Coaching success stories provide wonderful examples of what works in coaching. Recently a client of mine had a major breakthrough because of the technique I used with him at the very end of his coaching session. You’ve probably heard the old aphorism “You can bring a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.” Here is an example of success in getting the “horse” to drink the water.

Happy Endings Can Translate to Coaching Success Stories

Feeling down or unhappy can be a great motivator in coaching, but it isn’t a very empowered state for your client to be in. Clients come with all sorts of stories about what’s happened, what isn’t working, what they want to change—obviously that’s why they are in coaching. But once you have worked with them to find a strategy and an action plan for change, you want them to leave the session feeling powerful enough to follow through and become a coaching success story.

Creating The Happy Ending

In order to empower your clients to take action and to become one of your coaching success stories, you may need to help them to change their state from a negative one to a positive one. You can do this by asking the right questions; by having them follow your directions on breathing, standing, etc. to change their physiology; or by my favorite, taking them through an emotional flood of visualized and felt positive experiences, one of the techniques taught in the Master Coach University.

Bringing The Horse to Water

Remember the client I mentioned earlier? Well, I’ve taken him through the emotional flood process before and he’s enjoyed it. But this time turned out to be a revelation for him. He announced with wonder that instead of having to just wait until he was feeling better in a few hours or a few days, he now knew he could make the change from feeling bad to feeling good quickly and voluntarily. He was finally ready to drink the water!

So often, coaching success stories come from outside the actual sessions we do. This is one of my favorites because it happened right there on the call and I had the privilege of sharing the experience.

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Dorine G. Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach