Coaching tips are ineffective without one key ingredient.  Effective coaching relies on getting your clients emotionally engaged.  No matter how sharp you are or how many great coaching tips you know; you won’t have influence on your clients.  It will be a nice conversation, instead of an effective coaching session.  Using a wrestling metaphor, if you are just having a conversation with people it’s as if you are in kicking range.  The client is so far away you don’t have much influence over them.  In fact, the person is so separate from you and the conversation they won’t even hear you.  As a metaphor, you have to be willing to take your clients down on the wrestling mat where they are emotionally and intimately engaged.  You are affecting them at their deepest level.   Here are three coaching tips that will take you to quick grappling range.

Effective Coaching Comes From Connecting With Your Clients

Coaching Tips #1:  Emotionally connect.  One effective coaching strategy is for you to go there first as the leader.  People will tend to mirror the emotions of people who they are around.  If you are in your head, how do you expect your clients to go there?  Go there first, prove it’s safe, and support them.

Be Honest with Your Clients to be Effective Coaching Them

Coaching Tips #2:  Confront honestly.  The key to effective coaching depends on being radically honest.  Most people aren’t going to confront their limitations, and so they aren’t honest with others.  Take a stand for your clients and dare to be honest enough to find out what their real limitations are.  Once you are clear, you can find the most effective coaching strategy much more easily.

Use Story Telling for Effective Coaching

Coaching Tips #3:  Tell Stories.  When people hear a story, they stop listening to you and start following you.  They stop being critical and they relax.  It’s just a story.  The subconscious mind takes over, and they stop being so aware of themselves.   It’s an effective coaching strategy because your clients will connect with the emotion of the story, in a way we do when we see a movie.

So if you want to make sure you have an effective coaching session, engage your client.  Although these coaching tips may cause you to step out of your own comfort zone, remind yourself that your clients’ goals are on the line.  Commit to playing the bigger game.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach