Life coaching training online is available from many different coaches and organizations. It’s the main source of coaching information and training for a lot of new coaches and would be coaches. A lot of it is free promotional material and there are also many paid programs costing anything from $27 for some small piece to thousands of dollars for something more comprehensive. But what do you need to know to make the best use of the life coaching training online resources that are so numerous right now?

Decide on your favorite providers of life coaching training online

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The number of people and organizations providing online training for coaches is huge and growing. With affiliate marketing and many coaches promoting other coach’s training, it’s very easy to end up on way too many lists and have a ridiculously large number of email offers for free information, ebooks, teleseminars, etc. Especially when you are just starting out and not sure what direction your coaching will take, it’s tempting to sign up for everything that looks like it might be useful. Beware. It’s a trap.

If you’re already signed up on multitudes of lists, get yourself off. You will not have time to read, listen to, and watch everything you’ve signed up for, no matter how interesting or useful it may be. Choose one or two coaches whose style resonates with you and whose information is fresh, useful, and provided in a format that works for you. Unsubscribe from the rest. As your practice matures, you can add other sources and topics of  life coaching training online if and when you need them.

Is life coach training online right for you?

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Are you a person who will actually follow through with coaching training material that’s provided online? Or do you need an in person experience to motivate you? A lot of coaches waste a lot of money on programs that probably have fine content. The trouble is, they buy the programs then never actually look at them again. Don’t spend your money on life coach training online unless you know you will schedule the necessary time and keep a commitment to yourself to do the work.

Experience is the key to becoming a great life coach

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One major missing piece from  life coach training online  is the actual experience of coaching. You won’t be a good coach unless you practice your coaching skills on live people. If you choose to commit to an online training, make sure you also commit to coaching as many clients as you can. All the “book learning” in the world, whether online or off, can’t substitute for experience.

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Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Recently, I had the opportunity to experience 3 powerful principles of persuasion at work in a coaching mastermind.  While the details aren’t important in themselves, they can be illustrative.  I believe that perhaps the members of the group were unconsciously in the thrall of the 3 persuasion principles I noticed working that day.

Authority is tough to challenge

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In the context of any group, including a coaching mastermind, the leader, of course, is an authority figure.  Studies have shown that human beings have a deep-seated internal directive to obey authority, even in the face of logic, pain or otherwise unacceptable consequences to themselves or to others.  In my coaching mastermind example, the leader reminded the group that they had made a decision about a particular option, and stated that he thought they should stick to the decision.  Then he asked if anyone had anything more to say about it.  He invoked the power of authority and no one challenged him.

You can use this persuasion tool in many situations.  For example, to keep people awake and engaged when you are speaking from the front of the room, you might say “turn to your neighbor and give him a high-5.”  Most of your audience will do it.

The allure of consistency

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Look carefully at how people behave and you’ll often see that we stick to a decision we’ve made even if the reasons change and another choice might make more sense.  It’s human nature to think in ways that are consistent with our choice in order to justify it, rather than to change it.

As Robert Cialdini says in Influence, his classic book on persuasion, “it is obvious that internal consistency is a hallmark of logic and intellectual strength, while its lack characterizes the intellectually scattered and limited among us.”   This drive for consistency showed up in the coaching mastermind, individually and collectively, as an unwillingness to deviate from the agreed plan.   This was a great demonstration of the power of a public commitment, which is a very important tool in group coaching.

Internal social proof in the coaching mastermind

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The third principle of persuasion evident in the coaching mastermind example is social proof.  When the mastermind leader offered the opportunity to volunteer dissent from his opinion, no one spoke up.  Possibly everyone felt the same way he did.  But it is equally possibly that some group members felt differently.  They might have been willing to speak up if someone else had provided the social proof that it was OK to challenge the leader’s authority.  Since no one did, there was no social proof that speaking up was really OK.  In this case social proof worked to support everyone’s silence.  In your coaching business, social proof, in the form of testimonials for instance, is a major encouragement for potential clients to choose you as their coach.

The principles of persuasion are worth knowing.  Get familiar with them and you can use them to good purpose in many aspects of your coaching business, including a coaching mastermind.  And, you are more likely to realize when they are being used to influence you.

