Listen to the full episode here.
[00:00:43] Hi, Rhonda Britten. Welcome to Master Coach Mindset™, a podcast devoted to what I call the "Art of Coaching," if you embody what I'm talking about regarding the "Art of Coaching." This Season, we're talking about the Eight Coaching Skills that are the essence, the essential foundation of the "Art of Coaching." When you live your life, i.e., and your coaching practice through the "Art of Coaching," you will have more confidence, you will have more impact, you will have more influence, you will feel on fire as a Coach, and that is what I want for you. I want you to walk into every Session trusting yourself. You and I both know that having all these questions memorized isn't it, and being able to work with somebody for "this long" isn't it, right? You want to be able to know that you have the chops to work with somebody for four years, six years, three years. You want to know that you can take that person through a divorce, to losing weight, tripling their income, to dealing with their family members.
[00:01:47] I don't care why they come to you. Again, if you're only working in a niche, which is fine I'm all about niching, but if you can't talk beyond that niche, then you're teaching a class, and you're not coaching. I want you to Coach. I want you to be a Master Coach. This applies to you whether you're a professional Coach, a therapist, a consultant, a parent, a human resource director. I believe that coaching skills are safe communication. They change the world. I am an advocate for every single human being on the planet to learn coaching skills. To learn the skills that I'm sharing with you on this podcast so that you can feel comfortable and confident having the Fearless Conversations™ you need to take care of your own needs, to get where you want to go, to make your dreams happen.
[00:02:37] Everything and anything comes down to communication. This podcast is devoted to that, and I want to share everything that I've learned with you about that. The first Season was about Master Coach Manifesto, and I shared the 13 principles, 13 lines of what I call the Master Coach Manifesto. If you haven't listened to that Season, please do because it really is the ground in which we build everything off. This Episode the second part for a coaching skill called: "Speak inclusively." We want to speak inclusively.
[00:03:12] What the heck does speak inclusively mean? We already talked about it in the last Episode, and now this is the second part of it to go a little deeper so we can integrate even further. Inclusive is an interesting concept because again, logically, we all kind of think we know what it means. It means "you and I are together, and we're a team, and we do everything together, and we can be inclusive, and I'll include you, and you include me," right? In order to do that effectively and masterfully, you actually have to be willing to be wrong as the Coach, you have to be willing to ask a question that doesn't work, you actually have to have ... I don't want to say humility.
[00:03:51] I hesitate to use that word because I think in our culture, humility is really a false sense of humility like, "I am being humble." See, I'm not bragging about myself. The very act of saying, "I'm humble," you're bragging about yourself. If you say, "I'm humble," you just bragged, right? Real humility isn't something to be talked about. It's something to demonstrate. It's not to be talked about. It's to be demonstrated. True humility shows up in a Client Session with a willingness to ask the questions that need to be asked. Be willing to be like, "I don't know what I'm doing as a Coach. You know, I'm not sure what to ask right now. What do you think you need to ask yourself?" Be willing to be lost in a Session, be willing to bring up an idea that doesn't work for the Client, be willing to take that pause and be thinking about what's the next question, i.e., "How do I want to formulate that?" It's about including yourself as the Coach, as well as the Client. You're including yourself as well. It's not just that you are at service to the Client and don't include yourself, because when you just do that, then you're really not role-modeling. You're not role-modeling what inclusivity looks like.
[00:05:06] You're just giving it, i.e. "as a gift" to somebody else, but it doesn't work that way. It's two people or more people. You have to include yourself, and that means you do take that pause. That means you do say, "I'm not sure how to word this." You do include your own needs, wants, et cetera. It's also just FYI, a reason why we're attentive to our schedule. When I first started coaching, I just wanted Clients. I didn't have boundaries on my Sessions I just coached to coach. If you wanted to meet on Friday at 6:00, I'd be there. If you wanted to coach Saturday at 7:30 in the morning, you bet I'm there. Tuesday at 4:00, yep! Uh-huh, I'm there! In the beginning, I allowed my Clients to determine my schedule, but as I became more confident as a Coach, it became clear to me that I wasn't taking care of myself.
[00:05:57] I wasn't including myself in the process. Then, I started going, "Don't want to work weekends. That doesn't serve me. I really want my weekends to be about this, this, and this. Huh, working evenings doesn't really support me because of this, this, this, and this." Are you including yourself in the "Speak Inclusively?" Are you even including yourself in the process? Real humility isn't about, "I'm being humble." No, because right then you're not being humble. You can't say "you're humble," and oh, by the way, you can't say you're wise. There's another Coach in the industry that says, "I want to share my wisdom."
[00:06:30] Literally, I want to throw up. You can't say you have wisdom and you can't say that you're humble. Other people can say, "Oh, that Sally is humble. Oh, that Gerard is wise", but we can't label ourselves that. That is totally based in fear and trying to create a culture around us, which is based on, for lack of a better word, ego. "Speak Inclusively" is a true humility about knowing that you're there to guide, support, coach the Client and that you are not the perfect Coach. You are not the perfect guide.
