Listen to the full episode here.
[00:00:51] Welcome to Master Coach Mindset™. My name is Rhonda Britten, your host and Master Coach. I am so gosh darn excited to be here because this is Part Two of our Seventh Coaching Skill: “Speak to Acknowledge Risk.” I love risk because risk is at the heart of us changing our lives. Risk is at the heart of anything that we want to make happen in our lives. Without risk, we will not move forward. I don't care how little it appears. I don't care how small it seems. I don't care how, "Oh, it should be easy for me," it's not. If you haven't done it, there's a reason you haven't done it. Maybe it's, "Oh, I didn't know I should do it, and therefore I can do it easily." Let's just pick something easy like eating broccoli or eating vegetables or drinking water.
[00:01:47] All of us know that we need to drink more water, or should drink more water, or are supposed to drink more water according to the experts. Vegetables are good for you most people say. Yes? Yet we find ourselves not eating enough vegetables or not drinking enough water or whatever those small changes we want to make. We know we can make those changes. We just don't make those changes. Then what happens? We beat ourselves up. What happens when we know we could do something and we don't do it? We beat ourselves up. We give ourselves full permission. It's actually one thing that I talk about extensively in my course Stretch, Risk or Die™, which is part of and a bonus in my Fearless Living Training Program™.
[00:02:31] If you want to know more about risk and what I mean by risk: Stretch, Risk or Die. And you get worksheets. Please go to the show notes. Those are going to be linked so you can check those out. Risk to me is at the heart of everything because without risk we won't change. I don't care what that change is. Specifically, when we beat ourselves up because we think we should do something and we know we can do something, but we don't do it, that's when we're ruthless with ourselves. We're mean to ourselves. We're horrible to ourselves. Then sometimes, and usually, we give up, and we just say, "This is my fate. My fate is to weigh this. My fate is to live like this or make this much money. I guess I'm stuck here. I guess I'll never be able to move." What do our Clients do? They hire us because they want help in making these changes. You as the Coach must acknowledge risk so they know they're moving forward because they'll forget. We forget.
[00:03:37] Think about your own life. Have you forgotten changes you've made? I bet you have. I know I did for most of my life until I learned to acknowledge myself and keep track. Fill up that evidence box so that anytime I want to take a risk, anytime I want to make a change; I can pull out that evidence box and say to myself, "Well, I did it here. I did it here. I can do it here." It builds motivation, momentum, inspires me to take different actions. A challenge for many of us, we kind of categorize it as a small thing, "Oh, that's no big deal. Drinking water, no big deal. Vegetables, no big deal." What I say and what I believe is that any risk, no matter how small, is a big thing. We, as the Coach, want to make sure that we acknowledge our Client so that they can build that momentum, and they can start feeling more empowered, and better about their future.
[00:04:32] How do you acknowledge? Be descriptive. Be specific. Don't just say, "Good job." What about? What did they do? You have to ask questions to find out how they made that change. Your Client probably will say, "I don't know. I don't know what I did." Your job is to help break them down. "Well, what thought did you have?" "Well, I don't know." "Well, think about it. Just let's stop for a minute and let's think about that. What'd you feel?" "I don't know." "Well, let's stop. Let's think about this. Tell me what you normally feel before you go and grab that ice cream, and then tell me how you felt when you turned your car around and decided not to do it. What were your feelings? Tell me about that." We're trying to pull out those moments so that our Clients can see their process and they can recreate it. That's what we want for our Clients, to be able to recreate those changes.
[00:05:22] Be feelings-oriented. Talk about their feelings. You talk about feelings. You say, "Wow. You look so relaxed. Wow. You're telling me that you have this feeling instead. What was that like? How can you recreate that feeling?" Of course, be complementary. Be excited. One of the things that I notice with my Fearless Living® Life Coach Certification Program™, when my Coaches are going through that program before they graduate, and now they're working with real live Clients, not peers, not colleagues, not friends, not family members, but people they do not know, and people who know nothing about Fearless Living. I believe if you learn to coach by practicing on peers, people that are in the program the same as you or family and friends who know you, or people who have already read the book, Fearless Living, or know this stuff, you're not having a real live experience of what it really means to Coach. We want our Coaches to have Clients that don't know anything about Fearless Living. Nothing at all. That aren't family members, or friends, or peers, so they really have the experience of coaching.