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Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

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What do you think of when you think about leadership coaching?  Probably the context of business is what comes to mind.  But leadership is an art and a skill set that your clients can use in many areas of life.  Sure, you might be a business coach helping an executive or a branch manager to increase productivity in her team, but you could just as easily be a parenting coach helping a dad figure out how to blend an argumentative, stressed out family into a harmonious and happy unit  The mindset and skills of leadership can be effective tools in the arsenals not just of business coaches, but of parenting coaches, relationship coaches, personal development coaches, and the list goes on.

Demonstrate Leadership to Your Clients by Example

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When you coach, who is responsible for keeping the session focused on your client’s goals?  Who structures the session?  Who manages or uses the emotions that come up?  That’s right, you–it’s your job.  You are the leader.

Think about the qualities you need to have as a successful coach.  You are focused on helping your client get what he wants, not on getting what you want.  You are open minded and non-judgmental, willing to listen and pay attention to what your client is saying.  You demonstrate integrity by keeping your coaching appointments at the day and time you set, and by staying focused on your client during your sessions.  You know when to push and when to back off.  You know when to be a shoulder to cry on and when to be a tough accountability coach.  You spend time on building rapport, but you don’t waste time without a purpose.  You demonstrate respect and expect it in return.  Etc. etc. etc.

With the obvious additions of coaching knowledge and skills, a great coach looks a lot like a great leader.  When you demonstrate the behaviors, expectations and mindset of a leader in your coaching sessions, you are already half way to success in your leadership coaching.

In Leadership Coaching You Become Part of Your Client’s Peer Group

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In order to sustain a long-term shift in behavior and mindset, your leadership coaching client will benefit from being part of a peer group of successful leaders, willing and able to mentor and support each other over time.  Part of your job as a coach is to help your client find a way to associate with such a peer group.  And guess what?  You are a great fit.  Of course as a coach, you have specific, additional skills, and you get paid by your client, but as long as you don’t get caught up in an ego trip, you can be model, mentor and peer in many positive aspects of leadership.  Be an example in your leadership coaching, and challenge your client to extend his peer group and find other leaders with the qualities he sees in you.

Give this strategy a try and see for yourself that it works.   If you liked this coaching tip, leave a comment or use the handy bookmark buttons below to share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc. Thanks!

Dorine G. Kramer

JTS Advisors Certified Strategy and Accountability Coach

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They key to effective leadership coaching is to get people to do what they wouldn’t do otherwise.  This is the crux of motivation.  Ideally, the entire team needs to experience motivation in a way that amplifies each individual’s motivation.  This creates a powerful team and requires good leadership skills.  What are the key elements in coaching a team?

Five Key Elements to Effective Leadership Coaching

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1. Create an Environment Where People Get Their Needs Met.  Just as individuals have a drive to get their basic needs met, groups or teams also experience a drive to get their needs met as a group.  The basic needs are certainty, significance, variety, and love and connection.  Members of a team may play different roles, but the leadership coaching goal is to create synergy.  For example, one member might be all about creating harmony and connection in a group, while another might bring a great deal of certainty to the group because of her experience.
2. Create an Environment Where People’s Values are Appreciated.  Having a business run entirely by a group whose highest value is selfless contribution to others might be devastating to in a sales team, but for a medical office it might work.  Allowing a team member who values beauty for beauty’s sake to make some modifications to the décor of a waiting area or conference area may be a win-win for all involved.  Leadership is about utilizing the strengths of the individuals and creating a cohesive team.
3. Create an Environment Where the Goals Are Clearly Defined.  People are motivated to achieve goals, but often employees are the last to know what the outcomes are.  Team behavior is also motivated by the goals that individual members intent to achieve as well the common goals.
4. Create an Environment With Accountability.  An effective team needs performance and behavioral standards, as well as a means for holding itself accountability to these standards.  There is much less incentive to perform without a system for tracking progress and results.
5. Create an Environment With Incentives and Rewards.  Team memory has a life of it’s own.  Just as individuals remember successes, with effective leadership coaching you can create a positive memory of wins and accomplishments within the team.  This enhances motivation to support each other in common goals.

