It sounds like a silly question when you ask it out loud, but it’s a question that has lurked in conversations I’ve had with potential new coaches over the last 10 years. People want to become life coaches but feel that since their lives aren’t perfect, they probably shouldn’t consider it. Or they feel like maybe someday they’ll become a coach, after they do a lot of work to get their lives in perfect order. Some new and even established coaches are held back due to lack of self-confidence or self-esteem because they are overtaken by their own perceived imperfections.

Early in my coaching career, I thought, “Wow. I want my clients to have balance, success, abundant life, and more, and I want to have integrity myself in these areas.” It was intimidating. I was tempted to feel that striving for perfection was necessary as a coach. However, at that time I called myself a recovering perfectionist, and I was so aware of the active gift of grace in my life. Making “perfection” the goal did not line up with my faith and what I saw in scripture. But I wanted to walk my talk as a coach.

For me, I had to make peace terms with my coaching terms. I had to think through what integrity, balance, abundant life and success truly meant to me and reconcile that through prayer and scripture, and with my faith and understanding of grace. This helped me to develop my own personal understanding and practice of what it means to me to walk my talk as a coach.

I’ve developed an ecourse out of this experience, to help anyone else who wants to work through this process. It’s free and I invite you to sign up for it here.

As the author of The Complete Guide to Christian Coach Training the most asked question I hear

TAKE ACTION

I encourage all coaches to research and become aware of credentials available through the International Coach Federation. Pray through decisions about credentials. Look at your credentialing opportunities in light of the unique vision to which God has called you.

• Research the International Coach Federation (ICF) credentials at www.coachfederation.org.
• Check out the professional development opportunities at Christian Coaches Network International (CCNI) at www.christiancoaches.com.
• Read my book – The Complete Guide to Christian Coach Training – 2016 edition – which simplifies your efforts, shortens your research, and profiles 13 top Christian coach training programs – many of which offer training that leads to ICF credentials. Get help right now, right here.
• Hear me speak on Empowering Impact with Coach Training, Credentials and Professional Development at the Clarity Telesummit next week, February 24 and 26. Dr. Betsy Lavin has invited me to join seven other speakers to offer Christian coaches resources for gaining focus and clarity as you develop your coaching business. It’s free – sign up here.

“What did that represent?”

Sounded like a brilliant question to me and I didn’t know exactly why.

After the demonstration, I asked this master coach about this one powerful question. “Why did you ask that question?” And he told me that his mentor coach had challenged him on avoiding “why” questions.

Oh wow! Big shift in my thinking, as the value of this suddenly clicked for me.

“Why” implies judgement. The alternatives can elicit answers free of judgement.

Right then, I made a commitment to eliminating “why” questions from my conversations – both professionally and personally. For example, as a parent I can personally attest to the value of asking a teenager an alternative to “why did you do that?” There is a much better chance of getting a real answer that opens up a helpful conversation with “what was your thinking behind that?”

As coaches we engage in conversations that that bring awareness and growth and are free of judgement. Stepping away from the “why” questions and asking alternatives inspires conversations that are foundational to powerful coaching.

I’m challenging you to avoid why questions and choose alternatives. Will you accept the challenge? Let me know how it goes!

Through this, I’ve been repeatedly reminded of something I learned my freshman year of college. As part of college orientation we were assigned Lloyd Ahlem’s book, Living with Stress. There, I was first introduced to the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory and learned that all change – even positive, wanted change – can produce stress. This was a significant lesson for me, so much so that I have kept the book on my shelf ever since.

Now, after years of coaching people through positive change in their lives, I see clients pursuing and achieving their coaching goals and notice the stress that can appear. Even positive change – marriage, retirement or a new job – can contribute to stress. Recently, this was true of a client of mine who was thrilled to be moving with her family into a lovely new home and yet couldn’t identify why she found it difficult to make progress with other coaching goals.

Sometimes clients will say “I’m stuck, I’m in a funk, I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do next. I’m lacking, I’m deficient. I feel guilty.” And sometimes it is just because of all the change they are experiencing. Helping clients see when there is a lot of change going on gives them the opportunity to respond intentionally, accordingly.

Be mindful of the changes – both positive and negative – that your clients are experiencing. Share your observations when you sense it may be helpful. Ask questions such as:

How have these changes impacted you?

