Coaching Quote of the Day 13th May 2013
“What if everything you’d ever learned about how reality worked was just wrong?”
(Michael Neill, www.InsideOutRevolution.com)
Michael Neill
Coaching Quote of the Day 7th May 2013
“All an “insight” really is…is a new thought.”
(Michael Neill, www.InsideOutRevolution.com)
Are you coaching from your head or from your heart? 4
Transformative Coach Katri Manninen shares her thoughts about coaching and clients insights in today’s guest post:
Are you coaching from your head or from your heart?
Have you ever noticed, how sometimes a random statement you make without thinking seems to cause your client to have a major insight? Or even worse: your client shrieks joyfully “Oh, that’s it! I get it! Thank you!” …and you have no idea what you just said?
How many times you have thought you fully understand what is going on with your client, but when you explain it to them, they stare at you as if you just said sun doesn’t exist? Or even worse, they mutter something like “yeah, but…” and then go on a rant that proves your point wrong? Suddenly the mood in the room becomes tense and oppositional and you feel that you lost the connection to your client.
I have experienced the both scenarios, and for the first year I was coaching it puzzled me. How could I help my clients to have more insights, when I didn’t know how I had helped to have their initial insights? How could I stop myself from ruining the good feeling between me and my client when I felt the urge to help them?
Then I joined Michael Neill’s Supercoach Academy [www.supercoachacademy.com] and learned the three principles behind the human experience. I learned when to speak and when to shut up by noticing where my thoughts and words seemed to come from. Were they coming from my heart: my inner wisdom and the intelligent energy behind life — or from my head: my personal intelligence, opinions, judgements and prejudices?
When I’m speaking from my heart, I feel grounded and open. My body feels relaxed and light. My mind is calm and clear. The words and thoughts seem to be coming deep inside me, from my gut or my heart. Or more precisely: they feel like they’re coming through me, not from me.
When I’m in the heart-space, I’m often surprised by what I say — and so are my clients. I just seem to know instinctively what to ask — and when to be quiet — even when it doesn’t make sense to me.
When I’m speaking from my head, I’m thinking a lot. Sometimes so much I don’t really hear the client anymore. All my thoughts seem to be coming from my head. I may feel energetic and enthusiastic, but if I listen closely to my body, I notice my body is tense and closed.
When I’m in the head-space, my words are calculated and statements manipulative. I feel like a puppeteer trying to pull the right strings to make my client to see what’s best for them. I feel smart and important… That is, until my “wisdom” fails to hit its target and my eagerness to help the client ruins the mood in the room.
When I’m speaking from my heart, I don’t care if my clients get what I’m saying or not. I know that they have access to the same infinite wisdom as I do, and that they will eventually find the answers they’re looking for. My job is just to be present and point them to the right direction. That’s all.
When I’m speaking from my head, outcome is everything. I want my clients to understand me. I have a need to add value and make a difference. If they resist my suggestions, I feel irritated or disappointed. I start to think that either I’m a failure or they’re “un-coachable”.
Today I do most of my coaching from my heart. Yes, sometimes I fall into the trap of my own thinking and have an irresistible urge to say something smart or give advice. The minute I notice what I’ve done, I laugh at myself — sometimes out loud.
This new approach has made coaching feel light and easy while my clients are having amazing breakthroughs. This understanding has also changed my marriage and other relationship. It’s mind-blowing how seldom people really need my opinions and advice — and how often just being present and loving is more than enough.
About the Author/Further Resources
Katri Manninen is a Transformative Coach (™) on a mission. Her goal is to create Fearless World 2022 by teaching three principles and helping people to tap into their inner wisdom. She has committed to being The Most Powerful Coach in the World by being fully present and open with all of her clients — regardless if they’re desperate housewives she’s coaching pro bono or successful entrepreneurs with multi-million businesses.
If you understand Finnish, check out her website: www.kutri.net . If you’d like to experience the space where miracles can happen, email her: ku***@***ri.net
Background on Image above title via: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Selling Made Simple 1
Supercoach Michael Neill shares some thoughts on selling in this week’s guest post.
Selling Made Simple
Over the past couple of days, I’ve really enjoyed participating on a “Creating Clients” seminar given by Supercoach Academy faculty members Steve Chandler and Rich Litvin. We were challenged, cajoled, and at times even coddled through the process of facing up to and breaking through our fears about enrolling clients and selling our products and services in the world.
