Successful coaching is driving to stretch your client beyond her comfort levels to help her achieve her goals and then instead of stopping and resting on her heals, you get her to set new stretch goals so she can move into a place of real power where she can have a real impact on her family, business and professional life, shift her finances to create enough wealth to support her long-term visions, and get started on how she plans to give back once she has arrived at a plateau in her life.

Now nabbing new clients is one way to continue to grow your business, but it’s far less expensive to keep a client and extend your services once you’ve nabbed them and worked hard to over serve them through successful coaching.

This is important for your coaching practice because by keeping your clients beyond their initial six months contract, you smooth out your cash flow and move your service from basic coaching into comprehensive lifestyle coaching that addresses all aspects of your client’s personal and professional life.

That is longer client relationships mean you move from being a hunter to becoming a farmer who plants and grows his crops without having to worry about the next find and kill.

The Key Steps to Successful Coaching That’ll Engage Your Clients Long-Term

The way you can keep your coaching client longer than six months is by you helping her see the possibilities of how she can be more and more fulfilling and richer by expanding her thinking in terms of how and where she contributes and to whom she makes her contributions.

Six Success Coaching Steps:

Help your client set stretch goals and become successful by knowing what is truly important for her to achieve in her personal and professional life.

Never step over any accountability concerns you have with your client because that lets her know regularly how much value she gets from you by keeping her on track and aware of how she’s being out of integrity and how that impacts her negatively in so many ways.

Stay on the look out for successful coaching opportunities that are available for your client that she may not see or recognize as a breakthrough, and then get her to set goals to take advantage of her opportunities. Now do the same for pending dangers that she may not see in front of her.

Push your client to set goals that lead her to a balanced life that helps her expand and deepen her relationships and overcome any family challenges or health concerns she faces.

Eradicate any limiting beliefs through successful coaching that get in your client’s way so she keeps rising up the success ladder and enjoy the significance and certainty that comes from achieving her goals.

Impress upon your client that you and she are a team, and that team is what’s producing the results she values.

What if My Clients Don’t Appreciate My Coaching Value?

You can take all of the steps above and your client still may not associate you with the success she has had since you came into her life.

That’s not her problem. It’s yours, and that’s because you need to discover how to impress on your client that you are in charge of her success by always asking her the value that she receives from your coaching every time you have a successful coaching session with her.

If your client struggles with sharing the value with you that you gave her in a coaching session, you’ve got to slice through that wall that separates you and your client.

If you can’t get your client to see your value each time you coach her, then at the end of your contract, she won’t see any reason to extend your contract and keep you onboard.

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.

Donald Hunter
Certified JTS Accountability And Strategy Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

This is, all too often, a valid question. Too often “successful coaching” leaves the client unaffected, or worse, damaged. With coaching becoming an “in” profession, self-ordained, “master coaches” naively – if not innocently – faking their way through coaching sessions relying on a warm personality, a gentle touch and a sincere-looking smile.

Are You Coaching from Instinct and Inspiration, or Worse – Are You a Mail Order Coach?

Coaching is a well established practice of art and science. While it is based on scientific principles, it is science in action. Successful coaching combines a caring heart, scientific training and a significant number of coaching sessions where the coach-in-training, not only delivers coaching, but also receives coaching. Without all these aspects of coaches training, the coach-in-training cannot possibly mature to become a master coach properly serving their client.

Are You Coaching from Afar?

By this question I am not referring to physical proximity. I am referring to a level of rapport. Rapport, which must at times, be extremely close. That is a level of rapport which allows the coach to effectively communicate and council the client behind the protective layer of emotional scar tissue that protects us all. Clearly, this is a serious responsibility. But it must be done to bring about profound and lasting positive change for the client.

Are You Delivering Successful Coaching?

The measure of success in successful coaching is the success of the client. And this should not be measured as short term, feel-good results. It must be based on breakthrough potential and lasting positive change. With this as the measure, are you delivering successful 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.

Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

Successful coaching involves a complex interplay between coach and client. As a skilled coach you know the steps to a successful and transformative coaching relationship. You understand that you need to build and sometimes break rapport, to ask uncomfortable questions, and to push your clients beyond their comfort zones. But you are only half of the equation. What are your client’s responsibilities in ensuring success?

The Client Commitments

1. Commit to a higher standard. If your clients aren’t willing to make this commitment, successful coaching just isn’t possible. They will back out of coaching at the first challenge.

2. Results, not excuses. Clients have to be willing to take responsibility for what happens, even when that is a stretch for them. If they are at effect rather than at cause, they lose the power to make the changes they want.

