leadership coaching

Lessons from movement 1

7 June 2013 in Guest Post tagged business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / Create Yourself / executive coach / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Louise Gillespie Smith / Mark Walsh / movement / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / self-awareness / yoga

In today’s guest post Louise Gillespie-Smith shares a little about how she combines her skills and knowledge when coaching.

"Lessons from movement" A guest post by Louise Gillespie-Smith

Lessons from movement

by Louise Gillespie-Smith

Yoga teachers will often say to their students during a class something like “how you are on your yoga mat is a reflection of how you are in life”. I remember hearing for the first time when I began to practice years ago and it always stuck with me. I found it fascinating to pay attention to how I was being in a class and then to observe where I was like that in other areas of my day to day life.

Whether it was comparing myself to others, trying to force myself in to poses when my body was not ready, my mind chatter being so busy it would throw me off balance, breathing shallow and fast, the list of observations was endless. I could then stop, try something new and experience the results before experimenting with the same outside of the yoga studio.

This is something that led me to fall in love with yoga, how it wasn’t just exercise but a personal development and self-awareness tool for my whole life. In 2012 I became a yoga teacher and now combine my life coaching with yoga to help my clients heal themselves and become self-aware through how they are on their mat.

There is something powerful about getting out of the mind and learning from how we move our bodies instead. Our movements are instinctual, our self-talk does not come into play so much, we just move. Sometimes it can be easy to over analyse what is going on in the mind, going round in circles, that’s when paying attention to the body can provide us with numerous insights.

Yoga is not the only way to learn from how we move our bodies, simply looking at how we walk can teach us a huge amount. Earlier on this year, I enjoyed an Embodiment course with Mark Walsh, which was great to dive deeper into this type of coaching which plays around with movement.

One powerful technique I learnt with Mark was how to effectively centre yourself which helps you to deal with anything that is thrown your way in a calm, steady, clear manner. The 3 steps Mark gave to centring are:

Bring your mind into present moment awareness by using the five senses for example feeling where your feet/body connects with the ground and becoming aware of your breath.
Become aware of your balance, noticing both feet evenly on the ground.
Relax the middle line, the point between your eyebrows, your nose, your lips, your tongue, your chin, your throat and your belly.

Simply moving through these 3 stages helps you to feel grounded and connected in the moment. A tool that is very useful in times of stress and chaos.

A great way to demonstrate the power of this to a client is to first stand to the side of them and grab their arm. Their fight or flight response will generally cause them to jump.

Next go through the 3 centring steps and then grab their arm again. The response is usually very different, completely reduced in fact.

Often with a client I will ask them to start to walk around the room and then start to think about the issue they are dealing with, then notice how their movement and body language changes. After going through the centring process I ask them to walk and think about it again. The difference is often very noticeable.

Movement is a powerful way to learn about ourselves, to experiment with dealing with situations in a different way and it makes a coaching session fun.

About the author

Louise Gillespie-Smith runs a business called Create Yourself which empowers and supports people in making positive change in their life. She has a holistic toolkit of resources, life coaching/NLP/ yoga/ reiki/ image consultancy, to create individually tailored packages based on what each client needs. lo****@cr************.uk/07779 150886.

Find Louise and Create Yourself on Facebook at www.facebook.com/CREATEYOURSELF and follow Louise on Twitter at www.twitter.com/LouiseatCreate

How To Make It Rain Money

31 May 2013 in Guest Post tagged Anja Schuetz / belief / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / money / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development

Coach Anja Schuetz shares her experience and knowledge in today’s guest post:

How To Make It Rain Money

by Anja Schuetz

I grew up in communism where religion and any kind of belief system were suppressed and discouraged.

After the wall came down and I grew up and got to travel the world, I was able to look at different cultures, beliefs, traditions and superstitions from the outside, with curiosity and respect, and without any judgment.

I noticed that beliefs come from either conditioning (upbringing) or choice. Either someone “told us a story” or we’ve been telling a story to ourselves.

I saw how beliefs could be inspiring and comforting, or limiting and guilt instilling.

When I realized I had a choice, I decided to go for inspiring and comforting! I started to believe in a friendly universe; a universe that wants to partner up and co-create with me and help me reach my full potential. All I have to do is show up like I mean it!