[00:06:34] One of the things we talk about and I see over and over again is how to acknowledge that risk. Be descriptive. You can say, "Wow. Wait a minute. What did you just do?" By the way, when you say things like, "Wait a minute. What did you just do? What did I hear you just say?" What does that do? It makes the Client repeat themselves and helps anchor that they did, in fact, do it. Many times the Client minimizes that second time, "Well, it's not a big deal." You go, "Did you do this before you started working with me? Wait a minute. What changed?" You're pulling out that process. That's our job. Risks are going to help us get there. Those risks are going to build motivation, momentum, confidence, empowerment, belief in one's self, trusting ourselves. It allows us and our Clients to get to know themselves.
[00:07:27] I hear my Clients, my PCs (my program candidates) in the Life Coach Certification Program, I hear them when I'm listening to their Sessions, they just roll over risks when they're first learning. They don't even know how to identify a risk. They don't even know how to acknowledge it. That's why this skill is so critical because I bet you a few of you might be good at this naturally. You have to be really careful that you're not fake cheerleading which we talked about previously. You’ve got to be authentic. You’ve got to be real. It's got to be factual, and it's got to have meat. It's got to have that meat. It's got to have descriptive. It's got to be factual. I teach my Clients, I say, "Okay. Listen to your tape again. Listen to that coaching Session, and I want you to find three places you could have acknowledged them." "What?" "Yeah, go back and find three places you could acknowledge that Client."
[00:08:29] I think really all these skills sound easy when you hear them, but to practice them, and live them, and do them with your Clients is a whole different ballgame. It's one of the reasons why I teach Fearless Conversations Workshop™ because I want you to have the experience of doing it so it can get into your bones and into your body. Another thing is you want to say things like, "Tell me three ways you did that. Tell me what you were feeling. Tell me what you were thinking. How was it different from before?" Ask those types of questions to help your Client move into their process. You definitely want to be listening for those opportunities like, "Wait. When did they get out of their comfort zone? When they did they Stretch, Risk or Die?" That's what we use here at Fearless Living: Stretch, Risk or Die. We train our Clients to use Stretch, Risk or Die so that they can say, "That was a stretch for me. That was a risk for me. That was a die for me," so that they also can give themselves credit due for those Stretches, Risks, and Dies.
[00:09:29] Roadblocks. One of the big things that I notice Coaches do is they only acknowledge the big risks. It was amazing. They did it perfect. No, no, no. Remember what I said in Part One in last week's Episode. You want to acknowledge every step along the way because what are you doing? You're connecting everything together. You're connecting everything together and educating, teaching, showing, supporting them through your coaching, through your questions on understanding how they process. This is critical for long-term permanent change. That's what I'm going for here. I don't want my Client's life to change because I happen to be coaching them. I want my Client to learn how to change their own life whether I'm coaching them or not after we've worked together. I'm teaching them long-term skills to make permanent changes in their life that are repeatable and doable over and over again. Acknowledging risk is critical to that.
00:10:30 QUESTION OF THE DAY:
Let's go to the question of the day. I'm going to change my question to the day so give me a second because I think I want to change my question. This is a perfect question. I like this one even better. We'll get to the other one later in another Episode. This is the question of the day: “What blocks or frustrations should I expect to experience as a new Coach? Do you have any tips I can use to get past them quickly if they come up mid Session?” I'm going to ask that again. “What blocks or frustrations should I expect to experience as a new Coach? Do you have any tips I can use to get past them quickly if they come up mid Session?” These are two very different questions. “What blocks or frustrations should I expect to experience as a new Coach?” You're not going to know what you're doing. You're going to freeze. You're not going to know what question to ask. You're going to go blank. You're going to feel paralyzed. You're going to feel like you're the worst Coach in the world. You're going to doubt yourself. You're not knowing when to ask. How do you interrupt?
