In this week’s guest post Frederique Murphy returns to shares her thoughts and expertise about how you, as a coach, can know how effective you are with your clients.
Chuuut… Watch Out!
One of the questions, coaches often ask me, whether directly or indirectly sharing their concerns, is about knowing how effective they are with their clients. And, most of the time, they’ll say (you might have heard that before ;-), and it usually starts with the B word: “But, coaching is not an exact science, there is no real way for me to know how my session is going…”
Well, let’s blast that belief, as I am sure you will all agree that this is a belief, which is not worth holding on to, as it is clearly limiting you and your coaching abilities.
Putting the results your clients will be producing and experiencing aside, what I’d like to focus on today is on the silence bits, as in, the answer to you knowing how it is going, can very often be found in what you clients are actually not saying verbally.
I believe the answer to do that is in developing an acute sense of awareness and observation, and it is one of the top skills, that a coach wants to always enhance throughout their career.
Here is a list of what you want to be watching out during your sessions; and for all of these, you want to particularly pay attention to the changes in:
- blinking
- breathing
- energy / state
- eye movements
- lip size
- muscle tone
- pauses
- posture
- pupil size
- skin colour
- voice
- pace
- pitch
- tone
See, this is where you go beyond the words of your clients and watch out for the non-verbal clues they are giving you.
Observing, noticing and interpreting these non-verbal clues is key in helping you assess how your session is going, in knowing how your words are being received, and how effective your communication is.
These clues are very often truer than the conscious words your clients are using as these are unconscious “leaks”. And, therefore, are fantastic true feedback for you as the coach.
Before wrapping up, I’d like to add one more thing, as I hear some of you asking already 😉 And, how about phone and Skype sessions?
Well, it is the same, you still can assess how your session is going by using some of these elements; the thing is that while you won’t be able to notice a skin tone change or a muscle change, you will find that you’ll put more emphasis on the auditory elements.
The more you practice, the more you will refine your sensory acuity, and start noticing the minute and subtle changes in your clients.My suggestion is to make a list of the sensory acuity elements you’d like to enhance and then systematically, pick one per week, and during that particular week, put extra focus on that one element. And, then repeat, for the next one. Etc, Etc!
To your ever-increasing awareness!
About the Author/Further Resources
Combining her business expertise, having been a business consultant for over 10 years, working on multi-millions programmes around the world and running a successful 6-figure business (she hit that figure within 9-months in business and then doubled it within the following 6 months!) and her mind expertise, being an international licensed NLP Master Practitioner & NLP Mind Coach, Frederique has developed the “Mountain Moving Mindset” programme, where she empowers business owners, entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs to master their mindset, so that they can move mountains and bring their businesses to the next level!
Interesting piece of work.