As soon as I started to really commit to what I wanted, the universe started doing its part, too: it opened my eyes to opportunities I didn’t see before and I “magically” met the right people who helped me move forward – either through important information or contacts.

Since then, I question my own limiting beliefs and choose better ones all the time, in order to create more magic in my life:

“You can’t teach at a university if you never went to university yourself!” Says who? Watch me!
“You can’t start a business in a financial crisis!” Oh yeah? Let’s see if that’s true!
“Walking under a ladder brings bad luck!” Who ever made THAT up? I say, “It’s raining money on me when I walk under a ladder!” And I will seek out ladders to walk under! And it usually does rain money on me a few days later, because I choose to believe it and I show my commitment by confidently walking under them and imagining the feeling of catching thousands of Euro notes flying around me!

Beliefs are stories that we (or someone else) made up – not always based on real evidence. Some people may have real and solid evidence for their beliefs, but we can’t simply copy and paste their beliefs on us. What’s real for them may not apply to us. That’s why – if we feel stuck in a certain area of our life – we need to question our beliefs! We need to really look at what evidence has shown up in our life. And if we notice there isn’t any real evidence and those beliefs are not serving us any longer, we need to make up better ones! It’s as simple as that!

I know… simple doesn’t mean easy! It can be a big deal to let go of a conditioning we’ve been brought up with and lived by for our whole life! Beliefs can be super sticky – whether it’s harmless little superstitions or big, essential philosophies that have become part of our identity (and even that is only a belief).

But – as with everything – it just takes practice. Start with the little superstitions and practice letting go of them, or even better – turn them around! Use them for something good!

Are you really circling around ladders because you have solid evidence that walking under them brings bad luck? Have you verified that myth or did you just subscribe to it without questioning and allowed it to become a habit? What if you decided it brings good luck instead?

Do you really believe breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck? Do you believe saying Happy Birthday a day too early brings bad luck? Do you believe missing that one bowling pin brings seven years of bad sex??

My guess is you don’t really believe in all of that. My guess however is also, that when it happens to you or to someone else, you say something like, “Uh-oh! Seven years of bad luck!” And you might not even mean it, but words are powerful. Even if you don’t wholeheartedly believe in them, repeating them re-affirms those statements and registers them somewhere in the depths of your subconscious, and you never know in what ways they might be holding you back.

It’s time to re-frame and reaffirm positive, inspiring beliefs instead!

Next time you’ll see a black cat crossing the street – what will you choose to believe it means? It could mean that good news is around the corner for you! And if the cat walks in the opposite direction, how will that be even better for you?

Your beliefs are all yours! Make them fun and inspiring and have them serve you and others!

About Anja Schuetz

Anja Schuetz is a Personal Coach for Thirty-Something women, and a Customer Service consultant. Her 5-week online community course “The Supergirl’s Moneycure” starts on June 8 and will offer a mix of money magic, math and manifestation! It will also strengthen your “receiving muscles”. Get a pre-chapter here: http://anjaschuetz.net/moneycure and follow Anja on http://facebook.com/virtualanja

“Without a vision people will perish” 1

24 May 2013 in Guest Post tagged Andrew A. Faccone / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / goals / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / plan / sales / vission

In today’s guest post Andrew A Faccone combines his personal beliefs and experience to share some thoughts around success.

"Without a vision people will perish" A guest post by Andrew A.Faccone

“Without a vision people will perish”

By Andrew A.Faccone

“Where there is no vision the people perish.”

(Proverbs 29:18)

The majority of our modern society is removed from many of each day’s activities, caught in the cycle of keeping up with what everyone else is doing and not focusing on themselves or their own long term goals, which will impact their life personally and professionally.

Having a greater vision of where you want your life to be at any given moment is within reach of every person who is envisioning the end result, where they want to be. What mark will you leave on this world?

Each day is truly a gift and with the gift you and you alone are allowed to determine the outcome of your actions. Think back to a time in your younger years when you were asked if you wanted a special gift for your birthday, graduation from school, or from Santa Clause.

