Some of the best coaching practices are the simplest. One of the greatest challenges in coaching is that clients often let their own fears get the best of them. Sometimes their goals seem so far from what is possible, they aren’t able to get started. If you incorporate finding ways to help your clients see progress as part of your coaching practices, you will improve the odds of success greatly.

The Problem With Goals

Goals are not actually the problem. It’s how most people relate to goals. Most people never accomplish their goals, and they then beat themselves up for failing. This is one of the most powerful de-motivators in our society. Instead of moving forward, most people just try to hang onto some sort of safety net. By the time most people hit their 30’s or 40’s they have all but given up on having a great life.

Best Coaching Practices For Long Term Motivation

But what if people learned to find fulfillment along the path toward their goals? Would they be too complacent to really try to do something? Most likely not. Instead of seeing taking on a new goal as a ‘do or die’ mission, what if your coaching clients saw working toward an ambitious goal as a ‘no lose’ prospect? When people look at a challenging goal as an opportunity to grow, regardless of the outcome, they actually work harder toward their goals.

One of the best coaching practices is to help your clients celebrate the milestones along the way toward their goals. This is very challenging because few high achievers ever think what they have accomplished is worth celebrating. There is always one step further to go before they feel that they have succeeded. This best coaching practice is important to incorporate, because few clients will ever give themselves permission to celebrate. By doing this, however, your clients will soon start to feel a new sense of fulfillment they never dreamed possible. When that happens your coaching clients will have a new relationship with goals that propels them into their future.

By the way… you’re invited to claim your FREE step-by-step “30-Days to Become a Coach” video toolkit. Just go HERE now to get your 30-day coaching blueprint videos.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: best coaching practices, Coaching Tips

One of the best coaching practices is to master the art of active listening. As a good listener, it’s not enough to be able to parrot back the words the other person is saying. Active listening requires that you demonstrate that you are truly interested in the other person. It’s a necessity in order to establish rapport and in order to get the best possible outcomes for your clients during their coaching sessions.

Using Active Listening As Part Of Your Best Coaching Practices

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• Listen with the intent of understanding the facts and the underlying emotions of what the other person is saying.
• Give appropriate feedback. Nod your head, empathize with your facial features, and keep your body language open. If you happen to be on the phone, you can use your body even though the other person can’t see you. It’s been shown that people can “hear” you smile over the phone.
• Paraphrase what you have heard them say. Not just the facts, but the underlying emotions. Ask questions in a way that lets the other person know you understand what he is trying to express, and also that you are interested in understanding at a deeper level.
• Give feedback and step into your client’s world. Feedback such as, “Wow,” “Hmm,” “Oh, really,” or even the occasional, “That’s horrible!” will people feel that you are with them.

Does This Mean You Have To Agree With Everything They Say?

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Using active listening as part of your best coaching practices doesn’t mean you agree with your client’s perspective. It means going with them and spending some time in their world so you can step back outside and offer another perceptive. You wouldn’t jump into the ocean to save a friend who was drowning and start drowning with him, would you? No, you would throw a life ring out so you could safely pull him back to the boat. Active listening is about understanding your clients so you can offer the best strategy to move them forward.

Would you like an endless stream of new coaching clients? Simply fill out the form to the right with your first name and email and I’ll send you free videos with step-by-step blueprints for generating a massive income from high paying coaching clients.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: best coaching practices, Coaching Tips

As a coach, your best coaching practices require you to look deeply at the issues your clients bring you. While watching television recently, my husband’s quirky sense of humor produced a question which led me to think about how TV music is a sort of metaphor for beliefs. It was a scene in a perfectly ordinary supermarket, and suddenly there was an orchestra playing. His question–“what’s that invisible orchestra doing in a supermarket?”

What does TV Music have to do with beliefs?

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Have you ever noticed how music suddenly appears during dramatic moments on television? Someone survives a risky surgery and suddenly violins are playing in the operating room. Or there is a car chase and a full orchestra suddenly roars into existence to accompany the racing vehicles on the freeway. So what does this mystery music have to do with your best coaching practices? It’s about looking at motivation. In the real world, it makes no sense that the music is there, but it is used to heighten emotion and draw you in. Similarly, your client’s beliefs hide somewhere until something triggers them, and suddenly they are driving the action, providing the passion and emotion. And while the beliefs go unrecognized, their effect is to cause your client to behave in inexplicable, extreme or undesirable ways.

As a coach using your best coaching practices, you are a super sleuth. You figure out what’s going on in the background. What beliefs are driving the behaviors? How do they limit your client? Until you really start looking, no one even knows those beliefs are there–not the client, not you. When you are using your best coaching practices, you use probing questions to find the beliefs that are constraining your client and stopping her from getting what she wants.

Your best coaching practices include transforming limiting beliefs

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Once you and your client have identified the hidden beliefs that are limiting her, it’s your job as coach to transform them into beliefs that empower her. Unlike the TV music, you can’t just make the limiting beliefs disappear. But using your best coaching practices, you can work with your client to:
– Find out how those limiting beliefs are serving her–what needs they are meeting;
–Transform the limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs that meet the same needs at a higher level;
– Help her find ways to reinforce the new beliefs so the old ones don’t regain their power.

Special Bonus – Learn 32 ‘Guru’ Transformation Techniques when you fill in the form at the top right and click the “Watch The Videos Now” button. You’ll learn how to become a life coach in 30 days.

Dorine G Kramer

JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: best coaching practices, Coaching Tips