[00:07:09] You are just the best guide you can be. You're just the best Coach you can be in any one moment. Some days, not very good and other days they're awesome. I just want to bring that up because as I was just about to tape this Episode of Master Coach Mindset, I really just started thinking at a deeper level what inclusivity means. It means you take care of you and the Client. You help the Client, support the Client, coach the Client to take care of themselves, and you come together in that vein. As a Coach, if I need a glass of water, I say, "I'm going to go get a glass of water. Excuse me for a minute. I'm going to grab a glass of water."
[00:07:45] This happened to me recently. I'm on the phone with a Client, and I see a rat in my house. I had been on the search for this rat for two days. A rat got into my house. Thank you, Jezebel. I knew the rat was in the house, and I tried to find the rat, but could not find the rat. Saw the rat, but couldn't find it. Now, I'm on day two of being on "rat alert," and I'm on the phone with a coaching Client. I'm on the phone on a Session, and I go holding my phone to get a glass of water. As I walk through my kitchen there's the rat, and I'm like, "Waa!" Of course, what was my natural reaction? "Waa!"
[00:08:34] On the phone with my Client I went, "Waa!" and she was like, "Is everything okay?" Instead of pretending it's okay I said, "You know what? I actually have a little bit of a problem over here, and could I take about 5 to 10 minutes and call you back? Do you have the time? Do you have the availability?" Most Coaches wouldn't do this because they're like, "Oh my God. How can I do that?" But if I don't do that, where's my mind going to be? On the rat. "Is the rat moving? Is the rat eating? Is it going to run away again? How am I going to catch him?" I would be distracted by the rat.
[00:09:13] If I'm distracted I am not being inclusive, and I'm not coaching. I must include myself, and this lovely rat is there. I say to myself, "I think that I need to take 10 minutes to get this rat." It's what I did, so she goes, "Yes, of course." She had the time, which is great, and she said, "Yes." I said, "Great. I'll call you back in about 10 minutes", so I call her back, and she's like, "Is everything okay?", and I was like, "Well, let me tell you," and I told her a short version of the rat story.
[00:09:44] She's like, "Oh my God. Oh my God." Now, do I have to tell the rat story? No, but she heard me scream, so I explained it briefly. Didn't make it dramatic, and make it all about me, and my rat, my two days of agony, going to sleep every night trying to sleep knowing there's a rat in my house and, "Is it going to come into my bedroom?" even though I put a towel in front of the door. That towel, as the rat person who came to try to find it with me who was unsuccessful, said, "Ha-ha. That towel doesn't matter because the rat will just crawl under it." I'm like, "Ha-ha-ha. Oh, no." For two days, I'm like, "Where's the rat?" That is an example, a simple example of inclusivity, right? I'm including myself.
[00:10:25] It's not just about including the Client it's about including yourself. If you don't include yourself, then you are going to get distracted. You are going to be thinking, and therefore not present. If I'm thinking, I'm not present. If I'm thinking, I'm not present. If I'm thinking, I'm not present. You're probably not trusting yourself, i.e., probably not present with the Client. I understand there's going to be moments when you have to ponder how to say something. We talked about that in the last Episode. If you consistently are thinking about what question to ask, we got some training to do. We've got some things to do.
[00:11:05] Inclusively asking them, "What do they think? What do they want to do?" Another way to think of this is if you say, "Do you want to do that? Yes or no? Is that something that's calling to you? Yes or no?" You ask a closed-ended question with a yes or no. Let's say they answer it really quick, "Yes, I want to do that." If my Client didn't give me other indications besides that yes, I would actually have them include the rest of their body, and say, "Let's slow down a bit. Let's take a nice, deep breath." Maybe I'd put them through a visioning.
[00:11:46] Maybe I'd ask them to feel their feet on the ground. I'd get them into their body, and then I might say, "So, let's talk about what that yes would look like. Let's talk about what that yes would mean." Actually allow them the space to go back and say, "No," or, "What part of yes isn't okay with you? What part of yes is exciting? What part of yes serves you?"
[00:12:10] If my Client answers everything hastily, I want to make sure that their whole being is saying yes and not just saying the right answer. We all want the right answer, right? We have that right answer. Remember what I shared with you before is a lot of times your Client unconsciously is trying to please you or trying to please their mother, their father, their cousin, their sister, their partner. They're not even there, but they're unconsciously trying to say the right thing, to do the right thing, so they can be the right person, so they can be loved, so they can be accepted, and you don't care about the right thing. You want the right thing for them. It might not be right for anybody else, and their partner may hate it. I actually was talking to one of my Coaches recently, one of my first Certified Fearless Living Coaches™, and I was asking her about how she became a Coach. She was telling me the story about how she knew she wanted to be a Coach, and it was calling to her, then found Fearless Living®, and so she's telling me the story.