The young child will make grandiose requests for a shiny toy, a certain electronic gadget and the more important clothes item that “all the other kids have”. Then after a lengthy sales pitch, prolonged reminders and constant communication by the child that desires it, the item will ultimately find its way into that child’s possession.

The teenage years bring about the same types of requests with even more specifics geared toward the latest and greatest item. I am very fortunate to coach both my daughter Juliana’s basketball and softball teams along with my son Drew’s basketball, little league and travel baseball teams. Many of the requests that come from my children are from the sports related, electronic communication devices (can we say Apple) and fashion minded clothing apparel wish list.

We truly need to be more like our children in our thinking and our approach to life. A bigger picture of life with unlimited boundaries with very little stress? Have you ever seen a child under 12 years of age stressed out?

What is our purpose in life? What do we hope to accomplish, achieve, conquer and leave our mark creating our legacy during our life? Some of us will teach, some will coach, be parents, work in the various service industries, trades using your given talents, become writers, bloggers, social media experts and some will even become entrepreneurs based upon the previous mentioned talents.

Paired with our purpose we also create the vision for what our future will be, we determine our future with the words we are saying. Proverbs 18:21 says the tongue has the power of life and death. We don’t realize what power our words can have impacting positively or negatively in all situations we come in contact with in our day to day lives.

In preparation for writing this blog piece I was reflecting on many of the various goals I had made for myself, work diligently toward, readjusted my course of action and ultimately overcame the many challenges and achieved what I had sought after. My life has been a series of goals, actions steps and ultimately achievement through a step by step approach. Hard work & determination can achieve anything when paired together to overcome the tallest of challenges and the most difficult of goals.

The hardest part of any journey is the first step. Where do you envision yourself in 3 months, 6months, 1 year, 2 years and even 10 years from the time you read this article. What do you picture yourself doing, how detailed are you in that vision of success?

Another key element to fulfilling that vision of success is having a burning desire. A desire that burns to your inner core, that same desire that will reinvigorate you on the darkest of days and make the brightest of days even more meaningful because you are one step closer to achieving that goal. Your vision is your picture of your future – your desire is what will transform your dream into a reality.

My career is in healthcare sales. My day to day activities are different than many people in other career choices. In sales, you and you alone have to motivate yourself, execute your plan, readjust your plan and then repeat the successful part of that plan daily. Day after day, week after week and year after year. The sales goals will get bigger and the demands of the position will increase. It takes a time tested approach, a vision and a burning desire to achieve what you truly want in life.

When you finish reading this article, think about something that you have been putting off, something you would like to do, but haven’t gotten to it. When its important enough to act upon and follow through on, that is when the vision will become a reality.

Most importantly believe in yourself, your abilities and what you are truly capable of. You have been successful throughout your life to this point, why wouldn’t you continue to achieve greater things as your progress forward. When the challenges become more demanding a more creative plan is required. That creative plan will enable you to achieve that desired result. Just as we have all found this blog site from various parts of the world, that same vision and desire will allow you to explore new boundaries of opportunity within yourself creating greater outcomes and endless opportunities for greater success.

Make that goal, be daring, really stretch yourself, have the desire to see it through and you will amaze yourself in what you will be able to accomplish. Make it quickly because tomorrow is coming faster than you think.

I look forward to hearing of your successes and accomplishments. Can Do! Yes, you Can!

About the Author/Further Resources

Andrew A.Faccone, MBA can provide insight regarding his expertise within the healthcare industry. He can also provide valuable business acumen and coaching insights.Andrew is available for speaking engagements for any size business organization as well as personalized business & career coaching.

Email aa****@ya***.com

Linkedin Contact Info www.linkedin.com/pub/andrew-a-faccone-mba/24/291/3b2/

Using The Pygmalion Effect in Coaching

17 May 2013 in Guest Post tagged belief / Beth Burgess / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / Robert Rosenthal / Smyls / solution focus / The Pygmalion Effect

In this week’s guest post Beth Burgess shares a study from the 1960’s and how it links to coaching.

"Using The Pygmalion Effect in Coaching" A guest post by Beth Burgess

Using The Pygmalion Effect in Coaching

By Beth Burgess

As coaches, we often work on the limiting beliefs of our clients; but we should be just as concerned about how much we believe in our clients and their potential, and how we demonstrate that.

