Archives for:
“how to be a successful coach”

Black and White Thinking — A Common Problem With New Coaches

Often when I talk to new coaches they get caught in black and white thinking about what good coaches should and shouldn’t do. 

– You should never ask a client why? 
– You should only ever ask questions. 
– You should never teach a client.
– You should never give advice. 

These guidelines are helpful when you’re starting as a coach.

– It’s easier to talk at a client than explore with them. 
– It’s easier to give advice than be curious. 
– It’s easy to ask why when you can’t think of something better to say. 

But these guidelines are simply guidelines and too often they become a religion for new coaches. Soon enough they are zealots preaching the gospel of pure coaching and the ICF standards. 

The best coaches I know push the boundaries of coaching while acting with a high level of integrity. Sometimes from habit but more often with conscious choice. Generally, they abide by the principles of what makes coaching work, but they aren’t bound to them. 

They see all the gray in between the lines. So if you’re new to coaching YES listen to the guidelines, try them on, if they feel hard to implement GOOD! That means you’re getting better as a coach. 

But don’t fall into black and white thinking. There are no rules to coaching and that’s the best and worst part about it. Your clients need you to be flexible enough to help them while maintaining enough integrity not to get lost. And learning how to make your way through the gray is essential is you’re going to truly become a masterful coach. 

You Don’t Have To Be An Expert To Be A Great Coach

How can I help someone build a multi-million dollar business if I’ve never done it?
How can I help someone with their law firm if I’m not a lawyer?
How can I help someone have a dope relationship if I’m still single?

I hear this kind of thing a lot from coaches. I get it. I mean I wouldn’t want to learn how to cook from someone who couldn’t make toast. I wouldn’t want to learn guitar from someone who can’t play basic chords.

But coaching isn’t like cooking or guitar.

To be a good cook you need to do cooking. Because you have to learn the nuances of making food in order to teach it to someone else.

With coaching you’re not teaching someone a skill. You’re using a totally different set of skills to help them improve their skills.

Skills like:
– Observation
– Curiosity
– Contextualization
– Empathy
– Analysis

Just to name a few.

But even more important than those skills… you’re being someone for your client.

You’re being a stand for possibility. Which just means you choose to stand in a place where you can see that so much more is possible than your client realizes.

In the movie, a Star is Born the famous singer sees a young singer with talent performing somewhere and takes an interest in them. The famous singer is standing in possibility. They see that so much more is possible for this young singer then they even realize. More so, they have the ability to draw it out of them.

THE MOST VALUABLE THING YOU DO AS A COACH IS THIS!!!

And you don’t need to be a famous singer to do it.

What you need is an intimate understanding of possibility. What you need is an experience of someone standing for your possibility.

What you need is practice in the art of being with someone, finding out what they want, figuring out what’s in the way, and supporting them to take on the steps and beliefs. It’s a whole different set of skills than building a million dollar business or running a law firm.

And it’s why I coached a CFO at Nokia.
A CEO of a digital marketing agency in Peru.
A writer with work in the NYTimes
without ever doing ANY of these things.

The skill they needed to do their job was irrelevant to the skills I needed.
I never let a client’s desire for something I can’t do, stand in the way of what I see as possible for them.

If you’re wondering how you can help these people.
PRACTICE HELPING PEOPLE.
The deeply felt confidence you get when you realize you can choose to stand for anybody’s life, and possibility is irreplaceable.​

Love,
Toku

PS The Spring Dojo is already over half full. If you want one of the five remaining slots. Please let us know. It’s the ONLY dojo we’re running in 2021 right now.

The Best Coaching Sessions Are Boring

Don’t get me wrong. I love it when a session with a client is full of emotion. Maybe they burst into tears and are on their growth edge, or they are so fueled up with energy that they cannot wait to take on a new challenge.  If I’m honest the best coaching sessions—the ones that have the most lasting impact—are the boring ones. But this is hard for most coaches to understand, especially new coaches.

 

The difference between swings and homeruns. 

If you want a truly masterful coach you’ll likely be impressed by their ability to cause big tectonic shifts with relative ease. In the world of coaching, you might call these home runs. 

They are:

  • The questions that crack a client open
  • The reframes that shift perspective in a big way
  • The words of appreciation that open a client’s heart

I love home runs. I remember watching coaches like Rich Litvin, or Steve Chandler, or Michael Neil, or Byron Katie and many others. And being blown away by their home runs. 

And I remember going out and trying to replicate them. 

I’d ask BIG QUESTIONS 
I’d stare intently at the client willing them to cry
I would pluck on heartstrings
I would give bold speeches

A lot of this ‘worked’ in that it created a reaction in my clients. 
But much of it wasn’t great coaching. 

Slowly I began to notice something. While the home runs were great, they didn’t lead to change. 

So I went back to the drawing board. I began watching sessions in a new way. 
I stopped looking for the home runs. I started watching in between them. 

Eventually I began to see what these great coaches were doing.
They weren’t trying to hit home runs at all. 

They were trying to take swings. 
They would listen and take a swing. 

Sometimes it hit, sometimes it didn’t. 
But that was ok. 

They would learn from the last swing. 
They would listen even more closely. 
They would lean into the client. 

And then they would swing again. And again. And again. 

With each swing, they would notice what landed or what didn’t. 
No one swing mattered that much to them. Their swings were graceful, elegant. 
They were mostly unattached to hitting a home run, they swung because they loved to swing. 

That’s when it hit me. 

If I want to be great, I need to learn to swing. 
Even when I don’t hit the ball. 
Maybe even especially when I don’t hit the ball. 

I need to learn to swing. 

And sure enough, the better I got at taking swings the more home runs I hit. 

But it was only by letting go, by not needing to hit home runs, and by letting myself be boring that I saw the results. 

So now, when I have a session that’s all swings and no hits, I don’t worry about it as much; 
I simply let myself swing. I feel the motion of the conversation. I enjoy the sound of dialogue. I know that if I keep swinging and paying attention, eventually something will open. 

A whole session of swinging can feel boring. But these sessions are often the ones that create the momentum, lay the groundwork, and inspire the big changes that come later on. 

Please don’t get attached to hitting home runs, or making your clients cry. 
Focus on the swing, the being, and the way you stand for your client. 
If you put your attention there not only will you get better home runs, but you’ll also enjoy being a coach so much more.