[00:13:10] She starts talking to me about how her husband was not onboard. "Oh, that's a call. That's weird. No. It's just a rip-off." He's going on and on about how she should not do this coaching program, the Life Coach Certification Program. She graduated, so she clearly did it. We talked about the processes she went through. Then I asked her, "So, how does he feel about the coaching program now, now that you're graduated, and you went through the entire program?" She says, "Oh my God, he loves it. He thinks it's the best investment I ever made. He's so glad, and he'd pay triple for it." That Client included herself.
[00:13:56] She didn't get swayed by her husband. She included herself in the process. It's just so critical, and we've got to do that for our Clients. When that Client answers hastily yes or no, you want to make sure that Client is including their whole being as well as talking about the pitfalls, the drawbacks, the potential barriers, whatever words your Client uses. That's another form of inclusivity. You're going to use the same words your Client uses. If your Client says diet, you say diet.
[00:14:25] If your Client says lose weight, you say lose weight. If they say soul mate, you say soul mate. When a Client says diet and you say lose weight or they say, "I want to get healthy" and you say, "How much weight do you want to lose?" you are not listening, and you are not inclusive. You are just making up your own stuff over here. That is not about your Client. That's all what you think healthy living is, so you're using your own definitions. You're over here just doing whatever you think you should be doing, and it's not for the Client.
[00:14:53] I ask them to slow down and include their whole body. That is part of being inclusive. The other thing is, I touched on it just a second ago I believe in the last Episode, is advice. If you are a consultant, they hire you for advice. If you're a Coach, they're not hiring you for advice. They're hiring you and asking you to help them become more of who they are meant to be whether they say that or not.
[00:15:20] Whether they say it or not, right? Whether they say it or not, that's really what they want. Your job is not to give advice because again, that's about you. It's not about them. Your job is to help them evoke within them, unleash in them, unfold within them the right answer for them. The answer that works for them, that, by the way, might change through the course of your coaching.
[00:15:42] They might come in with a single-mind like, "I want to triple my income", and then through the coaching, they start recognizing with your support: "Oh, triple my income means this, this, and this" or "Triple my income is really me trying to prove to my parents to get their love" or "Tripling my income really means that I blah, blah, blah", and they find a deeper answer, a deeper meaning, a deeper why. All of a sudden that tripling the income isn't what it's really about, is it? It's something else. That's the power of Life Coaching. People come to us with a "problem." They want a "solution."
[00:16:24] We support them to find that solution, but we're doing other deeper work all through the "Art of Coaching," all through that building, all through that seeing their innocence and speaking inclusively. That brings in a new dynamic for them, and they start seeing themselves differently, not just intellectually. I want to say that again. Whole bodily, right? You could ask your Client like, "What worked in the past? Did you ever come up to this? Did you ever have this problem before, and what did you do last time, and how long did it last, and what did you learn?" We're going to evoke things from them. We're going to evoke, "What would you tell your best friend?"
[00:17:04] The other thing for inclusive is you have to be attentive. As a Coach, I always ask myself before I get on with the Client, "What's my intention? What is my intention?" As I work with a Client, once they understand what intention really means and not just the cliché of intention but what real intention means, then I ask them, "What's your intention?" That way we can have a through line through our coaching. That might change as they evolve, as they awaken, as they wake up to something deeper and more profound within them. This is what's so cool. When you come in with a level of inclusivity, they are free to change. They are free to become different. They are free because they are accepted.
[00:17:54] We're going to start with seeing their innocence, which is about accepting and trust. Then when we speak inclusively, that helps them include their own being. They're not just worried about what work should do or how much money they need to bring in. They're including themselves in the process. We want to take their whole body and whole being with them. Are you going to share stories? Yes, but not because you want to or it's a great story.
[00:18:25] Only because it's moving through you and it's a great example. It's an opportunity to ask a question through telling your story. Does your story last an hour? No, it does not. No, it does not. The other thing about inclusivity is you want to follow where the Client is leading. I said a minute ago about using the same language. That's really critical. You want to speak the same language as your Clients. Like I said if they come to you and say, "I want to get healthier," you do not say, "Lose weight." You say, "What does healthy look like? Tell me what that means to you. What are the aspects of healthy living? When you think about healthy living, what's that going to get you? Who are you going to become? Who do you need to become? What do you think that means? What do you think the results are going to be? What are your expectations about healthy living? What are the pros of healthy living? What are the cons of healthy living? What're the benefits? What's the cost? What is healthy living about?" You're going to flush that out, so it is not just a mere healthy living. They have a full experience of what healthy living means and you because you're inclusive, use the language they bring. Not your own language.