We know that what people believe about themselves has a massive impact on what they are capable of. But often clients come to us because they don’t necessarily believe in themselves. Our clients have frequently been struggling to reach a goal or take action because of their limiting beliefs.

How vitally important it is, then, that we impart to our clients the belief they may lack. If we hold limiting beliefs about our clients, we will not be able to help them get to where they want to go.

Belief in the realisation of our goals motivates us to keep pursuing them and overcoming the obstacles. The same goes for how we motivate our clients. You can not push someone to achieve if you don’t really believe they have a chance.

In fact, the belief of the coach in the potential of the client is a fundamental factor in their success, much more so than what their current abilities may be.

A 1964 study by Robert Rosenthal gave us the term The Pygmalion Effect, a phenomenon in which people perform better if others believe in them and expect them to excel.

In an experiment, school children were given an IQ test, with Rosenthal telling the teachers it was a special test from Harvard University that would predict which students would be ‘academic bloomers’. Rosenthal picked out a few random children and told teachers that these students were more gifted than the others, ostensibly based on the test results.

Over the next two years, the children who had been identified as gifted had gained more IQ points in comparison to the kids who had not been picked out as ‘special’. The only defining factor in which of the kids achieved was the teachers’ belief in these being academically gifted students.

Rosenthal found that teachers who believed in their students tended to be warmer, more nurturing, gave more detailed feedback and ‘pushed’ their learners more.

All good coaches know the importance of building a nurturing relationship, good feedback, encouragement and accountability. As long as a strong and genuine belief in the client underpins that, then you are setting your client up for success.

And remember to make it known to your clients that you believe in them, too. Anyone who has ever heard the heartfelt words “I believe in you” can tell you the massive boost in confidence and self esteem that it gives them. Just knowing that another person believes you can succeed can be a very powerful experience.

“If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

About the Author

Beth Burgess is the founder of Smyls a solution-focused service which she set up to help people to overcome obstacles in their lives and create a fulfilling future.

Using a mixture of Coaching, NLP, Hypnotherapy and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Beth specialises in working with addiction, anxiety disorders, eating disorders and other mental health problems. In addition to her work with individuals, she also runs anti-stress workshops.

Beth is the author of two books on addiction recovery; The Recovery Formula: An Addict’s Guide to Getting Clean & Sober Forever (2012) and The Happy Addict (due to be published in July 2013).

She has also published a mini e-book, What is Self Esteem? How to Build your Self-Esteem and Feel Happy Now.

Beth lives in North London and coaches clients from all over the world. Her other projects include writing articles for The Huffington Post and promoting the message of recovery wherever she can.

For more about Beth, visit http://www.bethburgess.co.uk

Coaching with Logical Levels 3

10 May 2013 in Guest Post tagged behaviour / beliefs / business coach / business coaching / capabilities / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / environment / executive coach / identity / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Logical Levels / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / Phil Manington / purpose / Robert Dilts / Suffolk Coaching Zone / values

In this week’s guest post Phil Manington shares how he uses a specific NLP model.

"Coaching with Logical Levels" A guest post by Phil Manington

Coaching with Logical Levels

By Phil Manington

Anyone familiar with NLP will probably have come across Robert Dilts’s Logical Levels model. It is a great tool for exploring how and why we do what we do. It works at a system level and provides a powerful way of creating sustainable change in an individual or organisation.

It looks at our thinking across six levels:

The Environment level involves the external conditions in which you live. Questions such as: “Where?”, “When?” and “With whom?” are typical Environment level questions.
The Behaviour level refers to what you do in different environments.
Capabilities (whether mental, physical or emotional) describe how you do what you do. What are your skills and strategies for taking action?
Beliefs and Values define why you do something and shape the way you perceive the world. Beliefs can be both empowering and limiting.
Identity consolidates whole systems of beliefs and values into a sense of self. It defines who you think you are, as an individual or an organisation.
Purpose involves your connection to something that goes beyond yourself. At this level, useful questions are: “For whom am I doing this?” and “What is my purpose?”.

Many change initiatives focus at the behaviour and capability levels and this can be very effective on occasions. For example, anyone wanting to lose weight will have used exercise and/or dieting to become more fit and healthy.