While there were a number of wonderful strategies shared throughout the weekend for inviting conversations and making powerful proposals, I became fascinated early on by a simple question that was being asked by the still, small voice in the back of my head:
What would selling be like if I didn’t know anything about how to do it and was completely comfortable with that fact?
The first thing I realized is that I would show up without much on my mind. I wouldn’t fill my head with affirmations about my self-worth or “visualize success”. If I had any intention at all, it would simply be to see what I could best do to assist, help, or serve the person in front of me.
Not having much on my mind would leave me very present. This quality of presence would ensure both high quality listening and a natural, unforced human connection.
I wouldn’t need to prepare any questions because anything I wanted to ask would arise instinctively out of my curiosity and interest in answering fundamental questions like “what would make the biggest positive difference in your life right now?”, “how can I serve you?”, and for myself, “do I want to?”
Because I’m comfortable not knowing what I don’t know, if you asked me anything that I hadn’t thought about, I would just think about it in the moment. If a satisfactory answer didn’t come, I would promise to get back to you when I had an answer and then keep my promise.
I wouldn’t have any fear about telling you the cost of my product or service because (as Steve repeatedly pointed out throughout the weekend) it would be no more significant than giving you my phone number so you could get in touch if you wanted to speak further. And if I hadn’t already decided what my fee was, I would make it up based on what would make me want to choose you as the next person to serve.
My lack of agenda would inoculate against the appearance of much “sales resistance”, and concepts like “overcoming objections” would become irrelevant because my job is to find a way to serve you, not to find a way to get you to do what I want. In fact, selling would never feel forced or manipulative because if I couldn’t find a way to serve you that I actually wanted to do, I would just move on to the next person.
If I wasn’t enjoying my sales and enrollment conversations, I would know that either I had slipped into thinking my job was to “make a sale”, or that perhaps I wasn’t terribly convinced that what I had to offer would actually be of service.
As the essayist Lawrence Platt writes:
“If you’re experiencing enrolling others in your possibility as a chore, it’s likely you haven’t yet completely distinguished your possibility. If you possibility is authentic, if it’s clear, if it’s genuine, then it’s inspiring to you. When it’s inspiring to you, then it’s inspiring to others. No effort is required for it to be enrolling. Inspiration grounded in possibility is naturally contagious: everyone gets it, everyone wants it. It literally enrolls others by itself.”
When we began enrolling Supercoach Academy three years ago, my first instruction to the enrollment team was that I would evaluate their effectiveness by how often I was thanked by potential students for allowing them the chance to speak with my team. I figured that if we found a way for people to feel grateful for being “sold to”, chances were we would not only wind up making sales, we’d also wind up building strong relationships for the future.
What made my reflections this weekend so powerful was the realization that “sales as service” isn’t just a clever ideology – it is the most natural and unforced way to sell, and as such will provoke the least internal resistance to the process.
In other words, when selling is really about you, not me, it’s really fun to do. Since I’m enjoying doing it, I’ll do more of it. As I do more and more of it, I’ll get better at it. And when I start getting noticeably better at it, chances are I’ll begin to enjoy it even more…
Have fun, learn heaps, and a belated Happy Mother’s Day to all!
With all my love,
Michael
About the author
Michael Neill is an internationally renowned success coach and the best-selling author of You Can Have What You Want, Feel Happy Now!, the Effortless Success audio program and Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life. He has spent the past 21 years as a coach, adviser, friend, mentor and creative spark plug to celebrities, CEO’s, royalty, and people who want to get more out of their lives. His books have been translated into 13 languages, and his public talks and seminars have been well received at the United Nations and around the world.
Copyright © 2012 Michael Neill. All Rights Reserved
The 12 days of coaching resources – recap
The festive season is often a busy time for many people so in case you missed any of the 12 posts here is a quick recap with links for each day.
A mix of different topics providing support and solutions for a range of problems and questions were deliberately selected. You’ll notice that there is a mix of books, audio and other products spaced throughout the 12 days. Some will be more appealing if you are new to coaching, whilst others will be more attractive if you have more experience.
I invite you to explore the following and decide which one is most useful for you.
Day 1 – “The Life Coaching Connection: How Coaching Changes Lives” by Steve Chandler
Day 2 – Get Clients in 30 Days by Elizabeth Purvis
Day 3 – Playing Cards For Happy Managers & Happier Employees
Day 4 – The One Page Business Plan: The fastest, easiest way to write a business plan by Jim Horan
Day 5 – “Effortless Success” by Michael Neill
Day 6 – “The 8th Habit: From effectiveness to greatness” by Stephen R. Covey
Day 8 – “Coaching for performance” by Sir John Whitmore
Day 10 – “Get Unstuck & Get Going … on the stuff that matters” by Michael Bungay Stanier
Day 11 – From Non-Coach to Coach Discovery Session
There are many other coaching resources out there, like on this list, some are complimentary and others require an exchange of money. Coaches, if you were to add one extra coaching resource to this list what would you add and why?