What are the implications of these changes on your feelings right now?

If you managed the impact of these changes as you would like, what would that look like for you?

These days, I’m asking myself these questions and finding them helpful!

I’ll be sharing a couple of my intake forms in this post, but first let me recommend samples at the following:

• The appendix of Christian Coaching: Helping Others Turn Potential Into Reality by Gary R. Collins, PH.D.
• The Coaches Toolkit in Co-Active Coaching by Kimsey-House et al.
• For members of the International Coach Federation, find sample coaching agreements in the member benefit area at the website.

I begin orienting my clients with an email including “Welcome to Coaching” in the subject line. The email has a customized written coaching agreement attached and includes a link to a webpage with instructions and intake forms. My clients complete and return the forms to me via email before our first scheduled session.

Here are samples of intake forms I use with my clients:

Session Prep Form: I include a session prep form with my intake forms and in my initial session I explain the value of completing this form 24 hours prior to each scheduled coaching session. I provide this for my clients as a Word document so they can fill it in and return it to me. Click here to see what mine looks like.

Coaching Forward: Three Basic Keys: To underscore the value of the prep form and to further help my client best understand how to maximize our time together, I include an instructional form I called “Coaching Forward: Three Basic Keys.” Click here to see what mine looks like.

My Friday Reports documented my business projects, challenges and accomplishments for the week. Every week I’d submit my report to my mentor coach for accountability. The reports helped keep me focused and highlighted opportunities to celebrate. They became a tool (from coach training, recall the term “structure”) that ensured my moving forward.

This practice illustrates the value of mentor coaching – of coaching in general really. In theory I could’ve written reports and “submitted” them to myself, but I wasn’t likely to do that. The structure established by the coaching relationship fueled the success of my Friday Reports and contributed to propelling me forward.

I’ve passed this tool along to many of my mentor coaching clients and here are a couple of creative ways they have managed their reports:

• One client opens the report document on her computer at the beginning of the week and adds to it throughout the week. On the day she submits her report it is already completed and ready for her to email to me.
• Another client works a four day week. On the first day of her week, she writes the report as she wants to see it completed on the fourth day. (And isn’t this an awesome use of vision-casting and “closing the gap” to achieve that vision!) She refers to the completed report throughout the week and uses it to guide her.
• Friday reports were my thing. I have clients who do Monday reports, Thursday reports, etc. It’s all about what works best for the client, right?

What would your best version of “Friday Reports” look like? How could your version of “Friday Reports” propel you forward?

What is mentor coaching?

Traditionally, a coach hires a mentor coach to be coached in one or all of the following focus areas:

• Personal coaching for the mentee
• Starting and building a coaching business or ministry
• Developing coaching skills further beyond coach training

However, when a coach is applying for credentials with the International Coach Federation (ICF), the required mentor coaching is to be focused on developing coaching skills.  For more on the ICF mentor coaching qualifications, click here.

Why would a coach hire a coach?

On the same day we had this discussion in the Q & A, I came across an excellent post called “Why Coaches Need Coaching.”  It says the answer to “do coaches need coaching to be great?” is a resounding “yes.” Mentor coaching is all about learning and progressing as a coach.

Andrea Sharb, author of the post, says that when new coaches experience coaching they “learn what it is like to partner with a coach. They learn about opening up to what they often describe initially as vulnerability. They experience the power of coming up with their own solutions without someone telling them what to do. Through this practice they learn to be coaches…”

To learn more about Ms. Sharb’s personal journey as a new coach being coached read the article here.

Linda Hedberg is a mentor coach in the areas of personal coaching, coaching business startup and coaching skills development for prospective and new Christian coaches. She is a member of the ICF Mentor Coach Registry. She is the author of The Complete Guide to Christian Coach Training – 2014. Contact Linda today if you are interested in working with her as your coach.

Sample life satisfaction worksheet instructions:  “This worksheet provides an opportunity to consider your level of satisfaction in various areas of your life. Rate each of the following areas on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 means you are completely dissatisfied – this is an area in which you desire drastic change. 10 means you are completely satisfied – you are entirely pleased and can’t imagine a change that would truly add to your satisfaction. Of course satisfaction changes from day to day. However, use this worksheet to indicate your general sense of where you are in each of these areas right now.  Skip anything that doesn’t apply to you. Add anything that makes sense to you.”