3. Play at 100%. Clients must commit to regular coaching. They must be committed to continuing the coaching process even when it’s uncomfortable or frustrating for them.

4. Be honest and open. If something isn’t working in the coaching relationship or process, successful coaching clients will speak up. That gives the coach the opportunity to make whatever changes are necessary.

5. Come to sessions prepared, with a focus or result in mind. It’s up to your clients to determine what results they want. Sometimes as a successful coach you might see that something the client didn’t bring up needs handling before he can get the results he is looking for. But ultimately, the focus of the session is up to your client.

6. Follow through on agreements. Without integrity around keeping their word, clients have very little hope of successful lives and businesses. Your accountability coaching should teach this.

7. Be willing to be uncomfortable at times. If clients sit in their comfort zone, nothing will change for them and coaching will be a waste of time.

8. Show up to appointments on time and in focus.

9. Be open to change. If your clients aren’t willing to leave behind their beliefs about how things must be, or won’t give up feeling entitled to negative emotions because of their stories, successful coaching is all but impossible.

10. Be coachable. Your clients must be willing to explore and try on what you say to see if it works for them, even when they disagree, think it’s crazy or ridiculous, or just don’t like it.

Successful Coaching Leads To This

In the JTS Advisors trainings, the 10 commitments are expected and demanded of everyone involved. And what happens is that everyone, trainees and mentors alike, grows and achieves. Expect and demand the same commitments of your clients and their successful coaching stories and outcomes will be the reward.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article … Thank you!

Dorine G. Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

Successful coaching requires a partnership between you and your client. There are rewards and responsibilities on both sides. You’ve probably read and heard a lot about your side, the coach’s side, of the equation. But what about your clients? What do they need to contribute to your working relationship to maximize their success from working with you?

The 10 Client Commitments

1. Show up to sessions on time and in focus: Being on time means your client is committed to maximizing her experience and to having integrity around the process. Integrity in this context means keeping agreements with oneself and with others, and is a basic requirement for success not just in coaching, but in life. Being in focus means not allowing distractions—no email reading, no texting, etc.
2. Be honest: If your client is intentionally lying to you, distorting facts or leaving out critical pieces of information, he is sabotaging himself and limiting your ability to help.
3. Ask for clarification if something isn’t clear: When you explain something, give an example or tell a story, your client should be willing to admit if he doesn’t understand how it relates to him or his situation, and to ask.
4. Be coachable: Your client must allow himself to be open and vulnerable with you, willing to consider ideas and actions you suggest and willing to do what he commits to do.
5. Focus on the positive: Since we get more of what we focus on, this is important for goal oriented successful coaching.
6. Don’t make excuses: Excuses leave your client powerless, so she needs to get into the habit of taking responsibility for what happens to take back her power.
7. Be kind to himself: You’ve heard the expression “you catch more flies with honey”–it applies to people as well. If your client can be kind to himself and willing to forgive himself, he will be more willing to try again or try something new.
8. Be non-judgmental: Judgment is a strong negative feeling that interferes with the ability to be reasonable and objective, so it sabotages successful coaching.
9. Celebrate wins: Patting yourself on the back or jumping up and down shouting “I did it” might seem silly, but if you celebrate and acknowledge each step forward, no matter how small, the next step is easier.
10. Be responsible for your results: Your client’s results are up to her. Her willingness to play full out, her commitment to doing whatever it takes to reach her goals and her ability to stretch beyond her comfort zone all determine how successful she will be.

Successful Coaching Both Requires and Strengthens The Commitments

I ask each new client of mine to sign a “client commitment form for successful coaching”, with each commitment written out and a space for initialing each one. And if you think that someone new to coaching probably won’t entirely understand all the commitments, you are right! In fact, you might have to coach for a while before they become really clear and before your client can really keep them. But that’s OK. Signing off on them is the first step to taking responsibility in the coaching process, and throughout a successful coaching relationship, you work on all of them.

If you don’t agree with my list, don’t see the point, or feel that some commitments are missing from the successful coaching equation, I’d love to hear about it.

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 Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

When I told my husband I was looking for inspiration for a blog on successful coaching, he said “how about this?” and pulled a new wooden puzzle out of his carrier bag. As I watched him take the puzzle apart and work on putting it back together, I realized the puzzle and his approach to it exemplify a great approach to successful coaching so…

Successful Coaching Requires Focus and Persistence

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When working on a puzzle, my husband is a great model for a coach working with a client. Whether wood, metal, numbers or words are involved, his focus is totally on what he is doing. He doesn’t hear the phone ring. He doesn’t stop for food. The computer is forgotten and all other activities are put aside. And he will usually keep working until he has solved the puzzle. Coaching should be approached just the same way. Whatever the subject and goal of the session, you need to be totally focused on your client and persistent in working toward a successful outcome for him.