Feel free to share you thoughts in the comments box.
12 Days of Coaching Resources – Day 5 1
It’s day 5 of our 12 days of coaching resources, and today’s resource is:
“Effortless Success” by Michael Neill
This is a set of 6 C.D’s with a running time of 394 minutes (6 hours 34 minutes). You will find that the C.D’s also contains a 40 page “workbook” (approximately A6 in size) This isn’t a C.D. series just for coaches but it is a set that many coaches will recognise uses a coaching approach about having a wonderful life.
If you have read any of Michael’s written work you will be familiar with his conversational style of writing. This spoken form reflects this and has a relaxed chatty manner, that for many will be easy to listen to. It invits you to engage and play with the content and ideas for yourself.
Within these C.D’s you will find not only what Michael means by effortless success but also obstacles that can get in someone’s way with questions and exercises to give a nudge in such situations. You’ll find that the workbook contains many of those questions and exercises in written format.
If you prefer to see content in written format then the book “You can have what you want” by the same author would be a better fit. This audio format allows you to not only have someone explain an idea but also guide you through an exercise with the spoken word rather than the written word. An aspect that will appeal to some and make experiencing the exercises easier.
Personally, one of my favourite parts of this CD set is the “guided internal experience” on the last track. A lovely guided imagery/ meditation that compliments the ideas and exercises found on the previous 39 tracks.
To hear examples of how Michael will be your personal coach on this CD series visit here.
Missed Day 4’s coaching resource? Find it here.
How to use lessons about spaghetti sauce in your coaching
In this week’s guest post Lenny Deverill-West demonstrates how lessons from outside of coaching can be used by coaches to benefit your clients.
How to use lessons about spaghetti sauce in your coaching
By Lenny Deverill-West
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I was watching the clip above on TED by Malcolm Gladwell about how Howard Moskowitz, a food scientist, discovered 1/3 of Americans liked extra chunky spaghetti sauce.
To cut a great story short Howard tested lots of different types of Spaghetti sauce and after testing every conceivable type of sauce, Howard discovered that 1/3 of people liked extra chunky spaghetti sauce and that no other sauce company was servicing that need, by tapping into this gap in the market Prego, the brand he was working with, made $600 million.
What stuck out for me was that spaghetti sauce companies always researched their product by asking people what kind of sauce they liked, but no one ever said they liked extra chunky sauce, even though it turned out a 3rd of people actually did. So the spaghetti sauce companies had always provided their customer with, what their research had told them they wanted.
And this is a bit like coaching, we ask the client what they want and we coach them to help them get it, but what if they are like people who thought they liked traditional spaghetti sauce because that what they were brought up to believe spaghetti sauce should be like, but actually loved chucky spaghetti sauce? Michael Neill is famous for saying that most people do not really know what they want, and are just ordering off the menu for what they think they can have.
For example if you’re coaching someone who would like a change of career, promotion or looking to start up a new business, are they talking about doing something that really lights their fire, that they’d love to do and would make a difference to people or are they talking about doing something that they think they can, something that is already on the menu and doesn’t particular inspire them or make them happy?
I was talking to a colleague at work other day he mentioned that he wanted to build a career but did not know what he wanted to do, he mentioned that he was thinking or doing a qualification in carpentry, which is a great profession, hell we’ll always need carpenters.
When I asked why he wanted to be a carpenter, he said ‘he had looked at the local college prospectus and that was the only thing he thought he would be able to do’, in other words he had looked at the menu and picked what he thought he could have.
I went on to ask him what was he good at, and what would he like to do with his one and only life? He explained he is just great at dealing with people, putting on events for the company he works for and after a short conversation he stopped for a moment and looked off into the distance and then said that in fact he’d love to run his own event management business, but has never thought it was even an option.
Howard Moskowitz says “The mind knows not what the tongue wants” but you could also say “the person knows not what they really because they’re just looking at the menu of what they think they can have’.
It also struck me that in order to find out what kind of spaghetti sauce 1/3 of people liked, Howard and Prego had to create it because it previously didn’t exist, at least not on supermarket shelves.
So when you’re coaching a client around a new career try and spot if they are just ordering of the menu, or is there something else that they would love to be doing?