[00:11:42] Everything. Every single thing I've talked about in Master Coach Mindset. Every skill in Season Two and every single principle and philosophy that I've talked about in Season One. You can probably expect to hit sometime in your coaching practice because do you know how to acknowledge yourself? Do you know how to build your momentum in your own life? If you don't, you probably are going to miss that opportunity, miss those opportunities to do it for your Clients. If you don't know how to give yourself a break, let yourself off the hook, if you don't know how to see your own innocence, all of these things. Are you going to judge your Clients? Yeah, you could probably judge them. If you can't see your own innocence, you're going to have a difficult time seeing your Clients' innocence.
[00:12:28] Are you going to be judging your Client at times? Yes. You can pretty much guarantee that's coming down the pike. Are you going to wonder what's wrong with them? Why can't they do this? Are you going to get frustrated because they're not doing their homework? Pretty much, yes. Most Coaches don't actually understand the “Art of Coaching” so they don't know how to Coach a Client to get them to do their homework. They don't know how do you do that. You don't just assign homework. You actually have to know how to inspire them, move them, motivate them to do their homework. It's not just, "I'm giving them an assignment." There is that rare Client that will do that assignment.
[00:13:05] Some things to expect as a new Coach. You're going to forget to acknowledge them. You're going to get triggered. You're going to be coaching Clients with the same problems you have, and you're going to freak out. You're going to feel paralyzed. You're not going to know what to ask. You're going to feel like a failure as a Coach. You're going to feel like you're boring. You're going to feel like you're too pushy. You're not going to know how to interrupt. You're not going to know how to do so many things when you are first starting out unless you practice them. Unless you do this with your practice Clients while you're in a program or at Fearless Conversations™, wherever you get your practice. You’ve got to practice. If you're not practicing, you're going to keep hitting upon these things.
[00:13:54] You're not going to know how to talk to somebody about what you do. Most people aren't very good at that when they first start out. You're not going to know how to describe your successes. You're not going to know how to turn that potential Client into a sale where they buy a package. There's so many things. Each Coach is different because some Coaches are naturally good at acknowledging and others are failures at it. Some are naturally good at seeing innocence. They've done their personal work. They've done their spiritual work, and so they can see innocence, and they don't judge their Clients, but others judge. Every single thing that I've talked about in Season Two of Master Coach Mindset, and every single thing that I've talked about in Season One of Master Coach Mindset probably is going to come and visit you at some point in your coaching practice.
[00:14:46] The second part of this question is: “Do you have any tips I can use to get past them quickly if they come up mid Session?” It depends on what it is, but this is what I'd love you to do. I want you to come up with a phrase, a question, that if you're frozen, if you're not sure what you're doing, if you're going, "I don't know what to do now. I don't know what I'm doing. What should I say?" You're just frozen. You're paralyzed. You're freaking out inside. You're cool as a cucumber with your Client, but inside you're going, "Ahh!" I want you to memorize a question that you can lean on at any time. Let me give you a couple that you can use. Number one, you can use, "Tell me the one thing that you're getting out of our Session so far."
[00:15:30] When you ask that question because you're floating on that Session, it is going to anchor you back and it gives the Client time to reflect on the one thing they've received so far. That means they're going to be like, "Hmm, what's the one thing I've received so far? Well, I got this, this, and this." Then you as a Coach have something to grab onto and you can keep coaching on that topic. "Well, tell me why is that the number one thing. How is that going to impact your life? Tell me how it's going to make your life different." You can ask questions about that insight, about their aha, that one thing. That's one thing you can ask at any time. Maybe not two minutes in, but at least 10 minutes in, 15 minutes in. You can totally ask that question.
