Christian: Welcome, this is Christian Mickelsen. This is the Rapid Coaching Academy session. Tonight’s session will be focusing on strategizing your actions. Before we dive in to this I want to just do a quick review. Actually, before we even do the quick review I just want to let everybody know that most of what we’ve covered so far is very important stuff and has been really to lay the foundation for the coaching process, the overall coaching process. Now, we’re going to be moving in to more and more with each session in to the heart and soul or the meat of the coaching process. That’s going to be starting tonight with strategizing your actions and will continue even more in to upgrading your skills and optimizing your environment and mastering your psychology.
All those things that we’ll be covering in future sessions, we’re really starting to roll of the sleeves and dig in to the coaching process. But, before we get going on our content tonight I want to just do a quick review of some of the things we’ve covered so far. We’re going to just kind of do that review in a little bit of a different way. I’d like you guys to just share anything that you can remember that you’ve learned from any of the previous sessions whether it was something from me specifically or perhaps even something you’ve learned from another participant from getting together and doing some of the buddy coaching.
You don’t have to raise your hand to be called on here. Feel free to just go ahead and speak out loud anything that you can think of that you’ve learned so far.
Participant: For me it was the concept of direction. I just like the idea of direction and moving in a direction towards something that is coming but it’s not locked in to a specific.
Christian: Yeah, okay, right.
Participant: It leaves it open for what unfolds but at the same time always going forward always in the same direction that I want to go.
Christian: Yeah. Thank you, that’s the direction versus goal. I actually didn’t quite catch what you were saying right away but I get it. I remember when we had that discussion on the last call. Thank you for sharing that one. Someone else?
Participant: I’ll second that one and I’ll also add the indexing to disconnect from the feeling of pain. That was interesting.
Christian: Yeah, the idea of instead of saying I, you say you. Good one. Someone else?
Participant: One of the things I learned also was about going for your ideal. When we did the exercise on weight and how much weight lost, it really hit home about really going for what you want versus kind of being safe.
Christian: Great. Someone else?
Participant: For me one of the most valuable things I’ve gotten so far I think came out of one of our sessions with other participants and that was the idea from Eric that I use each contact that I have in my taxi as a possible prospect as a possible client. I’ve been doing that, passing out cards, explaining what coaching is and what can be done with it for the people who have my undivided attention.
Christian: Great.
Participant: I learned a lot but two big things that really stick out for me the one is relieving some of that pressure to perform. That having been coaching people on a month-to-month basis and only three sessions in the month that’s like okay the first session has to be hot out of the gate. I really like requiring a longer commitment because coaching really does take change over time. Three weeks is hardly enough time to do lots of great drastic changes for people so I like that and I will be extending my requirement from month-to-month to at least three months, maybe even longer.
The other thing is just that value in a person deciding to seek coaching in and of itself being a benefit to that person and they get value from coaching just from making that decision. Those were two real big things for me.
Christian: Great. Awesome. Thank you.
Participant: I’ve learned the importance of reframing. I’ve known it before but I saw it in action during our buddy coaching that when you see what could look like a list of negatives, percentages of coaches that don’t make it, to reframe it and look at the percentages that are making it, it’s just much more pleasant, much more hopeful. Also, the balanced reality check of yes it might be a stretch and that’s okay but remember there are those that do it and I’m going to be one of those.
Christian: High five over the phone to that one. I love it. Good. Let’s just take a couple of more. Does anyone else have one that you’d like to share?
Participant: I have to say that my buddy coaching has been incredibly powerful and in just a couple of session we’ve gotten together I’ve learned a lot from both of them so I’m very happy to have had the opportunity just to do the couple of sessions we’ve done. I’m really looking forward to the upcoming sessions, kind of knitting together some of the things we’ve covered in class here and putting it in practice has been really, really exciting.
Christian: That’s fantastic. Now, are any of the three of you that are in your trio, have any of you had coach training in the past?
Participant: I haven’t, I know myself and Scott haven’t. Eric is quite a skilled coach so don’t let him tell you wrong.
Christian: That’s great. It sounded like everyone has not had previous coach training, right?
Participant: Right.
Christian: And already you guys are making a big impact on each other right?
Participant: Right.
Christian: The reason I’m pointing this out is because this is a testament to the power of coaching regardless of who the coach is. Not to say that you guys aren’t great coaches or don’t have a lot to offer or don’t already have the right stuff because obviously you do. But, I just wanted to reinforce that yeah this coaching stuff in and of itself is so powerful even though we’re just barely even scratching the surface of all the things that you’ll be learning and become more skilled and proficient at and you will be able to great even more value for your clients as you get more of this stuff under your belt. I think that’s just a fantastic testament to the power of coaching. I’m so happy to hear that you guys are kicking butt.
I know obviously it’s also a testament to those of you who are in this program and it’s a testament to those of you who are in that specific trio. So great going.
Participant: I just have a quick question about that.
Christian: Yeah.
Participant: Do you think that the success of the individual trios is partially because the people who are in this program are drawn to coaching and so are by nature ideal coaching clients and so are willing to put forth the effort and kind of understand it? Do you think this is something that we should expect with other non-coach clients? Do you know what I’m saying?