[00:19:40] The minute you disconnect and if they say "healthy living" and you say, "diet," you're not listening. You've just disconnected from the Client, and they feel like, "Oh, should I be on a diet?" Now that makes them question, "Oh, are you saying I need to be on a diet?" or they're like, "I didn't say diet." Of course, if they want to please you, they will be like, "Oh, diet. Yeah, it's important too." They're going healthy living. They're going down the train. They're going the train track, healthy living, healthy living, and you bring in diet. They're like, "What?" You took them off the train. That is inappropriate questioning.
00:20:14 You can ask, "Well, is this about diet? Is this about exercise? What exactly does healthy living mean? Food you eat? The air you breathe?" Make sure you expand it to give them lots of different options. Does that make sense? Lots of different options. Let me go to the question. Again, I love your questions. Go to Master Coach Mindset and ask me your questions. I love questions.
[00:20:52] As you know, I answer a question from a Coach every single Episode. I love answering questions so ask me your questions. It makes me so happy and so pleased to do so. It allows the podcast to be better because we go places that maybe I wouldn't have naturally gone, so I love it. The other thing is if you like the questions and the answers, and if you want to embody what we're talking about today, "Speak Inclusively," make sure you go over to MasterCoachMindset.com and join the Insiders Club and download the Fearbuster Coaching™ Worksheet every week. I spent time on that baby and I love it. It's going to help you embody and integrate the things we're talking about each and every week. Go ahead and join the Master Coach Mindset Insiders Club.
00:21:35 QUESTION OF THE DAY:
"If I want to follow up on issues from a previous Session but don't want to interrupt or change the subject after a Client is in the flow, is there a good way to switch gears even if it's close to the end of the Session? Is it okay to leave it for the next Session?" It's a big question say it one more time. "If I want to follow up on an issue from a previous Session but don't want to interrupt or change the subject after a Client is in the flow, is there a good way to switch gears even if it's close to the end of the Session? Is it okay to leave it for the next Session?"
[00:22:17] If you're near the end of the Session you do not want to introduce a new topic. You do not want to introduce a new topic. You do not want to introduce a topic from before, because now, you're going off the rails of where you are, and now you're talking about this other thing. You want to have a contained Session, so it has a beginning, middle and end, that way the Client has a completion. If you throw something in at the end that is different than what you're talking about, that will discombobulate the Client. Unless if you're saying, "Oh and remember I still haven't received the homework from last week. Make sure you include it this week."
[00:23:00] That's different because you're just reminding them, "Oh, I haven't received your homework." If there's something you want to follow up from a previous Session, you want to do that as best you can at the top of the Session. The second thing is if there is a way to tie it together. Let's say that a Client says, "Well, I'm having problems with my partner", and you know previously that they have a difficult mother relationship. They said something about their mother. You could say, "What does this have anything to do or does it feel in a way similar to the relationship with your mother that you shared with me previously?" You can ask that question to tie them together, but you don't want to be talking about relationships and then switch to the mother thing.
[00:23:46] You want to tie the mother thing in with the topic at hand.Do they tie together? You can tie anything together. I train my Coaches at the Life Coach Certification Program™ for Fearless Living®. I actually train them to be able to talk about any topic with any tool, and how to integrate them together. We teach tools, we teach the "Art of Coaching." We Coach them through. We have mentors that really support and help them integrate because that's my bottom line: integration, alignment, and embodiment. I'm not going to just dump information on you and be like, "Good luck." No. We're going to make sure you embody it.
[00:24:23] Sometimes my Coaches, when they're in training are like, "But I don't know how to talk about it. They started talking about their mother, and the topic is expectations this week, and I don't know how to tie those in." You should be able to tie in any subject, with any concept, with any tool. If you haven't got the Fearbuster Coaching Toolkit that has how to open a Session and close a Session, go over to MasterCoachMindset.com and get that now. Some of the things that we're talking about right now are going to be answered in that freebie so make sure you go and download it.
[00:25:00] Do you want to introduce a new subject? No, you do not at the end. No. You want to wrap it up. I talk about that at the Fearbuster Coaching Toolkit, how to open and close a Session. Can you tie things from the previous Session to this Session? Absolutely. Do you want to take a right and go to a different topic when they're talking about their partner and now you want to talk about their weight loss? No. Can you tie those together? Yes. You have to tie it together. If you're not sure how to tie it together, join me at the Fearless Conversations™ Workshop because we will practice it there and you will know how to do that.
[00:25:37] I am so looking forward to meeting you in person and hugging you, a big Rhonda Britten hug, at Fearless Conversations Workshop. I'm so looking forward to seeing you right inside the Insiders Club to help you and support you in being even more embodied and connected to the Master Coach within. I know you got it and I can't wait to watch it blossom. Until our next Episode, remember, "Speak Inclusively." Next time, it's the next skill and I will share it with you now. The next skill, "Speak to Clarify." I bet I have some tips and techniques for you.
I'll see you next time. Be Fearless.
