starting coaching

Spare Some Time for Coaching and Mentoring

 in Guest Post  tagged Beverley Ireland-Symonds / clients / coach / coaching / doubt / help / mentoring / space / starting coaching / time

In today’s guest post Beverley Ireland-Symonds shares her experience from when she was in the early days of her coaching:

Spare Some Time for Coaching and Mentoring By Beverley Ireland-Symonds

Spare Some Time for Coaching and Mentoring

By Beverley Ireland-Symonds

If you’re a newly trained coach in the process of setting up your coaching business you probably have a long ‘To do’ list. Deciding on a niche, writing a business plan and marketing plan, getting business cards printed, a website up and running, gathering resources, deciding on costs and fees, sorting out banking and taxes and a whole host of other things. And of course probably the number one priority for a lot of people – finding and coaching clients.

Now I suspect there may be one thing that is either missing from your list or doesn’t have a very high priority and that’s getting support for yourself. I remember on the first two day introductory course I did in coaching I was advised that all coaches should have their own coach – who could coach and/or mentor.

This sounded like sound advice but I have to admit it just wasn’t on my list of priorities at all some months later. I simply had too many other things to think about and it slipped to the back of my mind. I’d made some good friends on my training course and we’d occasionally Skype or email each other swapping tips and information and occasionally raising any small difficulties we were having.

I remember thinking at one point ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing’ but I didn’t say so because my friends sounded so enthusiastic and contented. I just continued to plod along developing my niche with some successes and the occasional failure.

But after 10 months I was suddenly hit with a real crisis of confidence. I found myself developing ideas that were different from my original niche and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be pulled in a new direction. Once that thought had taken hold I then started to question whether I was up to even being a coach. I’m an NLP Coach specialising in confidence. Where was mine? It had all but disappeared.

Then one day, I remembered the conversation about having a coach and knew that I had to do something. The silly thing was that I actually had access to a coach/mentor as part of the coaching training package that I bought. Did I act immediately? No I didn’t – I was too embarrassed. I had this crazy idea that being a coach – also meant I had to be superwoman!

Fortunately I got over that and I sent an email to my coach/mentor with dates for a session and about a week later we spoke on the phone.

I cannot tell you what a relief that call was and I wish I had made it much earlier. After that I had two mentoring sessions (where I received a lot of advice) and three coaching sessions (where I developed ideas, goals and actions).

So what did I get from working with a coach? A lot, but here are some of the key things.

  • There’s nothing wrong in experiencing doubts and there’s nothing wrong in asking for help.
  • There’s a lot to learn from seeing an experienced coach and their coaching style.
  • It’s a valuable lesson to experience coaching as a client.
  • I had time to reflect on where I was with my coaching and clarify where I wanted to be.
  • I had the chance to discuss the change in direction, why it happened and what it meant.
  • I had the opportunity to bounce ideas and thoughts and do some ‘blue sky’ thinking.
  • I got excited about coaching again.

Now, I recognise that I’m fortunate to have been able to work with a coach without having to suddenly find additional money. But if you’re just starting out I would advise that you factor in the cost of some coaching and mentoring for yourself and make it a priority to find someone you can work with. You may not hit a crisis of confidence like I did but you may have issues that you need coaching on and those sessions could be a crucial element in your future success.

I’m sure you don’t need any convincing how important the relationship between yourself and your clients is and the positive impact you can have on their lives. Why not sample a bit of that magic for yourself when needed?

About Beverley Ireland-Symonds

Beverley Ireland-Symonds is an NLP Practitioner and NLP Coach, specialising in Confidence Coaching, working with clients both in the UK and America. She writes extensively on a range of issues including self esteem, confidence and personal development and has developed her own online coaching programme.

Coaching Confidence Chatterbox with Jen Waller

 in Chatterbox  tagged advice / business / Chatterbox / client / coach / coaching / interview / Jen Waller / lesson / starting / starting coaching

Chatterbox

Coaching Confidence Chatterbox with

Jen Waller

The Coaching Confidence Chatterbox is an interview feature with coaches where the questions are generated based on the origami fortune teller/chatterbox game.

As this is the first week, I thought as this is my site I’d join in and play first. 🙂

Name: Jen Waller

Website: www.CoachingConfidence.co.uk (this one!)

Jen Waller

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(The answers to the above questions are then used to generate a choice of numbers)

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Select one of the following numbers 8, 1, 4 or 5: 5

“What is your favourite way that a client has found out about your work?“:

A lot of the clients I work with have either come to me as a referral or because they have already have experience/contact with my work – either through the written word or in person.