However, when a client comes for coaching it is usually because they have tried these approaches and they haven’t worked – they are stuck. The Logical Levels model provides a way uncovering the root cause of the situation.

Uncovering the Root Cause

Listening to the client’s language will provide useful pointers to the level that might be important. For example:

I usually end up in the kitchen at parties (environment/behaviour)
I argue a lot (behaviour)
I’m not very good at dancing (capability)
People should tell the truth (belief)
I want to be less stressed (value)
That’s just the sort of person I am (identity)

You may notice your client is focussing around certain levels – you can gather more information by asking questions that take them to other levels. For example:

What do you feel when that happens? (behaviour)
Why is that important to you? (value)
What assumptions are you making about this? (belief)
What does that say about you as a person? (identity)
What does that do for you? (value)

Making Changes

Clearly the way you help a client change depends on the specific information you uncover but guiding them round the levels can break through seemingly insoluble blocks. Here’s an example:

After my marriage broke up, I suffered a crisis of confidence and was thrown back into an old set of beliefs about not being attractive to women. My friends encouraged me to “just get out there” and I knew, rationally that this made sense. After all, one of my favourite books is ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’! And yet I kept putting it off. My coach and colleague, Steve, helped me shift from this stuck place:

We started with my assertion that “I am not attractive to women” – an identity level statement. Rather than trying to challenge this directly he moved me around the levels. He said:

“OK, let’s put that to one side for a moment – tell me what your strengths are”.

I listed a number of things and he picked up on something that I said about learning. Not only am I good at learning but I am passionate about it – I love it. So we had established a capability and a core value for me.

His next question was a great example of elegant coaching:

“So, returning to your relationship with women, who do you know who’s good at it?”

This is a loaded question, with a presupposition that relating to women is a skill issue, not an identity one. Of course, I could name several people and we discussed what they did that seemed to work. His next question:

“So, do you think you could learn to do some of those things?”

was met with cautious optimism and I finished our session with the belief that being attractive was more about skill and behaviour rather than identity – and I also had practical actions to start improving.

This sort of approach works really well for anyone who has low self-confidence or low self-esteem. It’s particularly dispiriting to hold a limiting belief at the identity level because we don’t feel we can possibly change. But often it is only a belief and by using the Logical Levels model to change the way someone sees themselves (for example, from “that’s just who I am” to “I am just not very skilled yet”), it is possible to facilitate quite profound transformations.

About the Author

Phil Manington is co-founder of Suffolk Coaching Zone. He is a professional trainer, coach and management consultant, specialising in helping businesses and individuals to make successful change and achieve their full potential.

Phil currently offers training, workshops and one-to-one coaching for personal and business clients. Specialist areas include leadership skills, building self-confidence and self-esteem, and improving relationships.

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/SuffolkCoachingZone

Twitter – @SuffolkCZ

Website – http://www.suffolk-coaching.com

Achieve your career goals: Let’s lean in together

3 May 2013 in Guest Post tagged business coach / business coaching / career / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / Gina Visram / Happily ever after for grow-ups / leadership coaching / Lean In / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / Limitless Coaching / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / Relationship / Sheryl Sandberg

In this week’s guest post Gina Visram discusses a book that inspires her and shares her own thoughts and experiences.

"Achieve your career goals: Let’s lean in together" A guest post By Gina Visram

Achieve your career goals: Let’s lean in together

By Gina Visram

As coaches, we tend to be avid readers. From industry ‘classics’ like Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to more recent personal development / business books on the scene like Karen Williams’ The Secrets of Successful Coaches, Daniel Priestley’s Key Person of Influence and Bev James’ Do it or Ditch It – as coaches, we favour books that will not only inspire our clients but that will also inspire us to be our best, to provide the best service to our clients and to achieve our own goals.

It is with this in mind that I highly, highly (yes… I did deliberately type that twice) recommend Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In. Sheryl is the COO of Facebook and is not only formidable in business terms but also an excellent motivator due to her experience and passion when it comes to women’s leadership. In her book, she examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled, explains the root causes and offers solutions that can empower women to reach their full potential.