[00:16:16] What's another question that you can ask pretty much no matter what? "Well, tell me. Is that empowering or disempowering, that thought that you're having, that feeling you're having, that action you're taking or not taking? Does that empower you or disempower you? Does that work for you or not work for you? Tell me about the cost and benefits. What are the pros and cons? Well, tell me how that feels. Tell me what you think. Tell me what's moving through you. Where is it in your body?" All of these questions you can apply to almost anything. When you're frozen, when you're not sure what to do, when you're being triggered, grab one of those questions. Memorize it. Put it on a piece of paper in front of you. When you're sitting in that Session going, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I'm making a mess of it," you can grab that question, ask it in order to keep that Session alive and move that Session forward. One of the things you also could ask is, "Tell me a risk you took this week or tell me what risk you've already done in this Session." You can actually apply it to the Session. How do you support yourself? You memorize one, two, three questions that are your go-to questions no matter what.
[00:17:30] I highly encourage you, if you're a new Coach, to listen to your Sessions. If you were not mentored, if you did not have a one-on-one mentor, which I encourage every single person to have. If your coaching program didn't have it, then I encourage you to go get one. Not just another advanced Coach, but somebody who is really a Mentor Coach. That's a different scale. You want a mentor Coach that's going to support you in breaking down your Session so that you can learn the skill that you need in order to become a better Coach. That's what this podcast is all about. That is the reason I'm teaching it. The reason I'm taking my breath right now and talking to you is that I want to make all Coaches great. I want to make all Coaches be the best Coach they can be. I don't care if you went through the Fearless Living® Life Coach Certification Program™, or if you went to Sally's coaching program, or George's coaching program. I don't care what coaching program you went to. I'm doing this and I'm teaching this podcast. Supporting you in this podcast so that you can be a better Coach no matter what.
[00:18:30] Let's go back to acknowledging risks and some of the roadblocks that you could encounter. One I've already shared which is you just acknowledge the big things. If you only acknowledge the big things, then they're not really going to learn the process it takes to change their life. The only way that a Client notices how they did it is by you stopping and asking questions to help them notice it. Most Clients just breeze over it and aren't even aware of how they did it. Acknowledging big wins, not okay. Not bad to do that, but you must acknowledge the small wins as well. Otherwise it looks like you only care about the big changes and they're never going to make incremental change. They're never going to be able to repeat it.
[00:19:25] The second roadblock that I want you to be attentive to is over-acknowledging, going, "Wow. Great work. Great work. Great work. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. You're amazing. That's amazing," all the time. I find this to be rare because most Coaches that I've experienced through my Life Coach Certification Program is that they under-acknowledge rather than over-acknowledge. Listen to your tape. Notice, do you over-acknowledge because you don't know what else to do? You're lost a little bit so you think, "Oh, I'll just acknowledge them." Remember, an acknowledgement has to be descriptive. It has to be real. It has to be based on fact. It has to be feelings-based, and it has to be complimentary. It has to be empowering. It has to have all those qualities or it is not an acknowledgment.
[00:20:13] I really am excited about you understanding the power of risk and knowing and embodying for yourself. Anchoring it in yourself that risk is the key to a lifelong change. Lifelong learning of how to change because not only is your Client going to change now, but they're going to change six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, and we do not want our Clients to be afraid to change. If you think about it, coaching really is about mastering change and about understanding how to change when you want to make those changes. When a change is calling you and you're not even looking for that change, you're not the one thinking about that change, but that change is calling you, that you can identify it and take action. The process of coaching is really becoming a master of change, how to change your life, and acknowledging risks is critical to make that happen.
[00:21:19] I am so excited for our next Episode because next time we get together, we're going to be talking about our Eighth Coaching Skill which is: “Speak to Opportunities and Possibilities.” When you learn how to do that, well, we've completed all Eight Coaching Skills. Next week is number Eight so join me for “Speak to Opportunities and Possibilities” so that you can know and start embodying all Eight Coaching Skills that I think are needed, necessary, foundational, essential for success as a Coach. More importantly, success for your Clients. That's why we do what we do. Sure, we love it. Sure, we get turned on by it. Sure, it's our passion and purpose, but we're doing it to serve our Clients. Learn these Eight Coaching Skills so that you can be the best Coach you can possibly be.
Until next time, Be Fearless.