Failure Is Not An Option

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No puzzle left unsolved is my husband’s motto. In the 30 years I have known him, he has never thrown up his hands in despair over any puzzle. Puzzles are endlessly intriguing to him, no matter how tricky or how difficult, and he does not give up. As a coach committed to successful coaching you have a responsibility to have that same attitude toward your clients, whether they are a joy to work with or difficult, prickly and confusing. There is a difference, however, because unlike inanimate puzzles, clients share equal responsibility with you in the coaching process. As long as your client is committed to his goals, your commitment is to work with him until he accomplishes his goal or quits coaching.

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again!

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What a familiar phrase–one I’m sure we’ve all heard since childhood. And in case you couldn’t guess, it applies equally to successful puzzle solving and to successful coaching. Sometimes my husband gets the puzzle right the first time, but often he has to try arrangement after arrangement of the pieces until he finds the way they go together to make the finished puzzle. Coaching is just the same. Often you ask just the right questions and use exactly the right techniques. But even as an experienced coach sometimes you don’t get it right. When that happens you need to try something else. And if that doesn’t work, you try something else again. Successful coaching requires you to be willing to change direction and keep changing until you find something that works.

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.

Dorine G Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

Successful coaching is getting through your clients’ thick head that they can’t get a thousand percent boost in their business or life until they see themselves as the lion tamer of getting the results they need from coaching. This means they need to be trained to whip you into shape and get you to perform at the highest level you possibly can so they get the most they possibly can out of coaching with you.

You have to turn the tables on the way you think of coaching relationships. Coaching isn’t a one way street where you get your client to take on assignments each week and they see you as the person they should rely on to get them what they want. Setting up your coaching connections this way is a huge mistake on your part because your client won’t be fully engaged in coaching.

How to setup a successful coaching bond?

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It’s turning the gun on yourself and keeping your clients fully engaged and aware of their responsibility in the coaching relationship. Off the bat, start by teaching your clients what they should expect from coaching and tell them if you as their coach don’t do these things that their responsibility is to call you down on the carpet for not doing what you’re expected to do.

Now you have skin in the game and if you’re being accountable and delivering successfully on your half of the coaching relationship, you’ll be creating the space where your client is equally held responsible for following through on their promises to you. You can then hold them accountable for not putting you in check when you’re out of integrity as their coach.

5 coaching expectations your client needs to have for you

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Here are 5 essential things you need to make you’re client aware of from the start to have a successful coaching relationship:

1. You should never be late to a coaching call. There’s no excuse and if you are ever late, you must own it and make a promise how you’ll handle being on time in the future.
2. You should be organized and keep clear notes on what happens in the coaching session and what commitments they make. You need to always be at least one step ahead of your clients at all times.
3. You go beyond what you hear your client say and see them do by digging deeper into the issues to find the exact cause and add real value to their situation so the client is successful each week.
4. You have a 100% focus on them in every coaching session and the client feels you only care about what’s best for them.
5. You spend time asking really great questions instead of thinking you know what your client wants and shot gunning them with misdirected information. That’s not coaching.

By giving your coaching clients these successful coaching tips and how they should hold your feet to the fire for their achievements, you will solve the problem of your clients not being fully connected with you and engaged in their own success. The beauty of setting up your coaching relationships in this way is that your clients will keep you performing at the highest level possible at all times.

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.

Donald R. Hunter, MBA, Certified Financial Planner
JTS Certified Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

Inevitably, some of your clients will be successful coaching clients and some of them won’t have as much success.  Do some clients try harder than others, are more motivated, or are just plain smarter?  These factors don’t predict whether someone will become a successful coaching story; one that will give you great testimonials and send you referrals.   The best coaching tips are not about teaching you how to motivate your clients to work harder or teach them new strategies.  While these are important, they don’t address the inner game.  These coaching tips will give you understanding to unlock the mystery of the subconscious brain.

For Successful Coaching Address Emotions and Behaviors that Have Become Habitual

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Coaching Tips for Successful Coaching #1:  We are addicts to our own emotions and behaviors.  No matter how painful our life is, our built-in regulatory systems do their best to keep us on track.  This happens when we try to loose weight and eat less.  Our bodies respond by becoming more efficient and burn fewer calories.  And it doesn’t mean we’re comfortable.  Even people who are in abusive relationships often can’t see a way out.

