Coaching for Success: Don’t Let Your Client Dither

Most people struggle with decision making at least occasionally.  But for many, actually committing to a choice — speaking up or keeping quiet, the office in the newer building or the one with more square footage, signing up for coaching or not — is extremely challenging, threatening, or anxiety provoking.  For them, the wasted time and energy of indecision probably makes career and business success elusive, and significance and achievement seemingly unattainable.  Those people may come to you for help.

Coaching for Success Starts With the Enrollment Process

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Right from the beginning of a complimentary coaching session, you are coaching for success.  From the coaching business perspective, the ideal outcome of the session is a new client for your coaching program.  From the coaching perspective, however, the best outcome is a decision, either yes or no.  Your job is to coach your prospective client through whatever fears or doubts are getting in the way of a clear decision, so he feels powerful in his decision and leaves the session feeling that he has made the right choice.  Whether it’s yes or no isn’t the point, but committing to one or the other is a powerful coaching result, and the first step to a new level of success.

Some Personalities are More Prone to Dithering

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Coaching for success requires you to “read” your clients, so you can coach the decision making process from the right perspective.

A very powerful, goal oriented person who ranks high on the dominance characteristic on his behavioral assessment, is probably not going to come to you for help with decision making.  He’s already making decisions quickly.   In fact, he may be making them too quickly, without thinking about potential consequences.  For him, your coaching would be to slow down, think it through, and really commit to follow through.

On the other hand, your prospective client could be high on the compliance characteristic, largely driven by fear of the consequences of making a wrong decision.  The attitude of “nothing ventured, nothing gained” is inexplicable to him.   He is going to have trouble deciding to commit.   For him, coaching for success means helping him to see the consequences of his dithering and indecision, and to understand what it is he’s losing with his current decision-making behavior.

What Does it All Mean?

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You’re probably familiar with the line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “To be or not to be, that is the question.”  It’s a great reference for coaching because there is no middle ground, no room for indecision.  Hamlet knows he is at a point where he must choose one thing or the other.  His will be a powerful decision.  Help your client to be decisive and to commit to a clear choice, and watch his life and business expand with newfound confidence.

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.

Dorine Kramer

JTS Strategy and Accountability Coach