Listen to the full episode here.
[00:00:43] Hi, Rhonda Britten. Welcome to Master Coach Mindset™, a podcast devoted to what I call the "Art of Coaching," if you embody what I'm talking about regarding the "Art of Coaching." This Season, we're talking about the Eight Coaching Skills that are the essence, the essential foundation of the "Art of Coaching." When you live your life, i.e., and your coaching practice through the "Art of Coaching," you will have more confidence, you will have more impact, you will have more influence, you will feel on fire as a Coach, and that is what I want for you. I want you to walk into every Session trusting yourself. You and I both know that having all these questions memorized isn't it, and being able to work with somebody for "this long" isn't it, right? You want to be able to know that you have the chops to work with somebody for four years, six years, three years. You want to know that you can take that person through a divorce, to losing weight, tripling their income, to dealing with their family members.
[00:01:47] I don't care why they come to you. Again, if you're only working in a niche, which is fine I'm all about niching, but if you can't talk beyond that niche, then you're teaching a class, and you're not coaching. I want you to Coach. I want you to be a Master Coach. This applies to you whether you're a professional Coach, a therapist, a consultant, a parent, a human resource director. I believe that coaching skills are safe communication. They change the world. I am an advocate for every single human being on the planet to learn coaching skills. To learn the skills that I'm sharing with you on this podcast so that you can feel comfortable and confident having the Fearless Conversations™ you need to take care of your own needs, to get where you want to go, to make your dreams happen.
[00:02:37] Everything and anything comes down to communication. This podcast is devoted to that, and I want to share everything that I've learned with you about that. The first Season was about Master Coach Manifesto, and I shared the 13 principles, 13 lines of what I call the Master Coach Manifesto. If you haven't listened to that Season, please do because it really is the ground in which we build everything off. This Episode the second part for a coaching skill called: "Speak inclusively." We want to speak inclusively.
[00:03:12] What the heck does speak inclusively mean? We already talked about it in the last Episode, and now this is the second part of it to go a little deeper so we can integrate even further. Inclusive is an interesting concept because again, logically, we all kind of think we know what it means. It means "you and I are together, and we're a team, and we do everything together, and we can be inclusive, and I'll include you, and you include me," right? In order to do that effectively and masterfully, you actually have to be willing to be wrong as the Coach, you have to be willing to ask a question that doesn't work, you actually have to have ... I don't want to say humility.
[00:03:51] I hesitate to use that word because I think in our culture, humility is really a false sense of humility like, "I am being humble." See, I'm not bragging about myself. The very act of saying, "I'm humble," you're bragging about yourself. If you say, "I'm humble," you just bragged, right? Real humility isn't something to be talked about. It's something to demonstrate. It's not to be talked about. It's to be demonstrated. True humility shows up in a Client Session with a willingness to ask the questions that need to be asked. Be willing to be like, "I don't know what I'm doing as a Coach. You know, I'm not sure what to ask right now. What do you think you need to ask yourself?" Be willing to be lost in a Session, be willing to bring up an idea that doesn't work for the Client, be willing to take that pause and be thinking about what's the next question, i.e., "How do I want to formulate that?" It's about including yourself as the Coach, as well as the Client. You're including yourself as well. It's not just that you are at service to the Client and don't include yourself, because when you just do that, then you're really not role-modeling. You're not role-modeling what inclusivity looks like.
[00:05:06] You're just giving it, i.e. "as a gift" to somebody else, but it doesn't work that way. It's two people or more people. You have to include yourself, and that means you do take that pause. That means you do say, "I'm not sure how to word this." You do include your own needs, wants, et cetera. It's also just FYI, a reason why we're attentive to our schedule. When I first started coaching, I just wanted Clients. I didn't have boundaries on my Sessions I just coached to coach. If you wanted to meet on Friday at 6:00, I'd be there. If you wanted to coach Saturday at 7:30 in the morning, you bet I'm there. Tuesday at 4:00, yep! Uh-huh, I'm there! In the beginning, I allowed my Clients to determine my schedule, but as I became more confident as a Coach, it became clear to me that I wasn't taking care of myself.
[00:05:57] I wasn't including myself in the process. Then, I started going, "Don't want to work weekends. That doesn't serve me. I really want my weekends to be about this, this, and this. Huh, working evenings doesn't really support me because of this, this, this, and this." Are you including yourself in the "Speak Inclusively?" Are you even including yourself in the process? Real humility isn't about, "I'm being humble." No, because right then you're not being humble. You can't say "you're humble," and oh, by the way, you can't say you're wise. There's another Coach in the industry that says, "I want to share my wisdom."
[00:06:30] Literally, I want to throw up. You can't say you have wisdom and you can't say that you're humble. Other people can say, "Oh, that Sally is humble. Oh, that Gerard is wise", but we can't label ourselves that. That is totally based in fear and trying to create a culture around us, which is based on, for lack of a better word, ego. "Speak Inclusively" is a true humility about knowing that you're there to guide, support, coach the Client and that you are not the perfect Coach. You are not the perfect guide.