Listen to the full episode here.
[00:00:51] Welcome to Master Coach Mindset™. My name is Rhonda Britten, your host and Master Coach. I am so gosh darn excited to be here because this is Part Two of our Seventh Coaching Skill: “Speak to Acknowledge Risk.” I love risk because risk is at the heart of us changing our lives. Risk is at the heart of anything that we want to make happen in our lives. Without risk, we will not move forward. I don't care how little it appears. I don't care how small it seems. I don't care how, "Oh, it should be easy for me," it's not. If you haven't done it, there's a reason you haven't done it. Maybe it's, "Oh, I didn't know I should do it, and therefore I can do it easily." Let's just pick something easy like eating broccoli or eating vegetables or drinking water.
[00:01:47] All of us know that we need to drink more water, or should drink more water, or are supposed to drink more water according to the experts. Vegetables are good for you most people say. Yes? Yet we find ourselves not eating enough vegetables or not drinking enough water or whatever those small changes we want to make. We know we can make those changes. We just don't make those changes. Then what happens? We beat ourselves up. What happens when we know we could do something and we don't do it? We beat ourselves up. We give ourselves full permission. It's actually one thing that I talk about extensively in my course Stretch, Risk or Die™, which is part of and a bonus in my Fearless Living Training Program™.
[00:02:31] If you want to know more about risk and what I mean by risk: Stretch, Risk or Die. And you get worksheets. Please go to the show notes. Those are going to be linked so you can check those out. Risk to me is at the heart of everything because without risk we won't change. I don't care what that change is. Specifically, when we beat ourselves up because we think we should do something and we know we can do something, but we don't do it, that's when we're ruthless with ourselves. We're mean to ourselves. We're horrible to ourselves. Then sometimes, and usually, we give up, and we just say, "This is my fate. My fate is to weigh this. My fate is to live like this or make this much money. I guess I'm stuck here. I guess I'll never be able to move." What do our Clients do? They hire us because they want help in making these changes. You as the Coach must acknowledge risk so they know they're moving forward because they'll forget. We forget.
[00:03:37] Think about your own life. Have you forgotten changes you've made? I bet you have. I know I did for most of my life until I learned to acknowledge myself and keep track. Fill up that evidence box so that anytime I want to take a risk, anytime I want to make a change; I can pull out that evidence box and say to myself, "Well, I did it here. I did it here. I can do it here." It builds motivation, momentum, inspires me to take different actions. A challenge for many of us, we kind of categorize it as a small thing, "Oh, that's no big deal. Drinking water, no big deal. Vegetables, no big deal." What I say and what I believe is that any risk, no matter how small, is a big thing. We, as the Coach, want to make sure that we acknowledge our Client so that they can build that momentum, and they can start feeling more empowered, and better about their future.
[00:04:32] How do you acknowledge? Be descriptive. Be specific. Don't just say, "Good job." What about? What did they do? You have to ask questions to find out how they made that change. Your Client probably will say, "I don't know. I don't know what I did." Your job is to help break them down. "Well, what thought did you have?" "Well, I don't know." "Well, think about it. Just let's stop for a minute and let's think about that. What'd you feel?" "I don't know." "Well, let's stop. Let's think about this. Tell me what you normally feel before you go and grab that ice cream, and then tell me how you felt when you turned your car around and decided not to do it. What were your feelings? Tell me about that." We're trying to pull out those moments so that our Clients can see their process and they can recreate it. That's what we want for our Clients, to be able to recreate those changes.
[00:05:22] Be feelings-oriented. Talk about their feelings. You talk about feelings. You say, "Wow. You look so relaxed. Wow. You're telling me that you have this feeling instead. What was that like? How can you recreate that feeling?" Of course, be complementary. Be excited. One of the things that I notice with my Fearless Living® Life Coach Certification Program™, when my Coaches are going through that program before they graduate, and now they're working with real live Clients, not peers, not colleagues, not friends, not family members, but people they do not know, and people who know nothing about Fearless Living. I believe if you learn to coach by practicing on peers, people that are in the program the same as you or family and friends who know you, or people who have already read the book, Fearless Living, or know this stuff, you're not having a real live experience of what it really means to Coach. We want our Coaches to have Clients that don't know anything about Fearless Living. Nothing at all. That aren't family members, or friends, or peers, so they really have the experience of coaching.