For example, I have had clients approach me to become their coach who I initially met at someone elses event and we did a coaching exercise together.

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Select one of the following numbers 7, 2, 3 or 6: 6

“If you could travel back in time to give a message to yourself either at the start of your coaching journey, or earlier, what would that message be?”

For a long time I let fear and that voice of doubt and self criticism get in the way of actually coaching and being present with the other person.

So the first thing that springs to mind is to actually give her a big hug and tell her that everything will be OK. One day you will really see that the voice inside your head, the one that wants to give a running critique (the one you think is getting in the way), really doesn’t have to be important!

I know that at the time I was all about the destination and not so much about the journey – I doubt I’d have let myself get away without giving what I’d have viewed as a more practical answer.

So I’ll also add that you really don’t need to know all the questions you’re going to ask before the session – it works so much better if you respond to what your client actually says in that moment. Not what you imagined they may say or even where they were before the session!

Not knowing before the session what you are going to ask really does not reflect on your coaching skills – it just means that you’ve not learnt to time travel yet!

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Select one of the following numbers 8, 1 or 4: 4

“What is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as a coach?”

Oh so many to choose from – both from a coaching and a business perspective. I suspect that this is one of those questions where my answer will change from one week to the next!

If I had to just pick one today I would pick a coaching related one. It’s one where the language may get a bit more messy as it describes an experience – different people may use the same words in different contexts and to describe different experiences.

I think being totally present, focused and just “with” the other person is so powerful. It’s about listening without the purpose of fixing them, or using a specific pre-determined “technique” etc. It’s that space where if that voice of self doubt and criticism appears in my head it can go as quickly as it came – ‘cos it’s not about me in that moment, it’s about the other person.

When I’m in that flow it’s almost as if the questions, stories, quotes etc I share are coming from elsewhere. I’m not consciously having to think about any of that. Sometimes there’s a relaxed choice to make about a direction to head in but there’s an ease and naturalness about it all.

I love learning new things and I think certainly when I started out I would focus loads on the techniques, do lots and lots of language based drills, study different models and theories etc. I certainly undervalued the impact that being present environment can make – it seemed so simple and yet makes such a big difference.

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What question would you like to add to the Chatterbox for another coach to answer?

What advice would you give to someone thinking of starting a coaching business?

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How would you answer that question?

Two aspects immediately spring to mind:

  • Firstly the easiest way is to get some practical experience both as a coach and as a client. See how you enjoy this before jumping headlong into setting up a full time business and then potentially discovering that what you thought in theory is nothing like the actual experience!
  • Secondly, if you are wanting to “make a living” from coaching with your own business then there is the business aspects – it’s not just about coaching every working hour. That may seem obvious and it’s worth stating you don’t have to do all that single handed.

Having a support structure in place helps. How that support structure looks will vary from person to person – some will want support from an admin perspective, others with accounting, many love having someone to bounce ideas off or to talk about how to find clients etc.

It also really helps if you can make a difference with your clients so depending on your existing knowledge and background it may be that part of that support plan involves training and skill development.

One of the questions I’ve been known to ask people is to consider what their “dream” support would be? So if you had unlimited money/ time/ resources what would you put in place to make this easier and more fun?

Logistically unlimited money/ time / resources may not be your reality but I find that question often highlights surprising answers that many hadn’t considered exploring previously.

I’m on a mission to support, nurture and encourage coaching skills and talents from Non-Coach to Coach and Beyond, to find out more about me and my work visit here.

If you are a coach and want to play with the Coaching Confidence Chatterbox send an email via this page.

Do You Know Enough To Be A Coach?

 in Guest Post  tagged business coach / business coaching / change / charging / clean language / client / clients / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching courses / coaching methodology / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / executive coach / feedback / Judy Rees / knowledge / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / nlp coach / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / practice / referrals / starting coaching / x-ray listening

Judy Rees asks a question that many new to coaching asks themselves, in this week’s guest post:

Do You Know Enough To Be A Coach?

By Judy Rees

Are you a coach who actually coaches people? Or are you a perpetual preparer?

I often coach people who are in the process of becoming coaches. I’ve noticed a lot of beginners seem to attend endless workshops and events, learning more and more about how to be a coach, and how to market themselves as coaches, rather than getting on and actually doing it.

Using Clean Language questions and metaphor, I’ll help my clients to understand the pattern – and we’ll frequently discover that on the current plan, they’d never know enough to get started.

