Coaching Blog

What Voice Coach, Adam Levine, Can Teach You About Client Attraction

Posted by Julia Stewart

Adam_Levine2

I've written about why coaches love NBC's The Voice, before. And last night's season premiere was just as positive and entertaining a usual, except for one big difference...

Sexiest Man Alive and Voice Coach superstar, Adam Levine, was off his game. Way off.

Adam didn't attract a single singer to his team last night during the Blind Auditions. Every other coach, Pharrell Williams, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton, picked up multiple singers, but neither Adam's charm, looks, nor winning record could persuade any singer to take a chance on him. 

His arch rival, Blake Shelton gloated that Adam's pitch was all wrong: Adam pleaded with singers to join his team, because he "needed" them. He wanted to "share" their glory when they won.

Would you hire a coach who pitched you like that?

Even Adam admitted his mojo was gone; his supreme confidence had run out on him. 

Well, every now and then I hear from a new or not-so-new coach who can't seem to attract any clients. They are frustrated, discouraged, feel like somebody's played a bad joke on them, and/or a little desperate.

Sometimes they are very desperate.

They are mystified by the problem. And yet, most folks can watch them in action and see it: They are unsure of themselves, needy, and suspect something is terribly wrong.

You know, like maybe they are...failed coaches?

Not attractive.

I feel for them, because I've had that experience. But I don't worry, because the situation is fixable and the lessons learned can be priceless.

If Adam Levine, who's been accused of being obnoxiously confident, can lose his mojo, so can any of us. And the pattern is the same for everyone. If we can't take a few "No's" in stride, our brains actually change and we start to think like losers, instead of winners.

Martin Seligman calls this "learned helplessness". The survival value of learned helplessness might be to discourage rivals from fighting to the death and instead encourage losers to behave like good followers, instead of conquering kings.

Fortunately, most of us don't fight to the death for anything, these days, but unfortunately, our brains still learn to be helpless pretty easily. For someone like Adam, a young man who's enjoyed phenomenal success, this experience could be new, so he may have little or no idea how to handle it.

You are probably older, wiser, and perhaps have experienced a loss or two. So how did you come back from those losses?

There are loads of tools that can shift your brain state easily, such as somatic tools. For intance, standing with your hands on your hips (Think: Superman) for a few minutes, or raising your arms in the air (Think: V for Victory) can raise your testosterone levels the way winning does (Don't worry, Ladies, you won't grow a beard). By the way, winners naturally adopt these postures and thereby condition their brains for more confidence and winning.

The real value of confidence is that it allows you to shift your focus away from yourself and onto the task at hand. If you take it far enough, it begins to look like humility - in the most attractive way.

Keeping the focus on the potential client, and off yourself, can make all the difference. Offer them something with no strings attached, like a complimentary coaching session and give them tons of value whether or not they hire you.

By the way, Pharrell Williams is the perfect model of an attractive coach: passionate, insightful, generous, humble, and still offering value even after the singer has already chosen his/her coach, because he's a different kind of winner, someone who leads from behind.

He's really not there for the win; he's there for the talent. Be that coach.

If you've never experienced a loss, pursue coaching clients like an obnoxiously confident Adam Levine and you'll attract some.

But if you're like most coaches, be a little wiser.

Channel your Inner Pharrell.

Want to learn more about the subtleties of client attraction? Explore Coach 100:

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Topics: Coach 100, coaching clients, Attraction Principles, The Voice, clients, Martin Seligman

5 Life Coach Reasons to Love The Voice

Posted by Julia Stewart

Life CoachLike millions of others, I've grown to love NBC's The Voice. For me, it stands head and shoulders above other TV talent shows for a whole slew of reasons.

I even like it better than So You Think You Can Dance and I'm a former dancer! After laboring for years in dirty loft studios and off-off-off-Broadway theaters in Lower Manhattan, I can only imagine how incredibly cool it is for those young dancers to be featured on television. But it's equally cool for singers to get their chance on The Voice and the format of The Voice makes it really special.

What's so great about The Voice?

1. Like Ceelo Green says, The Voice is full of positive energy. Unlike some other shows that will remain nameless, all The Voice contestents are good performers. None of them are up there to be ridiculed and laughed at. It takes guts to go for your dream and the show respects that.

2. The Voice is a supportive environment. It's a cosmic kitchen serving up great singing chops. The first cool feature is that the judges are competing along with the singers, so they are on the line, too. That makes each of them, great singers in their own right, both judges and coaches. The Blind Auditions that made the show famous, mean the judges have to choose their team members on voice, alone. When more than one judege turns their chair around, the singer gets to choose their own coach, giving the power to the contestents. Those constant shifts in power make the show exciting. Plus, every coach has a vested interest in each of their singers. The better the singers do, the better chance the coach has to win. It's a win-win-win set up, much like a strategic habitat designed by a great life coach.

3. High-quality performances every week. With great coaching, huge talent, intense competition and tons of singing challenges and opportunities to perform, the singers grow before your eyes. Each week, at least one performance gives me chills. Last night, both Amanda Brown with 'Natural Woman' and Trevin Hunte with 'And I'm Telling You', gave me chills, tears in the eyes and a lump in my throat. As every coach will tell you, there's nothing better than witnessing someone who is stepping into their full potential. Very cool.

4. Acknowledgments from all the coaches. The show spends A LOT of time on this. It almost seems like too much, but it's a cornerstone of why the show works. Even though the coach/judges are competing, they are generous with both their praise and suggestions for improvement to all the singers. They don't just hand out pats on the head. And it's fun when they admit how jealous their are of the other judges' teams.

The possible exception is Christina Aguilara, who has doled out faint praise for several singers from competing teams. Positive psychology coaches will notice Christina's use of Passive Destructive Response (PDR) when critiquing Melanie Martinez on three separate occasions, by changing the subject and praising the stage set instead of the singing. It's a well-researched method for subtly stealing someone's thunder. As a result, I grew to dislike Christina and her team by extension and wonder if that's partly why the public voted them out early. I hear Christina won't be back next year.

5. The show is just plain fun. This year, during the knockout rounds, when singers had to win by singing a great duet with their opponent (another example of winning via cooperation instead of straight competition), competing coaches got to 'steal' the losers. Amanda Brown was snatched up by Team Adam Levine and Ceelo is still lamenting her loss.

Of course the banter between the judges is priceless, including Blake Shelton's dumb country jokes, like his comment last night that he thought that big violin-thing was called a Ceelo.

The Voice has everything that I love as a life coach: positive energy, supportive environments, great performances, acknowledgment and fun. As Oprah proved years ago, TV can reach for the highest common denominator and still succeed - hugely.

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Topics: life coach, Coaching, become a life coach, become a coach, free coach training, OPRAH, ENVIRONMENT, The Voice

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