Her main message to women is to “sit at the table” i.e. lean in – seek challenges, take risks and pursue goals wholeheartedly. She moves the discussion from what women can’t do to what they can… a necessary, positive reframe that we, as coaches, fully embrace.

With a combination of solid research and anecdotal evidence, there is no shortage of memorable nuggets throughout this text, and below are just a few of them:

“I truly believe that the single, most important career decision that a woman makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that life partner is. I don’t know of one woman in a leadership position whose life partner is not fully – and I mean fully – supportive of her career.”
“For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are hounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose because if they try to do too much they’ll be unhappy.”
“Feeling confident – or pretending that you feel confident – is necessary to reach for opportunities. It’s a cliché but opportunities are rarely offered; they are seized.”
“Less than six months after I started at Facebook, Mark [Zuckerberg] and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please everyone, you are not making enough progress. Mark was right.”

This book has received a lot of buzz since its release in March 2013 and true to Sheryl’s comment above about not being able to please everyone – she has received a hefty dollop of criticism since publication. More importantly however, she has also successfully connected with a number of women (and men) who like me, think that absorbing and acting on some of the thinking presented in this book could have a positive, and potentially even revolutionary outcome on the workplace as we know it.

Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In and Gina Visram's book Happily Ever After In fact, I am proud to say that I recently ‘leaned in’ by completing my first book, a career coaching book entitled “Happily Ever After for Grown-Ups: A non-fairytale, post-wedding, blues-busting guide for newlyweds.” While coming from a different angle, my book is also about achieving a successful personal/professional balance and I must admit, it feels good to be leaning in further towards my coaching aspirations through achieving this milestone.

What should you take away from this post?

As a coach, male or female – I highly recommend that you read Lean In. Agree or disagree – it is certainly thought provoking and in my humble opinion, a fantastic read and motivational platform for clients and coaches alike.
If you would like to support a fellow coach and/or if you coach around the area of careers, relationships and/or ‘work/life balance’ – please do check out and purchase Happily Ever After for Grown-Ups – available on Amazon from 15 April 2013. (If you can’t promote your own work… who will?!)

About Gina Visram

Gina is a career coach, speaker, mentor and author who works with ambitious, multi-tasking women (and men!) who are ready to work hard at being successful in their careers and personal lives – on their own terms. As part of her ‘Limitless Coaching’ initiative, she works with clients to help them maximise or regain focus and drive to achieve key goals. A relative newlywed herself, Gina married on 29 April 2011 (same day as the ‘royal wedding’) and is emerging rapidly as a lead moderator and facilitator in discourse on the traditionally “hushed” subject of ‘post-wedding blues’.

To enquire about working with Gina, stay in touch and find out more about local and online workshops in relation to the book Happily Ever After for Grown-Ups, follow her on Twitter @bridemotivation, connect through Facebook page “Happily Ever After for Grown-Ups” www.facebook.com/happilyeverafterforgrownups and visit her Limitless Coaching website www.limitlesscoaching.com

How to measure if your business building efforts are working

26 April 2013 in Guest Post tagged business building / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / measure / Michele Christensen / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / results / success / tracking

In today’s guest post Michele Christensen shares some of her experience and knowledge to focus upon the subject of building a coaching business.

How to measure if your business building efforts are working

by Michele Christensen

As the owner of a coaching business, you do a lot to build your business. There are many ways to bring in new clients and customers and new ways pop up all the time. It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing more and more, and to continue to add new business building tactics until it becomes too much to manage.

The key to building your business without overwhelm is to focus on what works best for you. What will work best depends on your talents and temperament as well as your target market. Some people have found huge success on Facebook, others speak on live stages. Blogging brings great results for some, one-on-one sales calls work well for others.

So how do you figure out what works best for you? The only answer is to measure your results. It helps to start with a sound idea that has a good chance of working in your situation, but the only way to know for sure how well something works is to measure the results.

Before you implement any new idea, it’s critical that you know why you are doing this new thing and what you hope to accomplish by doing it. For example, you might be using Pinterest with the goal of generating traffic to your website. The general goals would be to have more people visit your site in a given period such as a month after you begin using Pinterest, and you will also want to see specific numbers of people visiting your site from Pinterest.