[00:06:34] One of the things we talk about and I see over and over again is how to acknowledge that risk. Be descriptive. You can say, "Wow. Wait a minute. What did you just do?" By the way, when you say things like, "Wait a minute. What did you just do? What did I hear you just say?" What does that do? It makes the Client repeat themselves and helps anchor that they did, in fact, do it. Many times the Client minimizes that second time, "Well, it's not a big deal." You go, "Did you do this before you started working with me? Wait a minute. What changed?" You're pulling out that process. That's our job. Risks are going to help us get there. Those risks are going to build motivation, momentum, confidence, empowerment, belief in one's self, trusting ourselves. It allows us and our Clients to get to know themselves.
[00:07:27] I hear my Clients, my PCs (my program candidates) in the Life Coach Certification Program, I hear them when I'm listening to their Sessions, they just roll over risks when they're first learning. They don't even know how to identify a risk. They don't even know how to acknowledge it. That's why this skill is so critical because I bet you a few of you might be good at this naturally. You have to be really careful that you're not fake cheerleading which we talked about previously. You’ve got to be authentic. You’ve got to be real. It's got to be factual, and it's got to have meat. It's got to have that meat. It's got to have descriptive. It's got to be factual. I teach my Clients, I say, "Okay. Listen to your tape again. Listen to that coaching Session, and I want you to find three places you could have acknowledged them." "What?" "Yeah, go back and find three places you could acknowledge that Client."
[00:08:29] I think really all these skills sound easy when you hear them, but to practice them, and live them, and do them with your Clients is a whole different ballgame. It's one of the reasons why I teach Fearless Conversations Workshop™ because I want you to have the experience of doing it so it can get into your bones and into your body. Another thing is you want to say things like, "Tell me three ways you did that. Tell me what you were feeling. Tell me what you were thinking. How was it different from before?" Ask those types of questions to help your Client move into their process. You definitely want to be listening for those opportunities like, "Wait. When did they get out of their comfort zone? When they did they Stretch, Risk or Die?" That's what we use here at Fearless Living: Stretch, Risk or Die. We train our Clients to use Stretch, Risk or Die so that they can say, "That was a stretch for me. That was a risk for me. That was a die for me," so that they also can give themselves credit due for those Stretches, Risks, and Dies.
[00:09:29] Roadblocks. One of the big things that I notice Coaches do is they only acknowledge the big risks. It was amazing. They did it perfect. No, no, no. Remember what I said in Part One in last week's Episode. You want to acknowledge every step along the way because what are you doing? You're connecting everything together. You're connecting everything together and educating, teaching, showing, supporting them through your coaching, through your questions on understanding how they process. This is critical for long-term permanent change. That's what I'm going for here. I don't want my Client's life to change because I happen to be coaching them. I want my Client to learn how to change their own life whether I'm coaching them or not after we've worked together. I'm teaching them long-term skills to make permanent changes in their life that are repeatable and doable over and over again. Acknowledging risk is critical to that.
00:10:30 QUESTION OF THE DAY:
Let's go to the question of the day. I'm going to change my question to the day so give me a second because I think I want to change my question. This is a perfect question. I like this one even better. We'll get to the other one later in another Episode. This is the question of the day: “What blocks or frustrations should I expect to experience as a new Coach? Do you have any tips I can use to get past them quickly if they come up mid Session?” I'm going to ask that again. “What blocks or frustrations should I expect to experience as a new Coach? Do you have any tips I can use to get past them quickly if they come up mid Session?” These are two very different questions. “What blocks or frustrations should I expect to experience as a new Coach?” You're not going to know what you're doing. You're going to freeze. You're not going to know what question to ask. You're going to go blank. You're going to feel paralyzed. You're going to feel like you're the worst Coach in the world. You're going to doubt yourself. You're not knowing when to ask. How do you interrupt?