[00:07:09] You are just the best guide you can be. You're just the best Coach you can be in any one moment. Some days, not very good and other days they're awesome. I just want to bring that up because as I was just about to tape this Episode of Master Coach Mindset, I really just started thinking at a deeper level what inclusivity means. It means you take care of you and the Client. You help the Client, support the Client, coach the Client to take care of themselves, and you come together in that vein. As a Coach, if I need a glass of water, I say, "I'm going to go get a glass of water. Excuse me for a minute. I'm going to grab a glass of water."
[00:07:45] This happened to me recently. I'm on the phone with a Client, and I see a rat in my house. I had been on the search for this rat for two days. A rat got into my house. Thank you, Jezebel. I knew the rat was in the house, and I tried to find the rat, but could not find the rat. Saw the rat, but couldn't find it. Now, I'm on day two of being on "rat alert," and I'm on the phone with a coaching Client. I'm on the phone on a Session, and I go holding my phone to get a glass of water. As I walk through my kitchen there's the rat, and I'm like, "Waa!" Of course, what was my natural reaction? "Waa!"
[00:08:34] On the phone with my Client I went, "Waa!" and she was like, "Is everything okay?" Instead of pretending it's okay I said, "You know what? I actually have a little bit of a problem over here, and could I take about 5 to 10 minutes and call you back? Do you have the time? Do you have the availability?" Most Coaches wouldn't do this because they're like, "Oh my God. How can I do that?" But if I don't do that, where's my mind going to be? On the rat. "Is the rat moving? Is the rat eating? Is it going to run away again? How am I going to catch him?" I would be distracted by the rat.
[00:09:13] If I'm distracted I am not being inclusive, and I'm not coaching. I must include myself, and this lovely rat is there. I say to myself, "I think that I need to take 10 minutes to get this rat." It's what I did, so she goes, "Yes, of course." She had the time, which is great, and she said, "Yes." I said, "Great. I'll call you back in about 10 minutes", so I call her back, and she's like, "Is everything okay?", and I was like, "Well, let me tell you," and I told her a short version of the rat story.
[00:09:44] She's like, "Oh my God. Oh my God." Now, do I have to tell the rat story? No, but she heard me scream, so I explained it briefly. Didn't make it dramatic, and make it all about me, and my rat, my two days of agony, going to sleep every night trying to sleep knowing there's a rat in my house and, "Is it going to come into my bedroom?" even though I put a towel in front of the door. That towel, as the rat person who came to try to find it with me who was unsuccessful, said, "Ha-ha. That towel doesn't matter because the rat will just crawl under it." I'm like, "Ha-ha-ha. Oh, no." For two days, I'm like, "Where's the rat?" That is an example, a simple example of inclusivity, right? I'm including myself.
[00:10:25] It's not just about including the Client it's about including yourself. If you don't include yourself, then you are going to get distracted. You are going to be thinking, and therefore not present. If I'm thinking, I'm not present. If I'm thinking, I'm not present. If I'm thinking, I'm not present. You're probably not trusting yourself, i.e., probably not present with the Client. I understand there's going to be moments when you have to ponder how to say something. We talked about that in the last Episode. If you consistently are thinking about what question to ask, we got some training to do. We've got some things to do.
[00:11:05] Inclusively asking them, "What do they think? What do they want to do?" Another way to think of this is if you say, "Do you want to do that? Yes or no? Is that something that's calling to you? Yes or no?" You ask a closed-ended question with a yes or no. Let's say they answer it really quick, "Yes, I want to do that." If my Client didn't give me other indications besides that yes, I would actually have them include the rest of their body, and say, "Let's slow down a bit. Let's take a nice, deep breath." Maybe I'd put them through a visioning.
[00:11:46] Maybe I'd ask them to feel their feet on the ground. I'd get them into their body, and then I might say, "So, let's talk about what that yes would look like. Let's talk about what that yes would mean." Actually allow them the space to go back and say, "No," or, "What part of yes isn't okay with you? What part of yes is exciting? What part of yes serves you?"
[00:12:10] If my Client answers everything hastily, I want to make sure that their whole being is saying yes and not just saying the right answer. We all want the right answer, right? We have that right answer. Remember what I shared with you before is a lot of times your Client unconsciously is trying to please you or trying to please their mother, their father, their cousin, their sister, their partner. They're not even there, but they're unconsciously trying to say the right thing, to do the right thing, so they can be the right person, so they can be loved, so they can be accepted, and you don't care about the right thing. You want the right thing for them. It might not be right for anybody else, and their partner may hate it. I actually was talking to one of my Coaches recently, one of my first Certified Fearless Living Coaches™, and I was asking her about how she became a Coach. She was telling me the story about how she knew she wanted to be a Coach, and it was calling to her, then found Fearless Living®, and so she's telling me the story.