Persistence Pays Off

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Effective leadership coaching requires that the team be inspired into preserving through thick and thin.  When tasks require long periods of time before they are completed or are tedious, a team that works well together has a huge advantage.  The benefit of creating a powerful team is that together they can weather storms that would tear apart a lesser team.

SPECIAL BONUS — If you would like step-by-step blueprints for generating a massive income from high paying coaching clients, I invite you to claim your FREE ACCESS to the “Life Coach Salary Secrets” video toolkit.  Go HERE to get it FREE.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Life coaching education pops up all around us when we listen for it.  It’s in movies, on the radio and television, even, as I recently found out, at the opera.  Now granted, these snippets of coaching are not usually life changing, like on-going coaching is, but they can be educational and a spring-board– inspiring, thought provoking, and worthy of your notice.

In the last two weeks, several life coaching education snippets have caught my attention, and I want to share them with you.

Accountability Coaching from the Opera

Recently, the Los Angeles opera presented Wagner’s Ring Cycle–an epic mythology of gods, dwarfs, heroes and men.  In the story, Wotan, the king of all the gods, has established and agreed to rules of conduct, including the sanctity of marriage and absolute obedience to his commands.  When he later wants to make exceptions to the rules to suit his own purposes, his wife provides him with some very effective accountability coaching.   She takes it all very personally and is furious with him, which is something you would be taught not to do in your life coaching education.   But, she catches him every time he tries to justify his actions, points out where he is lying to himself and to her, and reminds him that the consequences of breaking his commitments will be severe.  She will only be shamed, but he will suffer derision from his subjects, and ultimately, his downfall as a god.   Powerful stuff.

Life Coaching Education on Cable Television

HBO cable television has a documentary series called Masterclass, which features young artists working with a famous mentor in the creative or performing arts.  Today I watched choreographer Bill T Jones work with two high school students putting together a dance and spoken word performance.  What I heard was some inspired coaching.  At one point, when Bill felt the dancers were playing it too safe, not pushing their own boundaries enough, he said “Be the hero.  Let your strength overcome whatever is negative for you.”   Later, he said “Work harder, make more difficult choices to develop your artistry.”   With his words he implies that his “clients” have heroism, strength, the ability to put more of themselves into what they are doing, and the ability to overcome whatever difficulties they find.  Great coaching, right? Wouldn’t you work hard with a coach who has such faith in you?

Keep an ear out for those snippets of life coaching education that come your way.   If you’re paying attention, you’ll find examples of inspired coaching popping out at you, to provide an extra dimension to appreciate in your favorite performing arts.  Too bad for me, I don’t think my opera tickets are a tax deductible expense!

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Dorine G. Kramer
JTS Strategy and Accountability Coach

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The best way to learn leadership coaching skills is to get on the court.  You will learn at a much deeper level when you apply coaching techniques to your own life and goals, and we all know that in leadership, it requires someone to volunteer to go first.  The first step in change is deciding what you need to do to change.  Decide what it is going to take to believe that you must change, and that the time is now.  Once you are there, you’re only a few steps toward transformation.

Five Steps to Leadership Coaching From the Inside Out

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1. What are you doing or not doing that prevents you from changing?  Be honest.  Where are you lying to yourself about the answer to that question?
2. What beliefs do you have that cause these factors to prevent you from changing?  Be honest.  Where are you lying to yourself about the answer to that question?
3. What’s the positive intent of these beliefs?  What needs are you meeting in terms of certainty, love and connection, variety, and significance?  For example, doing things the same way will give you some certainty about the outcome.  If you change things you might risk love and connection from people who would rather you not change, because they are getting their needs met from you being the way you are.  Take a thorough inventory and determine how at least two of these needs are getting met with your current behavior.
4. What can you believe that would turn this around?  What is an empowering alternative to the old beliefs?  How could that meet more or your needs at a higher level?
5. What kind of results will this new belief give you?  How will that feel?

The Key to Lasting Change Begins With Awareness

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When you take yourself through this leadership coaching exercise, you will be able to coach at a much more effective level.  You will also start seeing new results in your own life, and you will be a walking billboard for the power of coaching.

