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Customized Coaching Tips For Any Client: Different Techniques Coaches Use For the Different DISC Behavioral Styles

October 1, 2009 By Jeffrey T. Sooey 1 Comment

If You Are Searching For Customized Coaching Tips Look No Further than the DISC Assessment

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What if each client came with his or her own set of customized coaching tips? You would be able to lead them in a fraction of the time it can take to get to know your client. Using the DISC Assessments is one way to understand your clients’ behavioral styles in minutes instead of months. Based on the four different behavioral styles, there are different techniques coaches use to communicate with and influence their clients.

Each Behavioral Style Dictates Different Techniques Coaches Use to be Successful During Coaching

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Different techniques coaches use for the High “D” or Dominant behavioral style:

This person is dominant, intense and driven. Don’t be surprised if they anger easily. They want results. The coaching tips for this behavioral style is to get to the point, be direct, and efficient. Play to their ego and help them focus on results. Don’t waste time with small talk, facts, or figures.

Different techniques coaches use for the High “I” or Influencing behavioral style:

This person is a happy, positive, people lover. They think anything is possible and trust easily. Above all, they want connection. The coaching tips for this behavioral style is be gentle if you must disagree, trade jokes and stories, and allow time for socializing. Don’t let them talk so much that you don’t get a result, and don’t confuse them with too many details.

Different techniques coaches use for the High “S” or Steady behavioral style:

This person is a slow moving, steady, supportive person that hides their emotions. They want consistency. The coaching tips for this person are to move slowly, provide proof, earn their trust and friendship, and make sure you follow up with them. Don’t expect get too friendly during the first meeting, or close too fast. Also make sure you don’t bad mouth their current suppliers, because they’re probably friends.

Different techniques coaches use for the High “C” or Compliant behavioral style:

This is a rule following, detail oriented person that is afraid of going outside the box. They want the facts. The coaching tips for a person who demonstrates this behavioral style are to be organized, emphasize loses caused by delay, give them research and data, and give them time to decide. Don’t get personal if you don’t know them, be emotional or loud, or waste time with small talk

Using the DISC Assessment Will Help You Get to Know Your Clients but These Coaching Tips are Most Effective when You Realize Most People are a Combination of Behavioral Styles

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These are different techniques coaches use for different behavioral styles, but realize that most people are a combination of two or even three of these styles. The best way to use these coaching tips is to use the style that closes matches their behavior at that time if there are two styles that seem to contradict each other. By using these coaching tips, you will be able to predict, most likely, what problems your client will have, and also help you to navigate them through those problems in the most effective way.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

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Business Coaching Salary Secrets: Different Techniques Coaches Use to Keep Their Clients in Coaching

July 11, 2009 By Jeffrey T. Sooey 1 Comment

How You Can Double Your Business Coaching Salary From Every Client You Work With

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Business coaching salary is exciting for all business coaches, but let’s be honest; most business coaches don’t make much money.  The average business coach makes about $20k per year or less. Although part of the reason is that they simply don’t get enough clients, another big reason is that the clients they DO work with don’t stick around very long.

Even with all the different techniques coaches use to make their business clients successful, the average business coaching client will stay with their coaching program for 4 months, and then they will promptly quit.  In order to garner the kind of business coaching salary that you need to simply survive, you need to learn the different techniques coaches use to keep your clients around longer than just 4 months.

The Biggest Business Coaching Salary Problem: Why Clients Quit Coaching

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Why do coaching clients leave so quickly?  Most of the time, the reason why a business coaching client isn’t getting the results they want in their business is that their emotions are motivating them to avoid certain key activities that would make them more successful (as well as overdoing certain activities that are limiting their success).  The other possibility is that their emotions are causing them to perform badly, even when they do spend the time working on what they should be working on.  The point here is that the variables of success and failure in business are:

  • What things you do (and in what amount you do those things)
  • How well you do them.

Different Techniques Coaches Use in the Business Coaching Salary Timeline

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Day One: Business owners are looking for a way to not have to change anything they don’t feel like changing and still get better results, and they look to you – the powerful coach – as the magic pill to fix their situation.  They simply assume that working with you and learning the different techniques coaches use will make their job easier and more fun while simultaneously making more profit.