Help Your Coaching Client See More than They Are Trained to See With This Coaching Tip

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Coaching Tips for Successful Coaching #2:  We see what we were trained to see, and believe what we were trained to believe.  Newborn infants can’t see more than 8-12 inches away from their own face.  They only see far enough to imprint the face of their caregiver into their memory.   Have you ever seen a fly trying to get out of a window that is closed?  Again and again they try, harder and harder, until they eventually die.  They don’t even see that a door is open a few feet away.  How many times have you tried to get your clients to see something, and they just don’t get it?

Successful Coaching Comes from Shifting Your Client’s Belief Systems

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Coaching Tips for Successful Coaching #3:  In order to really transform someone’s life, you have to help that person shift the belief systems that are not serving them.  Limiting beliefs.  Just like trying to install new programs on a computer with a faulty hard drive doesn’t work, having people try new strategies when their underlying beliefs don’t support their actions won’t give them lasting results.

These coaching tips will not only help you get better results with your clients, but also help enroll more successful coaching clients.  When clients understand what they are up against, they are more likely to make the commitment that is necessary to really create the life they want.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

Successful coaching depends on results, and results depend on taking action. So what do you do with those clients who simply can’t or won’t get into action? Are there any coaching tips to help chronic procrastinators? In order to get clients to accomplish what they really want, you’ll need to help them take the action they wouldn’t do without your coaching. Helping your clients achieve goals that were merely dreams, is really what successful coaching is all about. Here are the top three coaching tips to help people get out of their own way.

The Top Three Coaching Tips for Successful Coaching

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Coaching Tip #1: The first of these coaching tips is to help your clients examine their current motivation. Find out what pleasure they associate to taking the action, and what pain they associate with taking the action. Another aspect of this successful coaching tool is to have your clients identify what pleasure they associate with NOT taking the action and, equally so, what pain they associate with NOT taking the action.

Successful Coaching Requires Identification of Clients’ Motivations

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Tip #2: The second of these coaching tips is to have your clients adjust their motivation. Find out what pleasure they need to associate with increasing their motivation. Don’t forget the other side of the coin. Have your clients determine what pain they need to associate with NOT being motivated. Successful coaching for procrastination requires having your client clear about what really is driving them. Which is usually to avoid pain and gain pleasure.

Sometimes the Best Coaching Tip Is to Focus on Clients’ Desires

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Tip #3: The lynch pin of these coaching tips is to have your clients decrease their desire for activities that conflict directly with the actions they need to take. A very successful coaching technique is to have your clients think of their level of desire for taking an action on a scale for -10 to +10, the latter being the level of desire that they must take action immediately. A 0 is no desire to take action, and -10 is the feeling that they would literally die if they took action.

This coaching tip requires your clients to lower their desire by asking questions such as what could they notice or believe that would cause them to decrease their level of desire at least one point? What would they need to imagine or do? What would they have to stop doing or thinking about? Once they approach -10, they won’t have a desire to participate in the conflicting activity. This is “The End” of a successful coaching session.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching

There are powerful coaching tips you can learn from top coaches who have successful coaching practices. One of the biggest obstacles to starting a successful coaching practice is learning where to invest your time. Most coaching tips are exciting to new coaches, because they usually are about helping your clients. The coaching tips in this article may not be exciting, but they will save you a lot of frustration if you want to have a successful coaching career.

Time Management Coaching Tips: Make A List Of All Your Time Commitments

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One of the first coaching tips you need is to make a list of all your time commitments. Most people who think about being coaches never get started coaching. They don’t get started coaching because they believe they don’t have enough time. You cannot have a successful coaching practice if you believe you don’t have time for one. You will learn you do have enough time when you make a list of all of your time commitments. I’ve never had a client with less than 10 hours a week of free time. That is enough time to get started on any business.

Time Management Coaching Tips: Plan Your Life To Make A Successful Coaching Practice

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One of the best coaching tips I was ever given is that we all have the same amount of time. Time management is about time choices. Schedule your time around the priorities in your life. If you start making the time for the most valuable things in your life then you will have time for them. Likewise, if you make a few hours in your life to build a successful coaching practice then it will be possible. If you don’t make the time, however, other things will get in the way.

When you make time in your life to have a successful coaching career, you take away one excuse for why you can’t have one. Eliminating this one excuse creates the space for you to make your coaching practice happen. It also allows you to feel good about keeping your life in balance while you grow your business. This also gives you the time to take advantage of the many other coaching tips around you, until you stop seeing time as a hindrance but, rather, as a series of open doors.

Kris Thompson
JTS Advisors Strategy Coach

Technorati Tags: Coaching Tips, Successful Coaching