[00:13:10] She starts talking to me about how her husband was not onboard. "Oh, that's a call. That's weird. No. It's just a rip-off." He's going on and on about how she should not do this coaching program, the Life Coach Certification Program. She graduated, so she clearly did it. We talked about the processes she went through. Then I asked her, "So, how does he feel about the coaching program now, now that you're graduated, and you went through the entire program?" She says, "Oh my God, he loves it. He thinks it's the best investment I ever made. He's so glad, and he'd pay triple for it." That Client included herself.
[00:13:56] She didn't get swayed by her husband. She included herself in the process. It's just so critical, and we've got to do that for our Clients. When that Client answers hastily yes or no, you want to make sure that Client is including their whole being as well as talking about the pitfalls, the drawbacks, the potential barriers, whatever words your Client uses. That's another form of inclusivity. You're going to use the same words your Client uses. If your Client says diet, you say diet.
[00:14:25] If your Client says lose weight, you say lose weight. If they say soul mate, you say soul mate. When a Client says diet and you say lose weight or they say, "I want to get healthy" and you say, "How much weight do you want to lose?" you are not listening, and you are not inclusive. You are just making up your own stuff over here. That is not about your Client. That's all what you think healthy living is, so you're using your own definitions. You're over here just doing whatever you think you should be doing, and it's not for the Client.
[00:14:53] I ask them to slow down and include their whole body. That is part of being inclusive. The other thing is, I touched on it just a second ago I believe in the last Episode, is advice. If you are a consultant, they hire you for advice. If you're a Coach, they're not hiring you for advice. They're hiring you and asking you to help them become more of who they are meant to be whether they say that or not.
[00:15:20] Whether they say it or not, right? Whether they say it or not, that's really what they want. Your job is not to give advice because again, that's about you. It's not about them. Your job is to help them evoke within them, unleash in them, unfold within them the right answer for them. The answer that works for them, that, by the way, might change through the course of your coaching.
[00:15:42] They might come in with a single-mind like, "I want to triple my income", and then through the coaching, they start recognizing with your support: "Oh, triple my income means this, this, and this" or "Triple my income is really me trying to prove to my parents to get their love" or "Tripling my income really means that I blah, blah, blah", and they find a deeper answer, a deeper meaning, a deeper why. All of a sudden that tripling the income isn't what it's really about, is it? It's something else. That's the power of Life Coaching. People come to us with a "problem." They want a "solution."
[00:16:24] We support them to find that solution, but we're doing other deeper work all through the "Art of Coaching," all through that building, all through that seeing their innocence and speaking inclusively. That brings in a new dynamic for them, and they start seeing themselves differently, not just intellectually. I want to say that again. Whole bodily, right? You could ask your Client like, "What worked in the past? Did you ever come up to this? Did you ever have this problem before, and what did you do last time, and how long did it last, and what did you learn?" We're going to evoke things from them. We're going to evoke, "What would you tell your best friend?"
[00:17:04] The other thing for inclusive is you have to be attentive. As a Coach, I always ask myself before I get on with the Client, "What's my intention? What is my intention?" As I work with a Client, once they understand what intention really means and not just the cliché of intention but what real intention means, then I ask them, "What's your intention?" That way we can have a through line through our coaching. That might change as they evolve, as they awaken, as they wake up to something deeper and more profound within them. This is what's so cool. When you come in with a level of inclusivity, they are free to change. They are free to become different. They are free because they are accepted.
[00:17:54] We're going to start with seeing their innocence, which is about accepting and trust. Then when we speak inclusively, that helps them include their own being. They're not just worried about what work should do or how much money they need to bring in. They're including themselves in the process. We want to take their whole body and whole being with them. Are you going to share stories? Yes, but not because you want to or it's a great story.
[00:18:25] Only because it's moving through you and it's a great example. It's an opportunity to ask a question through telling your story. Does your story last an hour? No, it does not. No, it does not. The other thing about inclusivity is you want to follow where the Client is leading. I said a minute ago about using the same language. That's really critical. You want to speak the same language as your Clients. Like I said if they come to you and say, "I want to get healthier," you do not say, "Lose weight." You say, "What does healthy look like? Tell me what that means to you. What are the aspects of healthy living? When you think about healthy living, what's that going to get you? Who are you going to become? Who do you need to become? What do you think that means? What do you think the results are going to be? What are your expectations about healthy living? What are the pros of healthy living? What are the cons of healthy living? What're the benefits? What's the cost? What is healthy living about?" You're going to flush that out, so it is not just a mere healthy living. They have a full experience of what healthy living means and you because you're inclusive, use the language they bring. Not your own language.
