One of the questions I quite often see some trainee coaches struggle with is how to find the confidence to find clients to coach. They have often done lots of preparation; maybe even have a secret suspicion that they do know the basics but they don’t feel that they have the confidence to actually start coaching.

If you think you are in this situation yourself then I’ll share some brief thoughts below. If you have been through this and are now happily coaching and helping lots of clients then feel free to share your thoughts.

Why do you need to feel confident before you actually start coaching?

Sure I get that feeling of confidence is far more pleasant than some of the alternatives (and I certainly am not against someone increasing their confidence) but why do you have to feel that first before you take action?

Give yourself a break

It’s not unusual to find that when I dig a bit deeper in this situation that the expectations a trainee coach has set for themself is incredibly high. Either they are comparing their potential coaching session to one run by someone with many years of experience or just by their own idea of what a perfect coach would do.

Normally this is done with the best of intentions, often a variation of wanting to be the best coach possible and making the biggest difference to their clients.

My suggestion is to allow your session to be what it is, focus upon your client and what is going on for them at that moment.

I’m going to guess that even if you give yourself that break you will still do the best that you can and even look to see how and where you can improve in the future. You just don’t have to add the extra pressure on yourself.

Yes, I think it’s possible to continuingly improve your coaching skills. I also think that you can persist in increasing the positive difference that you make to your clients. None of that is of any assistance to your potential clients if you never start!

What’s the worst that could happen?

I love coaching; I think it can have an incredibly powerful effect. It’s also unlikely that if a coaching “mistake” is made or if a question isn’t worded elegantly that anyone is going to loose their life!

However, you may have been telling yourself some horror story about what could happen – how realistic is this story?

It’s not at all unusual when you recognise the story you have been telling yourself for you to realise it’s really a piece of fiction.

Find a technique or approach that will give your feelings a quick boost

There are many different techniques and approaches that you can use to quickly boost your feelings of confidence – you may have come across some in your training or maybe things that you do in other areas of your life!

I’ll include one technique you could use in Mondays general life improvement post.

If you were already feeling the confidence to start coaching, what is the first thing you would do to find clients?

If someone is so caught up in increasing their confidence, self-belief and self-esteem then they often forget to check out the practical aspects of what action they would be taking.

Just for fun, what would be the first thing you could do to do just one coaching session?

Find yourself a coach or mentor

I’m perhaps preaching to the converted here, as I’m sure you already have a strong belief about how valuable coaching can be.

However, I’m often surprised by how many coaches attempt to run their coaching business with no support system in place. Ignoring the messages that gives about the value they place in coaching etc, it always strikes me as making things harder than it needs to be!

Find your local coaching circle and practice group

A sense of community is just one thing that you can get from a coaching circle and practice group. You may also find advice, support and an environment to practice your skills. (You can find a growing list of practice groups and coaching circles here)

Take one small step

Movement is a lot easier once you have started to take some action and got momentum going.

Sometimes that is by taking big steps and other times lots of smaller ones – starting with just one, perhaps just asking one person to practice a coaching session with you.

Who do you know that it would be fun to practice your coaching with?

Who do you know that you think would benefit from having a coaching conversation?

I will end this post first with a short video and then an invitation:

Each Tuesday on our Facebook page you’ll find that a TED talk link is shared. This week was this short video by Mark Bezos: A life lesson from a volunteer fire fighter.

As you watch the video consider the lessons you can learn about your coaching.

If you had been waiting to start coaching I invite you to go and take one action that will actually move you closer to starting coaching.

Feel free to share your actions below. For space reasons I’ve only added a few of many different approaches to this situation – if you have more you want to add then do add your comments.