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 Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Sometimes even with advanced coach training it’s hard to know what your clients really want.  That’s because it’s not always clear to your client.  This life coaching training is based on the foundation that what your clients really want is to satisfy one of their basic needs at a higher level.  In this coach training we’ll work under the assumption that the basic needs are certainty, significance, variety and love & connection.  But this life coaching training can be applied to other needs as well.

Coach Training: Listen to Your Client to Discover What They Need

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Life Coaching Training Step #1:  Ask your clients what they want, but listen for what they “need”.  The key to this coach training step is to listen for the top 1-2 needs they are trying to meet by getting what they think they want.

Coach Training: After Listening, Explain the Four Emotional Needs

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Life Coaching Training Step #2:  Explain the four emotional needs.  Certainty is about safety, security and comfort.  Variety is the opposite of certainty.  Significance is about being unique, special, one of a kind, needed.  Love and connection is about being part of something bigger than you, and in many ways it’s a polar opposite to being significant.  The key to this coach training step is to have your clients understand that their needs drive their actions.

Coach Training: Have Your Client Rate Themselves on These Needs

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Life Coaching Training Step #3:  Have your clients rate themselves on a scale of 0-10 on each of these needs.  The key to this coach training step is to find out where they are getting their needs met and where they are not.  Their wound is the need they are not getting met at a high level now.  Mind read, that is tell them what you think their wound is, and listen to their feedback.

Following these life coaching training steps will help you and your client identify what they really want to achieve.  Your clients will most likely still have the same vehicles to achieve their needs in terms of goals, but by using this coach training you will help establish motivation that is strong enough to carry them through the obstacles that will inevitably come up.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Even after life coaching training courses, many new coaches are unclear about exactly how to get clients.  Sure, most coach training courses suggest that you run free sessions but a lot of time it’s not effective.  Why?  In order for a free coaching session to be compelling enough to enroll a client, that client must see you as the only way to achieve what is most important in his life.  Most coach training courses do not make this distinction.  Here are some of life coaching training essentials that will change the way you run free sessions forever.

Life Coaching Training 101: Establish Rapport

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The first of these life coaching training essentials is that you must establish rapport.  A lot of coaches think that having a friendly conversation is enough to establish rapport.  It’s not.  You must get them to know, like and trust you.  The coach training technique that I’ve found most powerful is to use a three-part compliment.  Compliment them sincerely, tell them why you feel that way, and then ask a question to get more clarity on what allowed them to believe or accomplish whatever you complimented them on.

Life Coaching Training 101: Use Your Coaching Skills Effectively to Make a Difference

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The next of these life coaching training essentials is to make sure you are discussing an ambitious goal.  One of my clients told me his goal was to complete a century bicycle ride in a month’s time.  At the age of 70, I thought this might be an ambitious goal so asked him a few more questions.  I found out that he had done this event nine times in the past.  This goal was going to be achieved whether we had this session or not.  Don’t let your coach training go to waste.  Make sure you are making the best use of your time and your clients by having them tell you what makes their goals ambitious, and raise the stakes if you need to.

Life Coaching Training 101: Emotionally Engage Your Prospective Clients

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The most important life coaching training lesson is to get your clients emotionally engaged.  Just like no one buys a car for a rational reason, you must get your clients emotionally connected to their goal.  It has to go from a good idea to a desire so great that they would do anything to attain it.  One coach training tip is to get them to see the pain they would experience by not achieving their goal and the intense pleasure they would experience if they achieved that goal.  Then ask then what it would be worth to be able to make that choice.  It has to be priceless, or they are not emotionally committed to that goal.  Keep working with them until they get to that point.

How long does it take to run a free session using these life coaching training essentials?  The answer is until you complete it.  I have spent up to three hours with a client during a free session, because that is what he needed.  I have also enrolled people in under an hour; the average is an hour and a half.  The best coach training lesson is to give your clients what they need to move forward, and don’t count the minutes.  If you think you’re going to run out of time, schedule a follow up.  Some people may get so much out of the free session that they will feel they don’t need coaching.  These people are a great source of referrals.  The others will enroll into coaching if at all possible.  In any case, at least you played full out and make a difference in someone’s life.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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The key to effective leadership coach training is to provide accountability for your clients.  It’s essential that you lead the session, and to do this you need coach training on what to do.  Here is a simple syntax that you can use to boost your confidence and ability to lead immediately.