And go do that!
About the Author/Further Resources
Lenny Deverill-West is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist, NLP Practitioner, Coach and Corporate Trainer based in Southampton.
Lenny spends most his time seeing clients at his Southampton practice and is also developing trainings courses and Hypnotherapy products that are due out early next year. For more information about Lenny Deverill-West visit www.startlivingtoday.co.uk.
Become A Confident Coach 2
In this week’s guest post, Karen Williams shares her thoughts and expertise about becoming a confident coach.
Become A Confident Coach
By Karen Williams
As an experienced coach, mentor and the author of The Secrets of Successful Coaches, I often work with new coaches who struggle to have the confidence to become known and get clients.
They may believe they lack the confidence to coach. They may be scared of their abilities or lack of experience, worried they will get stuck or are not yet ready to tell people what they actually do.
I had a session with a new coach a few weeks ago and one thing she said to me was that she was expecting an inquisition and it didn’t come. We were just having a conversation – although, a constructive one at that. You don’t have to be formulaic, following the GROW model (although the principles are great), you just need to be or do what your client wants at that particular time.
When I interviewed Hannah McNamara for The Secrets of Successful Coaches, she said to me:
“It’s actually got nothing to do with you and your abilities; it’s what that client needs at that given time. Sometimes they need to be coached, sometimes they need to be taught, and sometimes they just need to offload. And they don’t want someone saying, ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ They just want to hear ‘Oh God, that sounds awful.’”
I love this philosophy. It is not about enforcing our thoughts or ideals onto our clients but being there for them. But on the other hand, I also advocate that sometimes we need to be tough too. If a client wants to achieve an objective but is putting up barriers in the way or is not doing what they say they will do, we have the right to challenge them supportively, to help them to achieve it or to check that this really is their goal.
When I talked to Michael Neill about running a coaching business, this was his advice:
“Be an amazing coach. It starts with your ability to make a difference. If you can’t do that very well, work on your coaching, not on your business. One problem is that a lot of coaches don’t get that coaching is a business, but there are also a number of coaches who don’t seem to get that effective coaching is at the heart of the business. They put all their energy into marketing and getting a website, building their newsletter, raising their profile, but they are not very good coaches yet. First, learn how to change lives – then you can figure out the marketing.”
Very pertinent, I’m sure you will agree. Many coaches, when they qualify, will concentrate on the business skills; but they need to become great coaches too.
So if you want to become a confident coach, here are my six top tips:
1. Learn how to be a great coach
This is more than getting a coaching qualification. Get practice in asking questions, listening to others and building rapport. This can be in a coaching situation with a client, or it can be just in day to day conversations with other people.
2. Get experience
When I qualified, I didn’t have a clue how to market myself as a business. So to become a great coach, I asked in a forum whether anyone wanted pro bono coaching and got 2 clients this way. This gave me the opportunity to further my experience and as one of these became a paying client, this kick-started my business too.
3. Develop your toolkit
You don’t have to attend all the different types of training available, but having a toolkit of resources will help you and your clients greatly. This starts from you and your own skills, and you can build on these with the knowledge you have, the information you can share and the resources you have at your finger tips.
4. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong
Sometimes you just need to put yourself out there and go for it. And don’t worry if you think that you will get something wrong. To be honest, your client won’t know what you were going to say and if you mess up, they probably won’t notice. And if they do, what is the worst that can happen? Learn from it, get it out of your system, and then move on.
5. Contract with your clients
One piece of advice that I give my mentoring clients is the importance of contracting with your client in the first place. Get their permission and find out how they want you to bring them back on track, whether they want you to make suggestions and explore your mutual expectations too.
6. Just do it!
Whether you want to visualise a great coaching session, use affirmations, act ‘as-if’ you are a confident coach, or just get on with it, this is the next step.
Here’s to being a confident coach!
About the Author/Further Resources
Karen Williams is a qualified coach and NLP Master Practitioner. She has been running Self Discovery Coaching since 2006, specialising in helping career changers and those facing redundancy to find a job they will love. She also works with new coaches to enable them to create a successful business and turn their passion into profit.
She is the author of The Secrets of Successful Coaches, which is based on spending time with 11 inspirational performance coaches and sharing their strategies for success. Her book was published by Matador this spring and is available on Amazon or via her website www.thesecretsofsuccessfulcoaches.com.
Karen has also created a great toolkit for coaches with the Self Discovery Success Club to enable them to have the best techniques for both themselves and their clients. You can get a month’s free membership when you buy a copy of her book.