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Here’s what You Need To Be a Coach

December 6, 2011 By Dave Iuppa 1 Comment

Straight from the heart, here’s what you need to be a coach. Just three things: competence, caring and capability. Do you have them? Can you get them? If not, set down the study guide from that online program “ become a master coach in 36 hours for $397,” and be glad you did.

Coaching Demands Competence

Of all the strengths you would like to have in the surgeon who is about to perform open-heart surgery on YOU, wouldn’t competence be right up there at the top of your list? You bet your sweet heart it would. It’s the same with coaching. If you don’t have a mastery of accountability, strategy and assessment coaching, don’t you dare call yourself a Master Coach. And if you haven’t a mastery of your primary area of coaching application – startup businesses, executive leadership, relationships, health, et cetera, then don’t dare to call yourself a Master Coach. Because what you need to be a coach comes down to knowing what the hell you are doing.

Caring that Goes beyond “Feeling Good” Is also what You Need To Be a Coach

The second requirement of coaching is caring. Caring that goes beyond feeling good. Tough caring, as in tough love. Caring that drives your motivation. And the sincerity which makes your tough message irresistible. It is easy to let your client off the hook. It is also, perhaps, the worst thing that you can possibly do for them. Coaching is based on the idea that each human being is capable of greatness, with an equally great impact on those around them and on the rest of the world, as well.

Finally, There Is the Element of Capability

So finally what you need to be a coach comes down to your capability to combine your competence with your caring to embrace your client’s aspirations. You must believe in them when they do not believe in themselves and you must help them step beyond their own needs and self-limiting beliefs to achieve their dreams. Now if you don’t have this capability, don’t bother to become a coach, because you might just do far more harm than good.

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “Master Coach Blueprint” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your master coach blueprint videos.

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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What You Need To Be A Coach: 5 Essentials For Success

January 10, 2011 By Jeffrey T. Sooey Leave a Comment

What You Need To Be A Coach | Image by 2asuccessdreamblogSome experts say that what you need to be a coach is a telephone, computer, and internet access. While that is a fine start, if you really want to be a coach you will need a few extras that most people forget. These essentials are the difference between success and failure.

What You Need To Be A Coach Who Has A Successful Business

1. Be clear with your own business goals. A lot of people think coaching is a fun way to make money and an opportunity to create an extraordinary lifestyle. But few are clear about what they really want for themselves and why.

2. Surround yourself with a team of the best people available. Like any other business, you want to leverage your resources. One of my mentors says one of the most valuable resources is human resources. When choosing a team remember that old cliché, “I would rather have an A team with a B plan than a B team with an A plan.”

3. Find a mentor. What you need to be a coach is not a foolproof plan. Even with a great plan, things are going to go wrong. It’s going to be harder, take longer and cost more money than you think. You need to have access to strategies to survive the tough times from someone who has gone before you.

4. Recognize your weaknesses. Don’t ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. A lose spoke on Lance Armstrong’s bicycle is going to slow him down. Find ways to address your weaknesses.

The Most Important Thing You Need To Be A Coach

5. Commit to the business. What you need most to be a coach is commitment. You won’t accomplish anything significant without fully committing to yourself and to the clients you serve.

To learn more about how to generate an endless wave of high paying coaching clients, get your FREE Instant Access to our “Life Coaching Business Blueprint” video toolkit when you go HERE.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

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What You Need to Be a Coach: Become a Life Coach Who Walks Their Talk When It Comes to Relationship Coaching

October 5, 2009 By Jeffrey T. Sooey 1 Comment

What You Need to Be a Coach: Three Keys to Successfully Become a Life Coach

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How can you become a life coach unless you walk your own talk? Maybe your own relationships aren’t great yet, but the question is you doing what you know to make them better. If you think what you need to be a coach is to be perfect, you’re wrong. Here are 3 keys to become a life coach who is on the path to restoring their own relationships. What you need to be a coach isn’t perfection, but integrity and a mindset that anything is possible.