Leadership Coach Training: Simply Check in With Your Client at the Start of the Coaching Session

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Coach Training Step #1:  Check in with your clients.  Find out what they’re biggest wins and challenges have been since last you spoke.  This gives you an opportunity to get into your client’s world.  Did he have a death in the family, a major illness, or a layoff from his job?  Maybe the week was great and he accomplished a major goal.  This step is an important part of leadership coach training because unless you do this step, you may have no idea of what’s going on inside their head.

Leadership Coach Training: Inquire About Your Clients Commitments From the Last Session

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Coach Training Step #2:  Check in with your client’s commitments from the previous session.  A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice.  To be effective in this leadership coach training tool make sure you do not step over anything.  If a commitment has not been completed, go immediately to the 3-step process to hold your client accountable.

1. Lead the client to awareness that a commitment has been broken.
2. Lead the client to understand the impact that breaking commitments has in their life.
3. Empower the client so they can make a choice to follow through with their commitments, even when they don’t feel like it in the moment.

Leadership Coach Training:  Find Out What Your Clients Hopes to Achieve From the Coaching Session

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Coach Training Step #3:  Ask your client what result they want to get out of the session.  Hold them accountable to making progress to their goals, and then have them commit to taking action toward their goals by the next session.  One leadership coach training tool is to ask, “If you could take one action step that would move you closer to your goals, what would that be?”  Know your clients.  Some will commit to a larger step than you would think of; others need to be challenged a bit.

Leadership Coach Training:  Confirm Your Expectations, Your Clients Commitments and the Time and Date Your Next Session

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Coach Training Step #4:  Let your clients know that you will be expecting them to complete their commitments by the next call, and that you will be asking about it.  Sometimes clients may have commitments that need to be completed prior to the next call.  I simply have them leave a voice mail for me to let me know.  At the end of the call, make sure you end on a powerful note by confirming the next appointment day and time.  Too many times leadership coach training students forget this vital step.

These leadership coach training tips will help you effectively lead your clients through most sessions.  Of course, there will always be challenges.  But that’s why to be an effective leadership coach you will want to lead the way be continually improving your own skills though coaching or coach training.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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Becoming a leadership coach doesn’t equate to becoming the biggest, baddest coach on the block.  There is a great deal of skill and finesse in leadership coaching.  In fact, the definition of leadership has more to do with getting people to willingly do what they wouldn’t otherwise do rather than to forcibly get them to do something.  So what does leadership coaching look like?  And how does one embark on the path to becoming a powerful and effective leadership coach?

Leadership Coaching Requires Understanding What Motivates Your Clients

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Becoming a leadership coach is about understanding what drives or motivates people.  One quick way to find out what motivates people is to do a Values Assessment.  People whose highest value is getting the highest and best use of their time and resources (aka money) are quite different than those who are driven by selfless contribution to others.  In leadership coaching if you try to motivate these folks with money it may actually decrease their motivation to produce results.

Becoming a Leadership Coach Means Staying Flexible

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Becoming a leadership coach doesn’t mean maintaining a superior posture.  In fact, some of the most effective leadership coaching sessions involve the coach taking inferior or equal postures as often as taking a superior posture.  A coach and a client who go head to head from a superior posture are like two rams battling over territory with their horns clashing.  Someone is going to get hurt.  The person who has the most flexibility is the leader, as he’ll have more possibilities to influence the other person.

If You Like the Idea of Empowering Your Clients, Leadership Coaching Might be for You

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Becoming a leadership coach is about caring enough to take a stand.  When a client shows a pattern of not following through on his commitments, in leadership coaching you need to care enough to bring it to his attention.  There is always a “reason” for everything.  My mantra is not to let anything slide.  It doesn’t mean yelling at your client, getting annoyed, or threatening him.  It means helping him identify what really stopped him from following through with what he committed to doing, and then empowering him to make a change.

Becoming a leadership coach is really about going first.  And in leadership coaching if you start from a position of love and caring for the other person, putting their dreams and desires above your own, and commitment to play full out; you’re off to a good start.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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