[00:19:40] The minute you disconnect and if they say "healthy living" and you say, "diet," you're not listening. You've just disconnected from the Client, and they feel like, "Oh, should I be on a diet?" Now that makes them question, "Oh, are you saying I need to be on a diet?" or they're like, "I didn't say diet." Of course, if they want to please you, they will be like, "Oh, diet. Yeah, it's important too." They're going healthy living. They're going down the train. They're going the train track, healthy living, healthy living, and you bring in diet. They're like, "What?" You took them off the train. That is inappropriate questioning.
00:20:14 You can ask, "Well, is this about diet? Is this about exercise? What exactly does healthy living mean? Food you eat? The air you breathe?" Make sure you expand it to give them lots of different options. Does that make sense? Lots of different options. Let me go to the question. Again, I love your questions. Go to Master Coach Mindset and ask me your questions. I love questions.
[00:20:52] As you know, I answer a question from a Coach every single Episode. I love answering questions so ask me your questions. It makes me so happy and so pleased to do so. It allows the podcast to be better because we go places that maybe I wouldn't have naturally gone, so I love it. The other thing is if you like the questions and the answers, and if you want to embody what we're talking about today, "Speak Inclusively," make sure you go over to MasterCoachMindset.com and join the Insiders Club and download the Fearbuster Coaching™ Worksheet every week. I spent time on that baby and I love it. It's going to help you embody and integrate the things we're talking about each and every week. Go ahead and join the Master Coach Mindset Insiders Club.
00:21:35 QUESTION OF THE DAY:
"If I want to follow up on issues from a previous Session but don't want to interrupt or change the subject after a Client is in the flow, is there a good way to switch gears even if it's close to the end of the Session? Is it okay to leave it for the next Session?" It's a big question say it one more time. "If I want to follow up on an issue from a previous Session but don't want to interrupt or change the subject after a Client is in the flow, is there a good way to switch gears even if it's close to the end of the Session? Is it okay to leave it for the next Session?"
[00:22:17] If you're near the end of the Session you do not want to introduce a new topic. You do not want to introduce a new topic. You do not want to introduce a topic from before, because now, you're going off the rails of where you are, and now you're talking about this other thing. You want to have a contained Session, so it has a beginning, middle and end, that way the Client has a completion. If you throw something in at the end that is different than what you're talking about, that will discombobulate the Client. Unless if you're saying, "Oh and remember I still haven't received the homework from last week. Make sure you include it this week."
[00:23:00] That's different because you're just reminding them, "Oh, I haven't received your homework." If there's something you want to follow up from a previous Session, you want to do that as best you can at the top of the Session. The second thing is if there is a way to tie it together. Let's say that a Client says, "Well, I'm having problems with my partner", and you know previously that they have a difficult mother relationship. They said something about their mother. You could say, "What does this have anything to do or does it feel in a way similar to the relationship with your mother that you shared with me previously?" You can ask that question to tie them together, but you don't want to be talking about relationships and then switch to the mother thing.
[00:23:46] You want to tie the mother thing in with the topic at hand.Do they tie together? You can tie anything together. I train my Coaches at the Life Coach Certification Program™ for Fearless Living®. I actually train them to be able to talk about any topic with any tool, and how to integrate them together. We teach tools, we teach the "Art of Coaching." We Coach them through. We have mentors that really support and help them integrate because that's my bottom line: integration, alignment, and embodiment. I'm not going to just dump information on you and be like, "Good luck." No. We're going to make sure you embody it.
[00:24:23] Sometimes my Coaches, when they're in training are like, "But I don't know how to talk about it. They started talking about their mother, and the topic is expectations this week, and I don't know how to tie those in." You should be able to tie in any subject, with any concept, with any tool. If you haven't got the Fearbuster Coaching Toolkit that has how to open a Session and close a Session, go over to MasterCoachMindset.com and get that now. Some of the things that we're talking about right now are going to be answered in that freebie so make sure you go and download it.
[00:25:00] Do you want to introduce a new subject? No, you do not at the end. No. You want to wrap it up. I talk about that at the Fearbuster Coaching Toolkit, how to open and close a Session. Can you tie things from the previous Session to this Session? Absolutely. Do you want to take a right and go to a different topic when they're talking about their partner and now you want to talk about their weight loss? No. Can you tie those together? Yes. You have to tie it together. If you're not sure how to tie it together, join me at the Fearless Conversations™ Workshop because we will practice it there and you will know how to do that.
[00:25:37] I am so looking forward to meeting you in person and hugging you, a big Rhonda Britten hug, at Fearless Conversations Workshop. I'm so looking forward to seeing you right inside the Insiders Club to help you and support you in being even more embodied and connected to the Master Coach within. I know you got it and I can't wait to watch it blossom. Until our next Episode, remember, "Speak Inclusively." Next time, it's the next skill and I will share it with you now. The next skill, "Speak to Clarify." I bet I have some tips and techniques for you.
I'll see you next time. Be Fearless.