[00:11:42] Everything. Every single thing I've talked about in Master Coach Mindset. Every skill in Season Two and every single principle and philosophy that I've talked about in Season One. You can probably expect to hit sometime in your coaching practice because do you know how to acknowledge yourself? Do you know how to build your momentum in your own life? If you don't, you probably are going to miss that opportunity, miss those opportunities to do it for your Clients. If you don't know how to give yourself a break, let yourself off the hook, if you don't know how to see your own innocence, all of these things. Are you going to judge your Clients? Yeah, you could probably judge them. If you can't see your own innocence, you're going to have a difficult time seeing your Clients' innocence.
[00:12:28] Are you going to be judging your Client at times? Yes. You can pretty much guarantee that's coming down the pike. Are you going to wonder what's wrong with them? Why can't they do this? Are you going to get frustrated because they're not doing their homework? Pretty much, yes. Most Coaches don't actually understand the “Art of Coaching” so they don't know how to Coach a Client to get them to do their homework. They don't know how do you do that. You don't just assign homework. You actually have to know how to inspire them, move them, motivate them to do their homework. It's not just, "I'm giving them an assignment." There is that rare Client that will do that assignment.
[00:13:05] Some things to expect as a new Coach. You're going to forget to acknowledge them. You're going to get triggered. You're going to be coaching Clients with the same problems you have, and you're going to freak out. You're going to feel paralyzed. You're not going to know what to ask. You're going to feel like a failure as a Coach. You're going to feel like you're boring. You're going to feel like you're too pushy. You're not going to know how to interrupt. You're not going to know how to do so many things when you are first starting out unless you practice them. Unless you do this with your practice Clients while you're in a program or at Fearless Conversations™, wherever you get your practice. You’ve got to practice. If you're not practicing, you're going to keep hitting upon these things.
[00:13:54] You're not going to know how to talk to somebody about what you do. Most people aren't very good at that when they first start out. You're not going to know how to describe your successes. You're not going to know how to turn that potential Client into a sale where they buy a package. There's so many things. Each Coach is different because some Coaches are naturally good at acknowledging and others are failures at it. Some are naturally good at seeing innocence. They've done their personal work. They've done their spiritual work, and so they can see innocence, and they don't judge their Clients, but others judge. Every single thing that I've talked about in Season Two of Master Coach Mindset, and every single thing that I've talked about in Season One of Master Coach Mindset probably is going to come and visit you at some point in your coaching practice.
[00:14:46] The second part of this question is: “Do you have any tips I can use to get past them quickly if they come up mid Session?” It depends on what it is, but this is what I'd love you to do. I want you to come up with a phrase, a question, that if you're frozen, if you're not sure what you're doing, if you're going, "I don't know what to do now. I don't know what I'm doing. What should I say?" You're just frozen. You're paralyzed. You're freaking out inside. You're cool as a cucumber with your Client, but inside you're going, "Ahh!" I want you to memorize a question that you can lean on at any time. Let me give you a couple that you can use. Number one, you can use, "Tell me the one thing that you're getting out of our Session so far."
[00:15:30] When you ask that question because you're floating on that Session, it is going to anchor you back and it gives the Client time to reflect on the one thing they've received so far. That means they're going to be like, "Hmm, what's the one thing I've received so far? Well, I got this, this, and this." Then you as a Coach have something to grab onto and you can keep coaching on that topic. "Well, tell me why is that the number one thing. How is that going to impact your life? Tell me how it's going to make your life different." You can ask questions about that insight, about their aha, that one thing. That's one thing you can ask at any time. Maybe not two minutes in, but at least 10 minutes in, 15 minutes in. You can totally ask that question.