What You Need to Be a Coach: Empathy

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The first step to become a life coach who knows how to restore relationships is to empathize with the other person’s feelings. You have 2 ears and only 1 mouth. Before you attempt to resolve a disagreement, make sure you see the problems from the other person’s viewpoint. Focus on their feelings, not the facts. Don’t try to talk people out of how they feel or offer solutions. By doing this you are saying, “I value your opinion and I care about our relationship.”

What You Need to Be a Coach: Own Your Part

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The next step to become a life coach is to own what is yours, and ask the other person to forgive you. Clean up your mess before asking someone else to clean up theirs. If you don’t see your own role, you might need someone to help you see your own blind spot. Someone is going to have to go first, and it might as well be you. Remember, you are the coach. If you are going to be a leader, get in the habit of going first. Don’t make excuses or shift the blame, just own any part you have played in the conflict. This will disarm the other person’s anger, most people react by becoming defensive.

What You Need to Be a Coach: Solve the Problem

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Now you are in a position to become a life coach who is ready to work on the problem. Make sure you work with the other person to attack the problem, and avoid placing blame or getting defensive. Look at the problem objectively, and come from the place of being clear about what your intentions are. Be ready to compromise and make adjustments for the needs of the other person. Making peace is not about avoiding conflict or being a doormat. For the sake of the relationship you need to be honest with yourself and the other person.

Become a Life Coach Who Knows That Honesty Is What You Need to Be a Coach

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Now you have what is takes to become a life coach who can handle one of the toughest challenges of all. Remember, you don’t have to wait until you feel like you can brag to others about the quality of your relationships. What you need to be a coach is to be honest with yourself and others in your life, and at least master the first of these 2 steps. After that, the possibilities will start opening up.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

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What You Need to Be a Coach: Decide Who You Must Be to Become a Life Coach

July 21, 2009 By Jeffrey T. Sooey 1 Comment

What you need to be a coach is to decide who you really want to be.  If you want to become a coach, decide what characteristics you need.  What you need to be a coach is more than just being passionate, committed, and disciplined.  Make a list of those qualities you will have when you have become a life coach, and then become that person.  Not someday, right now.

What You Need to Be a Coach are Some Good Shoes to Fill

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How do you do that?  What you need to be a coach is to step into the shoes of a coach.  Talk the way you would talk, walk the way you would walk, and live the life you would live if that were happening right now.  Make a decision to become a life coach and then act on it.

Become a Life Coach Who Wouldn’t Fear the Spotlight

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One way to do this is to conduct yourself like you are a public figure.  What you need to be a coach who is under constant scrutiny by the public is the same integrity you will need to actually become a life coach.  Are you being appropriate?  What would you be doing if you were already living your dream?  How would you conduct your life if you knew people were watching?  If you do this, many of your goals will start happening.

Your Future Will Dictate What You Need to Be a Coach

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What you need to be a coach is to define who you want to be in the future.  Once you are clear that you want to become a life coach, start being that person despite what people say or what your environment looks like.  Let’s face it, reputations come and go.  But as long as you know who you are nothing can change that.  And your world will eventually reflect who you are on the inside.

Become a Life Coach Who Knows Who They Are

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So what you need to be a coach is to step into your future.  Know who you are despite what your circumstances are.  Find out what some of the actions are that you would take once you become a life coach are.  As you start taking those actions, you build up your beliefs about who you are.  And if you find yourself using an old behavior, remind yourself that’s how you used to be.  At some point you will realize that what you have been seeking to achieve is who you have been all along.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

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When you Become a Life Coach, Will You Make it, or Are You a Cracked Egg? What You Need to be a Coach

July 7, 2009 By Jeffrey T. Sooey 3 Comments

Want to Become a Life Coach?  What You Need to be a Coach Today is More Than Ever Before

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Life coaching, as a professional service industry has never seen times as trying and as tough as this.  Years ago, if you wanted to become a life coach, you could just throw up your shingle and go get clients.  Everyone had free money to throw around on a lark.

Those times are over.

To Give You an Idea of What You Need to be a Coach Today, I’ll Tell You a Short Story With a “Become A Life Coach” Riddle For You to Solve:

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I was motorcycling through Nepal and a monk hitched a ride on my motorcycle.  We rode for hours up to a hidden monastery way up in the cold mountains.  He indicated we had arrived at our destination, and the Bodhisattva at the monastery gave me a meal before it was time for me to move on.