 

Sample life satisfaction areas: 

 

Immediate Family Relationships	Career/Employment
Extended Family Relationships	Financial
Recreation/Relaxation/Fun	Relationships with Friends
Pace of Lifestyle	Spirituality
Physical Environment (living space)	Church/Ministry/Religious Life
Physical Health	Community/Civic Involvement
Mental/Emotional Health	Other
Marriage/Romantic Relationship

 

Sample life satisfaction tool:  “Graph of Life” on page 355 of Gary R. Collins book Christian Coaching: Helping Others Turn Potential into Reality, Second Edition (NavPress, 2009).

The Life Satisfaction Tool is useful in a variety of situations:

If you are considering becoming a coach: Assess satisfaction in your own life and identify an area or areas in which you want to improve satisfaction. Then learn what it’s like to be coached by working with a coach on making the improvements you desire. It’s advisable to work with a coach and learn what coaching is from personal experience before you decide to make a career change or invest money on coach training.

If you are now in coach training: Use this tool to help surface issues in your own life that you can bring to your practice coaching labs and class coaching demos for those times you are assigned the role of coaching client.

If you are already coaching clients: Use this tool to help new clients consider what areas of their lives they want to address in coaching.

If you are already a coach and speaking to a group on a life-satisfaction-related topic: Include it as an activity in a presentation when you speak to a group. Have participants take the life satisfaction assessment, choose the area in which they want to make the most change and ultimately identify the next best step that will get them closer to satisfaction in that area. Walk the group through the process and/or work with an individual volunteer as a coaching demonstration for the group.

Here is a question that was recently asked by a mentor coaching client of mine who is currently in coach training and planning to establish a coaching ministry.  She asked via email:

Since the last coaching session, I’ve been reflecting on coaching more. From the people I’ve coached so far, I almost feel like there’s a certain “type” of person that coaching works for and others that it doesn’t work for. For example, the type that seems to respond well to coaching are people who see they really want to change a particular situation rather than people who want to try coaching just to have a coach. I’ve noticed a lot less motivation with the latter. Also, some who have mentors or others that they process with don’t seem to open up to coaching as much. Is this true based on your experience?

And my answer: 

Yes, this is true. When I first started in coaching, I saw experienced coaches’ webpages saying things like: “if you are ready for a change and you know you can benefit by the support of an experienced coach who is dedicated to seeing you thru to success…contact me to arrange coaching…” Often experienced coaches would emphasize the need for a potential to be ready and to intend to invest time/resources into change. I didn’t fully get it early on, but now based on experience I know that it reflects what you are asking about. 

In theory, coaching can be useful to any healthy person who has goals and aspirations… as long as that person wants to change or wants to reach out for something new. However, when people are not in touch with their desire to change or do something new and when they don’t intend to take action, they are not ready to be coached. So it’s not really that the coaching doesn’t work or even that the coach is being ineffective (although of course that’s a possibility), but more that the person isn’t in a season of life where they are interested and willing to do what it takes to engage in change. 

As a coach, you can act to inspire change but of course the client has to choose to change.

As a new coach, your enthusiasm might drive you to take on clients who are not coachable.  Hopefully in your coach training you learned the difference between a coaching client and a counseling client and you avoid engaging the latter.  But sometimes even basically healthy people are not ready for change and they will not take the time or do the work required to make the change.  And they are not interested in being inspired to change. 

As a new coach, perhaps you have offered your services to a friend or a friend-of-a-friend and at some level they feel they are doing you a favor by helping you “learn” coaching.  Maybe someone who wants to support your business start-up is paying for your client to be coached – and the client is enjoying your “free” services but hasn’t owned their commitment to change.  Or perhaps your client is an employee of yours or on your ministry team and since you are their leader they felt they should say “yes” when you recruited them for coaching – and that’s their sole motivation for engaging in coaching with you.  If you suspect you are coaching in scenarios like this and you are not seeing change in your client, take the situation to your mentor coach and determine how to graciously proceed. 

If your client is not intending to invest in change they are not ready for your coaching services.