[00:16:16] What's another question that you can ask pretty much no matter what? "Well, tell me. Is that empowering or disempowering, that thought that you're having, that feeling you're having, that action you're taking or not taking? Does that empower you or disempower you? Does that work for you or not work for you? Tell me about the cost and benefits. What are the pros and cons? Well, tell me how that feels. Tell me what you think. Tell me what's moving through you. Where is it in your body?" All of these questions you can apply to almost anything. When you're frozen, when you're not sure what to do, when you're being triggered, grab one of those questions. Memorize it. Put it on a piece of paper in front of you. When you're sitting in that Session going, "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I'm making a mess of it," you can grab that question, ask it in order to keep that Session alive and move that Session forward. One of the things you also could ask is, "Tell me a risk you took this week or tell me what risk you've already done in this Session." You can actually apply it to the Session. How do you support yourself? You memorize one, two, three questions that are your go-to questions no matter what.
[00:17:30] I highly encourage you, if you're a new Coach, to listen to your Sessions. If you were not mentored, if you did not have a one-on-one mentor, which I encourage every single person to have. If your coaching program didn't have it, then I encourage you to go get one. Not just another advanced Coach, but somebody who is really a Mentor Coach. That's a different scale. You want a mentor Coach that's going to support you in breaking down your Session so that you can learn the skill that you need in order to become a better Coach. That's what this podcast is all about. That is the reason I'm teaching it. The reason I'm taking my breath right now and talking to you is that I want to make all Coaches great. I want to make all Coaches be the best Coach they can be. I don't care if you went through the Fearless Living® Life Coach Certification Program™, or if you went to Sally's coaching program, or George's coaching program. I don't care what coaching program you went to. I'm doing this and I'm teaching this podcast. Supporting you in this podcast so that you can be a better Coach no matter what.
[00:18:30] Let's go back to acknowledging risks and some of the roadblocks that you could encounter. One I've already shared which is you just acknowledge the big things. If you only acknowledge the big things, then they're not really going to learn the process it takes to change their life. The only way that a Client notices how they did it is by you stopping and asking questions to help them notice it. Most Clients just breeze over it and aren't even aware of how they did it. Acknowledging big wins, not okay. Not bad to do that, but you must acknowledge the small wins as well. Otherwise it looks like you only care about the big changes and they're never going to make incremental change. They're never going to be able to repeat it.
[00:19:25] The second roadblock that I want you to be attentive to is over-acknowledging, going, "Wow. Great work. Great work. Great work. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. You're amazing. That's amazing," all the time. I find this to be rare because most Coaches that I've experienced through my Life Coach Certification Program is that they under-acknowledge rather than over-acknowledge. Listen to your tape. Notice, do you over-acknowledge because you don't know what else to do? You're lost a little bit so you think, "Oh, I'll just acknowledge them." Remember, an acknowledgement has to be descriptive. It has to be real. It has to be based on fact. It has to be feelings-based, and it has to be complimentary. It has to be empowering. It has to have all those qualities or it is not an acknowledgment.
[00:20:13] I really am excited about you understanding the power of risk and knowing and embodying for yourself. Anchoring it in yourself that risk is the key to a lifelong change. Lifelong learning of how to change because not only is your Client going to change now, but they're going to change six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, and we do not want our Clients to be afraid to change. If you think about it, coaching really is about mastering change and about understanding how to change when you want to make those changes. When a change is calling you and you're not even looking for that change, you're not the one thinking about that change, but that change is calling you, that you can identify it and take action. The process of coaching is really becoming a master of change, how to change your life, and acknowledging risks is critical to make that happen.
[00:21:19] I am so excited for our next Episode because next time we get together, we're going to be talking about our Eighth Coaching Skill which is: “Speak to Opportunities and Possibilities.” When you learn how to do that, well, we've completed all Eight Coaching Skills. Next week is number Eight so join me for “Speak to Opportunities and Possibilities” so that you can know and start embodying all Eight Coaching Skills that I think are needed, necessary, foundational, essential for success as a Coach. More importantly, success for your Clients. That's why we do what we do. Sure, we love it. Sure, we get turned on by it. Sure, it's our passion and purpose, but we're doing it to serve our Clients. Learn these Eight Coaching Skills so that you can be the best Coach you can possibly be.
Until next time, Be Fearless.
