of the blogs is, "Why isn't my vote count changing when someone votes for my blog?" There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. A blog can actually have negative votes, but the lowest grade you will see for it is zero. When someone votes for it, the vote will be counted, but it won't change from zero until the net vote is one or higher.
2. The system remembers your computer, so you can't vote it up more than once. In this case, your second vote won't be tallied.
3. With 16,000 hits to the page, the odds that someone else is voting at the same time that you are, are pretty good. If they vote down, while you vote up, the net vote is zero. Sounds incredible, but I've seen votes go up and down dramatically in minutes and I've seen votes stay "stuck", as well. This contest is very active.
4. The position of a blog won't change unless you update the page.

For readers of blogs, this is a great time to read the best coaching blogs, because they are all in one place. Don't worry, here's a strategy for finding the time to read them all. It's also a great time to cast your vote and help determine who gets declared the Best Coaching Blog in 2009.

And for those of you who own coaching blogs and are regretting that you didn't enter the contest in time, there is always next year.

In the meantime, VOTE! 

If you have trouble asking for favors, it could be that your intuition is telling you something important.

Sometimes coaches assume that if clients have difficulty asking for what they want, they just need coaching to get over their resistance and learn how to ask. However, in many cases, it's really the client's inner wisdom that's stopping them. The client may indeed need coaching, but coaching the wrong issue is just a waste of time.

Here's why. Most people have an inner barometer that tells them where they stand with others. This barometer is either instinctive or intuitive, I'm not sure which, but for our purposes, it doesn't really matter. It's the barometer that holds most people back from asking for, and getting, what they really want.

If your inner barometer is holding you back from asking for what you want, what it's telling you is that you haven't been giving enough.

If you're someone who gives your time, effort, attention, care, acknowledgment, money or whatever to others on a regular basis, with little concern for how or when it will come back to you, most others will be happy to help you when you need it. If you just give to get, on the other hand, people will avoid you. And if you're someone who rarely gives, most folks will run the other way if you ask them for very much (except, perhaps you nicest relatives).

Giving without concern for getting is the surest way to get what you want pretty much all the time.

So why don't most people give more? What's this resistance really about? Well, some people unfortunately were brought up around people who don't understand this principle, so they were just never taught, but often there is a fear underlying the failure to give. This fear masquerades as a desire to not be seen as a doormat, or not to be "taken advantage of". Have you ever worried about that?

If you're concerned that giving more will cause people to take advantage or perceive you as a doormat, you've got a different kind of a problem. This is a matter of you and your own boundaries, not that other people are out to take advantage.

Any time you find yourself worrying that people might take advantage if you offer to do more for them, what you're really worried about is that you won't take care of yourself adequately by identifying what your boundaries are and communicating them. If you do that, few people will ever take advantage of you and those that do will be fairly easy to deal with. 

It's up to you to say "No" now and then and once you learn how, you're free to give with abandon and thoroughly enjoy it. Not only that, but people who tend to take advantage of others (known as "energy vampires") will naturally give up trying to get more out of you and focus on some other victim. Whereas people who are givers (Read: People who are good at saying "No") will naturally be more attracted to you and they'll be happy to help next time you need some assistance with something.

So when that resistance to ask for a favor, or a sale, or even a few moments of someone's time comes up for you, ask yourself what's it's telling you. If you haven't been giving enough, you've got some work to do and the first step is to set some boundaries.

To get more of what you want, learn to say, "No". 

Read tomorrow's blog post for ways to say, "No".