At this point, it’s important to note that when measuring results you might set specific goals such as 100 unique visitors from Pinterest, or you might set general goals such as “get traffic from Pinterest.” You may also start with a general goal of “more traffic” and then try to improve it month over month and hit specific numbers. Both general goals of “more” and specific numeric goals work, and the key thing is that you have a goal.

Once you’ve set a goal for your new idea, figure out how you will gather the data you need to measure your results. If it’s a traffic goal, you might need to install traffic analyzing software such as Google Analytics. If it’s a certain number of clicks, you can use a link shortening service such as bit.ly to tell you exactly how many people clicked on a specific link. If it’s teleseminar signups, you’ll want to capture those so they can be counted. Once you know what you need to measure (traffic, clicks, signups, etc) it will be much easier to find the tool you need than if you are grasping at straws.

Next, begin tracking your results. Compare them over time as you make changes and see if you can improve. What happens if you do the same thing for 3 months? If you double your efforts, do you double your results? Is it worth the time you put in?

If you already measure your results, great! If not, get started today. Pick one thing you already do that you don’t track the outcomes for and start measuring. It’s the only way to know for sure what is working and the only way to make sure you are spending your time in the right place.

About Michele Christensen

Michele Christensen is a business coach and mentor for solopreneurs. She teaches people how to have a profitable, sustainable one-person business they can run from home without overwhelm or working 24/7. For more information and free resources, find her online at michelechristensen.com, or on the social sites.

Seven Pieces of Advice From Top Coaching Clients 1

19 April 2013 in Guest Post tagged advice / business coach / business coaching / charging / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / focus / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / nlp coach / outcomes / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / questions / respectful / Richard Nugent / trust / TwentyOne Leadership

What advice would your clients give coaches? In today’s guest post Richard Nugent shares:

"Seven Pieces of Advice From Top Coaching Clients" A guest post by Richard Nugent

Seven Pieces of Advice From Top Coaching Clients

by Richard Nugent

In preparation for this article, I thought I’d ask some of my coaching clients what they wanted and needed from a coach most of all. Some answers surprised me, some I completely expected and, while I hope all are factors that you already take into account when coaching, they are all great reminders of good coaching practice.

To give you a flavour, the clients I asked included several Executives of large organisations, various entrepreneurs, a professional footballer, a senior training manager, some business coaches and teacher. I have coached all of them for some time and all are pretty demanding of themselves and their coach!

I asked them all the same question ‘what is the single most important thing that a coach must do’? Here are the seven most common answers.

1. Keep in touch. Whether between sessions or during breaks in the coaching relationship. The coaching relationship must be on going and consistent even when the actual coaching isn’t.

2. Focus on helping me to understand how I can achieve my outcomes. Everyone is different; don’t assume that there is a right way for everyone.

3. Be you. A coaching relationship works best with you feel the coach is being themselves. Don’t be one way when we meet then turn into a different person when you coach.

4. Be respectful of the trust and investment that I am making in you. I am likely to be telling you things that I haven’t told my closest family. I may have also spent my whole development budget for the year with you. Occasionally let me know that you appreciate that.

5. Know when to be really tough with me and kick my butt and when to support me. (I’d call this emotional intelligence – what is clear from clients’ responses that we have to have it on full in every session. One client even used the phrase “don’t be too nice, I’m not looking for a friend, I’ve got plenty of those.”)

6. Keep asking great questions. Make me think differently to how I am now. Also keep asking me great, different questions – I never know what is coming next and that keeps me on my toes.

7. Keep developing. Clients love the fact that I am always learning and they feel that they are getting the benefit of that. This answer was especially prevalent in clients whose development budgets were tight.

These were the top seven, most consistent answers. Some clients felt really strongly about other things, including technical knowledge, business acumen (if you’re helping me build my business, yours should already be more successful) and even the size of network I have.

What occurs to be is that if this is a representation of the important thoughts my clients have, focussing on them is going to help me be a great coach for them and many others.

About the author

Richard is the M.D. of Twenty One Leadership and has coached talented people from the fields of sport and business for the last decade. Clients have credited him with everything from million pound transfers to the creation of new market leading organisations. The return on investment from his programmes stretches into the millions of Pounds, Euros and Dollars.