Months One to Two: When month one and two roll by, they are usually excited because they are learning some cool things from you, and the whole coaching experience is new.  They might even see more sales as a result of the things they learn from you.  The different techniques coaches use are enough to keep your client excited for a few months (even without results) or at least hopeful for more results coming soon.

Months Three to Five: When month 3-5 roll by, even with all the different techniques coaches use, the client starts to realize that they are still going to have to face the hard changes that they know were the keys to getting the success they wanted in the first place.  That’s when they will quit, and you will lose your business coaching salary.

Different Techniques Coaches Use to Get Business Coaching Clients (And Their Business Coaching Salary) to Stick Around

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Think of the mindset of your client at the time they are quitting.  “I have to work harder and have less fun… I have been paying this coach for 4 months with no results… there’s no guarantee that this is going to work… now I have to spend even more money and roll the dice, while suffering through the changes I know I need to make.”

At this point, if you’re going to impact your business coaching salary, you really need to show your client the value in them staying the course with you.  The different techniques coaches use for this vary, but the one I would suggest is to take these steps:

Step One: Explain that suffering is optional and work with the client on ways to make the ‘tough’ changes more fun and easy (it’s all in their heads)

Step Two: Remind them that coaching is about commitment and that as their ‘business personal trainer’ you are there to get them to follow through especially when they don’t want to.  Thus this is the most important time to stay in coaching.

Step Three: Help them guarantee success by creating small rewards so that, even if the changes they make don’t work, they’ll still give themselves the ‘pat on the back’ for attempting the win.

Step Four: Help them understand that even if the failure does occur, all hard changes pay off in the long term and look for examples and possibilities in their specific situation.

Jeffrey T. Sooey
CEO, JTS Advisors
Founder, Coaches Training Blog community

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The 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching An The Different Techniques Coaches Use To Overcome Them: Part TWO

June 15, 2009 By Jeffrey T. Sooey Leave a Comment

In our first article about the 3 biggest problems with life coaching and the different techniques coaches use to overcome them, we covered the stigma of being the ‘friend’ first rather than the ‘coach’ first in a coaching relationship.  When you are looking at the kinds of issues coaching clients seem to have with the coaching and results they are getting, it usually comes down to NOT being coached intensely enough or not getting the results (usually as a result of lack of intense participation from the coach, or a lack of the right style from the coach).  This article will continue on raising a higher understanding of how to get your clients out from under the 3 biggest problems with life coaching.  Now, let’s get into the 2 other problems and the different techniques coaches use to get around them….

Life Coaching Problem #2 of The 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching: Only Using the Different Techniques Coaches Use by Being Non-Directive (All The Time)

 

One of the 3 biggest problems with life coaching is using non-directive techniques all the time.  It can be good to let your client direct the conversation, direct themselves, and ‘find their own answers’, there’s no doubt about that.  One of the most important lessons I learned from Tony Robbins about coaching is that “when you tell your client something, then they doubt it, but when you can get your client to tell you something, then they automatically believe it’s true”.  That’s really part of the basis of good salesmanship.  Inside of the different techniques coaches use, however, there are very directive techniques that can cause a client to take action, get the answer more quickly, or simply follow the path you wanted them to follow as a result of resisting your direction! 

Life Coaching Problem #2 of The 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching: Coach Being Too Much of a Guru (and The Different Techniques Coaches Use to Avoid Getting ‘Guru Screwed’)

 

When a coach is more of a guru type (meaning that they have a large following of dedicated clients that have ‘blind faith’ in what the guru says being true), people tend to put the guru on a pedestal.  The 3 biggest problems with life coaching are reflective of a common problem that people have (I’ll get to that later), but the guru has so much sway with their followers that sometimes they don’t have the faith in themselves to follow the direction or coaching the guru offers.  You must be aware of the different techniques coaches use to steer clear of the guru stigma.  Clients believe that the solutions that the guru provides would work just fine for the guru, but that ‘my situation is different, and I’m not the guru’.  In fact the whole ‘guru thing’ exists by virtue of everyone that follows the guru is NOT quite the guru!  The funny thing is that the guru usually knows that this is hogwash, but even if they try to convince their followers of that fact, the followers won’t get it.  The different techniques that coaches use to get beyond this problem include confessing your own shortcomings in a story (i.e. even gurus are people too…), putting the client up on a pedestal (yes, even YOU can be a GURU…), and challenging the client (prove to me that you aren’t crappy…).  