As Nicholas Taleb points out in The Black Swan, the more expert someone becomes, the more they realise what they don’t know.

“You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books,” he says.

If you are determined to become a coach, perhaps because you want to help people, it’s important to find a way to manage this. (Just getting a Kindle doesn’t do the trick!)

I like to pride myself on “making change happen, whatever happens” in my coaching work, and I have a pretty solid record of success.

But that success is not just based on knowing a lot of stuff – it’s based on having a coaching methodology that is robust enough to work well, even when I don’t know what’s going on for my client.

At one level, I have to accept, I’ll never know what’s happening. I can’t see the world exactly through my client’s eyes.

And the more clients I have, the more I learn… and the more I realise I don’t know.

If you suspect you might be a perpetual preparer, I’d strongly suggest shifting your attention towards finding a robust coaching methodology that works well for you (Clean Language is my suggestion: others are available) and then getting started.

Practice, get feedback, practice some more, get referrals… and enjoy discovering how much you don’t know.

About the Author/Further Resources

Judy Rees is an author, mentor and information marketer, and an expert in Clean Language and metaphor. Her blog is at www.xraylistening.com

You can learn Clean Language online, free on Judy’s new website http://learncleanlanguage.com

Finding the confidence to start coaching 1

 in Coaching / confidence  tagged business coach / business coaching / career coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching model / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / confidence / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal development / starting coaching

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.

Coaching “real people” 2

 in Coaching  tagged business coach / business coaching / coach / coaches / coaching / coaching "real people" / coaching content / coaching courses / coaching preparation / coaching qualifications / coaching skills / coaching techniques / coaching training / coaching welcome pack / executive coach / Free resource / leadership coaching / life coach / life coaches / life coaching / performance coaching / personal coach / personal development / starting coaching

I’ve had several conversations recently with individuals that have revolved around coaching “real people.”

Now if you, like me, have been known to take someone’s language literally that can conjure all sorts of mental images appropriate for the run up to Halloween of coaching seasons with zombies! However, what they actually mean is coaching someone outside of a coaching training season.

For some reason many seem to have equated any coaching conversations that they have had in a training season as being a “role play” Apparently, the person that they were coaching was not using a real situation and giving fake answers.

When asked if they were given the brief to do a role-play, I’ve not had one person tell me that yes that was what they were told to do. When I also check if they had also been a coachee, the answer is normally yes and they had used a real life situation.

If you have found yourself in a similar situation, possibly feeling some fear and apprehension, I have a question for you. What if, you had already coached real people? What would you do differently if that was the case?

Sometimes what individuals tell themselves is that it will be different if the client doesn’t have an existing knowledge of the coaching model you have been taught to use. (Presuming that you are using a model.)

It’s true that someone without any knowledge of the coaching model may be confused if you use “jargon” or “terminology”. So you can either explain what any terminology means or just phrase it using language that they do understand.

In my experience the main difference is that someone without an interest in the skills of coaching is that they are not focusing at all upon how you are working, the questions you are asking etc. Their interest is about the outcome of your conversation not the techniques you’ve used.

Other people think that when they work with “real people” that they have to prove that coaching works. Personally I find that focusing on proving coaching works generally adds extra pressure and shifts the focus away from the individual in front of you and being of assistance to them. I find that the more I focus on being of service to my clients the more of a positive impact that conversation can have and, if they want it, provides more proof that coaching works.

This is often connected to using free sessions as part of your marketing strategy. I’m not advising not to use that as part of your approach – If that works for you then, of course, by all means keep using it. I will offer the suggestion that you can demonstrate and see if you and your potential client are a good match without focusing on proving coaching works.

Moving forward coaching “real people”

If you have found yourself stuck because you have some fear or apprehension about coaching a “real person” here are some possible ways you could move forward:

  • Take a small step to get the momentum going. That will be unique to you but perhaps coaching someone with coaching experience that wasn’t on your coaching training is one option.
  • Take a large leap – “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Do a coaching season with someone who you think is “real”!
  • Recognise you already have been coaching “real people” and choose to invite people who you think it would be fun to coach.
  • Find a coach/mentor you are comfortable with to work with you

There will be other approaches you could take and if none of the above appeals, then the following question may be of use:

What would have to happen for you to coach “real people”?

Or (if you’re feeling particularly daring 😉 )

What would have to happen for you to feel comfortable coaching “real people”?

Feel free to share your answers and thoughts below and click submit comment.