When I finally bade him farewell, the monk indicated that I should take him back from where I picked him up.  Let me make this clear, the same monk rode with me all day just to get to this monastery and now he wanted to go back to very place I found him, backtracking every step!

I turned to the Bodhisattva and asked him (in so many words) ‘what gives?’ expecting the wise Bodhisattva to explain.  Instead I got a riddle:

The Bodhisattva said, “How can I drop an egg without it ever cracking open?”

He didn’t answer his riddle, nor did he ask me to figure it out just then, but a long time after I dropped the monk back where he started, long after I left Nepal, and long after I was back in the US, I finally got the punch line.

The Answer to The Riddle is Very Important For The Future of Your Coaching Practice And What You Need To Be A Coach

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I actually never motorcycled through Nepal.  This story (and the riddle within it) was actually adapted from “The Monk and The Riddle” by Randy Komisar, who was the CEO of Tivo among other luminary positions in the web 2.0 world.  You should check out the book.

But the story is still valid for understanding how to become a life coach that has some staying power.  Let me give you the answer to the riddle by showing you some ‘cracked eggs’ (in a coaching sense):

Bad Egg Mistake #1 (Do NOT be This Person When You Become a Life Coach):

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The big question that new coaches ask me when they think about becoming a coach is, “How can I become a life coach quickly?  I want to get clients fast.  Can you show me how to do that?”

The answer is, “Yes, actually, I can show you how to do that.”  But it won’t help you.

Why won’t it help?  Because the mentality of a new coach that wants to get new clients fast is a short term mentality, and no matter how many clients you get in your first few months of coaching, you won’t make it long term as a coach (at least not with that mentality).

Your egg will crack wide open.

Why?  Because when you become a life coach with a short term mentality, you’ll lose those clients that you signed up as quickly as you got them, and then you will probably quit (or become an impotent coach… i.e. “I’m just coaching part time right now until I find some more clients that are ‘the right fit for me’”… yeah right!)

Bad Egg Mistake #2 (This is NOT What You Need to be a Coach):

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What if you get started as a coach and you think that what you need to be a coach is to be perfect, and your version of perfect is to steamroll over everyone you touch?  I know quite a few coaches like this.  They are going to be the next “Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar” Guru type and every client is their stepping stone to greatness.

If you keep steamrolling people like this, it’s for one reason… EGO.  The need for significance.

The hard thing about being an egotist coach is that in coaching you get rejected a lot.  You also risk rejection daily.  Egotists hate that.  They will soon be moving on to their ‘speaking career’ (that never really materializes in a way that pays a salary), but someday they are “Really committed to being on Oprah… I just know some day I’ll be on Oprah”.

DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY COACHES I’VE WORKED WITH THAT ARE GOING TO “BE ON OPRAH”??

…More than you could count

Man, if dreams were realities, it would be cool.

If you get started as an EGOTIST coach and can’t shift that in a short time, you won’t last at 100%, and your egg will crack.  What you need to be a coach is more than just a big ego.

To Have What You Need to Be a Coach For The Long Term is to Find Something You Love About Coaching That You’d be Willing to do For The Rest of Your Life

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What about coaching would you be willing to do or be involved with for the rest of your life?

  • Would you be willing to coach others and change lives until the day you die?
  • Would you be willing to write advice for others until you are on your death bed?
  • Would you be ok with running a business that supplies personal development products for the rest of your life?
  • Would you be inspired about being known as a job coach, or a business coach, or a life-purpose coach… forever… for all eternity?

Find the part of coaching that inspires you.  Find what part of you as you become a life coach you’d be willing to let live forever, and what part of you you’d be willing to stay committed to until the day you die, and you’ll have found what you need to be a coach at the level of greatness.

Then your egg will never crack open.  Then you’ll never quit, even when it’s tough.

Oh, by the way, that’s the answer to the riddle… “How can I drop an egg without it ever cracking open?”

Simple… Just drop it somewhere where if will fall forever.

Jeffrey T. Sooey

CEO, JTS Advisors

Founder, Coaches Training Blog community

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