The 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching Come From The Client Not Taking Full Responsibility for Their Own Problems.  The Different Techniques Coaches Use Must Address This Pattern

 

At some level, you contribute to every problem you’ve got, and even the problems that are exceptions to that rule don’t justify trying to get around the importance of just being responsible for everything in your life.  It’s not to say that ‘everything’s your fault’, it’s just that when a client takes responsibility, they start to take back control.  When a client becomes responsible (response – ABLE… ABLE to RESPOND), they stop being a victim and they now have the ability to truly change things.  The 3 biggest problems with life coaching all revolve around coaches not addressing this fundamental key to client problems.  The different techniques coaches use to get around this issue of responsibility are important for every coach to learn and master.

Jeffrey T. Sooey
CEO, JTS Advisors
Founder, Coaches Training Blog Community

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The 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching and The Different Techniques Coaches Use To Overcome Them: Part ONE

June 14, 2009 By Jeffrey T. Sooey 3 Comments

If you knew what the 3 biggest problems with life coaching were, you’d be quite surprised.  No matter what people say their problems are, and no matter what the personal development ‘gurus’ say about the problems with success and life, the different techniques coaches use to overcome life problems have been varied.  Some of these different techniques coaches use are effective and some aren’t.  When I first became a life coach, I found that I couldn’t help the majority of my clients.  It was really disheartening.  Here I am, supposed to be the ‘life coach’ that is going to solve your problems and help you get the results that are eluding you, and instead you drop a lot of coin and have nothing to show for it but time on the phone with me.

The 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching are All Based Upon the Fact That, Even With The Different Techniques Coaches Use, People Don’t Look at Themselves as The Source of Their own Problems

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Soon after the realization that I wasn’t effective as a coach, I closed the doors to my coaching practice and revamped the entire thing.  That’s also when I learned (by the school of hard knocks, mind you) the 3 biggest problems with life coaching (at least the 3 biggest problems with life coaching as I served it).  I was also lucky enough to be a part of a community of coaches at the time that showed me the different techniques coaches use to overcome the problems that I was experiencing (and needed badly to overcome if I was going to stay in business for much longer).

Life Coaching Problem #1 of The 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching: Coach Being a ‘Friend’ (and The Different Techniques Coaches Use to Stop The ‘Friend Trap’)

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Coaches many times create one of the 3 biggest problems with life coaching by being too much of a friend too much of the time.  Your #1 job as a coach is not to be your client’s friend.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t be a friend at all, it simply means that it is not your #1 priority, and frankly sometimes being a friend is the worst role to take on with your coaching clients.  Some of the different techniques coaches use take you way out of friend mode and make you the drill-sergeant, angel (or devil) on your coaching client’s shoulder, psychologist, or chief antagonist / provocateur.  Would you think it’s your job as a coach at times to simply bully your client?  Sometimes that’s EXACLY the right action to take with your client (if you know what you’re doing and how to work through the tension you create).

Avoid the 3 Biggest Problems With Life Coaching By Using the Different Techniques Coaches Use to Stop Being a Friend and Start Being a Coach

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When you are a friend first and a coach second (at least during coaching sessions), you will limit your effectiveness as a coach.  The 3 biggest problems with life coaching all are similar to this ‘friend’ issue and you must learn the different techniques coaches use to overcome it.  If you stop being a friend and start being a coach at the right times in your coaching sessions, you’re clients will surprise you by thanking you profusely for your honesty and ‘tough love’ and you’ll find that they are more your friend than they ever were before.

Jeffrey T. Sooey
CEO, JTS Advisors
Founder, Coaches Training Blog community

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