Christian: Yeah, I do. That’s a great question, I’m so glad you asked it. That’s just a great, great, great question. I’m just going to resay the question so that it’s even clearly hopefully for everybody. The idea is that coaches in this program may be more coachable, more open to coaching, more ready to put your heart on a sleeve open up and really go for it. The answer to that question is, of course that’s true. They are more open and all that but, there’s also a big difference in that when people hire you for coaching and are paying you money they also have a high level of desire for change and are willing to open up and go for it because whatever they want to change hasn’t worked yet on their own.
If they’re willing to pay for it they’re probably in some pain and willing to do whatever it takes to make a change. Now, will you ever get some people that have some resistance to coaching? Perhaps but, I’ll also be teaching you guys and ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be teaching you how to keep that resistance from even happening in the first place. Actually, we’ve already talked about a lot of those things in the first few sessions. A lot of that is going to keep any resistance from even coming up in the first place. Most of what you guys already know will keep resistance from coming up in the first place but a lot of what you’ll be learning coming up soon will teach you how when you notice resistance, what to do about it. Does that answer your question sufficiently?
Participant: Yes.
Christian: Especially when people are paying really good fees, they are pretty open to doing what needs to be done.
Participant: I can answer that by saying that my experience over the last year and a half of coaching is yes, that’s true when you have a client that pays I haven’t seen much difference in the coaching trio by coaching other coaches or how we coach each other to what I’ve experienced in my coaching with other clients. You get some that are just as open and some that are a little bit harder to get to but there’s a variety people out there probably both in coaches and non-coaches.
Christian: Yeah, absolutely. Great. Okay, anything else anyone wants to share? Something that maybe you just remembered that you want to share to review what we’ve learned previously? We’ll take one last one if anyone has one.
Participant: I would just like to underscore what you said about when you coach, I noticed that in our buddies coaching session today the power of coaching. It was my first time that I’d experienced it. I have done a lot of change work as an organizational development consultant and I’ve seen that but I’ve not experienced coaching before and there is a difference. What’s nice about it is to see that flow or momentum start to kick in is you really can get yourself out of the way and you really can start the process because there’s something magical that’s happening and it’s beyond you, you don’t have to get ego involved and it takes a lot of pressure off which is wonderful. I just wanted to share that that was my experience of seeing what was happening.
Christian: Great. Thank you for sharing that. Excellent. I just want to also open this up before we jump in to our main content for today, I just want to open this up for any questions about anything that has happened so far, any questions that anyone has about anything I guess? Why is the sky blue?
Participant: Or, why is it grey?
Christian: Why is it grey? Well, right now it’s dark here in San Diego, I’m sure it’s dark almost everywhere right now. Great, it seems like no one has questions, that’s just fine. If you have any feel free to speak up and ask and you can certainly get in touch with me outside of the call to. Send me a quick email or make a quick phone call or whatever.
So tonight’s session is going to focus primarily on strategizing your actions. There’s a five part methodology that this whole program is based on. I don’t know if I’ve actually mentioned it on these recordings yet, now that I think of it, I’m thinking I might not have or maybe a little bit in the first session. But, the five part methodology is know where you are going, strategize your actions, upgrade your skills, optimize your environment and master your psychology. Today we’re going to be talking about strategizing your actions.
You have already had one or two sessions with your buddy coaches for those of you who are participating in doing the buddy coaching in your trio format. For those of you who still want to and haven’t, feel free to use the Yahoo Group and the contact list to get in touch with people. I haven’t updated the list to remove people who are already in a trio yet. What I would say is still use the Yahoo Group because that seemed like that worked out really well. Did that work our really well for most of you?
Participant: Yes, absolutely.
Participant: Yes.
Christian: If anyone is having trouble forming their trio just email me and I’ll match you up with somebody else who might be having trouble. We’ll find a way to make it work for you. Alright, so you’ve had some coaching and on the last session we talked about setting goals and direction and going for the optimal goal and the difference between having goals and direction and they’re both useful. Today we’ll be talking about strategizing your actions. Once you know what you want then we need to figure out is how are we going to make it happen, how are we going to get it. There’s a couple of important things and I want to just actually point out some of the biggest mistakes that coaches make just so you guys can skip that step.
Participant: That would be wonderful.
Participant: Thank you.
Christian: Some of the biggest mistakes that coaches make with the whole strategizing your actions process is that the coach will tell the client how to do it. I see it a lot in different ways and in some topics more than others but let’s say somebody has a goal of working less hours in their business or something like that and so the coach will say, “Okay, here’s what you need to do. You need to manage your time better so you can be more productive and work less hours. Does that make sense?” The client is probably like, “Well yeah, absolutely.” Then the coach will tell the client exactly how they should manage their time, “You should do this, you should do that, you should do this, you should do that.” Some of them might be things that the client feels they can do easily and some of them are things that they may have heard before and tried before and struggled with and some of them may be things that sound like a great idea but then they’re just not necessarily a really good fit for the client.
I guess I would characterize the mistake of strategizing your actions that coaches make is that you know the right way to get there for them. Now, coaches if you start coaching the same types of people, let’s say you’re a relationship coach or you’re a sales coach, or a health coach or a weight loss coach, when you become more of an expert at something and really specialize, you may have sort of a formula for success that really works well. That plan that you might have for everybody may very well work for most people you’ll just want to keep in mind that everybody is different, everybody has different strengths.