In this episode Andrea and Robyn explore the differences between managing and coaching. In the coaching world there are significant differences between managing and coaching and specific contexts and situations that apply to each. Robyn also shares a funny story about her daughter at an airport in Bali – listen in to see how coaching plays a role.

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Robyn: Hi everyone and welcome to CoachStreet, Episode 9. I’m Robyn Logan, here with my co-host Andrea Lee. We’re bringing you a fantastic episode this week on Managing versus Coaching. Andrea, how are you?

Andrea:  I’m terrific. I’m thrilled for this episode.

Robyn:  We could all use it, running a business and being coaches at the same time. Listeners, just so you know, this is actually why we chose this topic. Just before this call Andrea and I were having a little de-brief on the challenges we’ve had being a coach and running a business.

I’ll just jump in and start with where I see the challenges and then we can move into some of the experiences you’ve had recently. My experience is, as a coach, coaching is all about empowering people, being positive, having people be self-directed in their learning, having people take responsibility for their own outcomes, client-focused, etc.

What I’ve noticed in my own personal experience in running a business is that my tendency is to manage with that approach. I don’t like to be the person who is the leader, demanding results and not allowing people to do their own thing.

Even, for example, in the way our company is structured in work time, it’s not a 9-to-5 company. We find a lot of staff, when they first start with us, have a challenge with that. They keep wanting to clock on a 9 o’clock and tell me they’re here and tell me, “I’m just going down the street for half an hour.”

It takes a while to train people into the idea that I don’t really care—well, I do. We have a group chat going all day on Skype and if you’re on green then you’re at work. If you’re not on green you’re not at work. What I care about is the result at the end of the month. But it’s a very flexible, fluid arrangement. My challenge has been how to manage without losing that sort of coach approach. It’s a very, very fine line to walk, I think.

So that’s where I’m coming from with this topic. What about you, Andrea?

Andrea:  It’s similar. I think in a coaching environment, when you are a coach, the dynamic is very clear. The client is the boss; you are the guide. When you use a coaching approach in running your business it can be a little blurry, like you are no longer letting somebody else be the boss. Your employees, your contractors, your team, they’re not the boss of you. They don’t get to dictate the agenda like your coaching clients do.

So because of that it can be a slippery slope for us who love to use the coaching approach. We can forget sometimes that a coaching approach still means that as a boss you have the authority and that you need to hang onto your authority and do so in a good style. You don’t want to be a bully. You need to know who is the boss.

Robyn:  You’re not the boss of me now.

Andrea:  [sings] You’re not the boss of me now.

Robyn:  They have that show on television. I’ve run into the room and started singing, “I am the boss of you now.” Maybe that should be the induction for every new staff member. Sing that song, “I am the boss of you now.”

How to have that authority without being a mean, horrible boss? How to be the boss of people but also have them empowered is the tricky thing.

Andrea:  It is tricky, isn’t it? I think some of the distinctions are our skills and tools in coaching that are 100%transferrable, like good listening or asking great questions or communicating clearly and cleanly. Those are straight-on great coaching skills and they’re 100% transferrable to managing.

Then there are other skills that are more coach-like or there are other requirements of the management position that cannot be 100% fulfilled through a coaching approach, such as disciplining. Saying, “I asked for X and you didn’t deliver X and now there’s a consequence.” That’s a management skill, not a coaching skill.

Robyn:  So there are two things. One is the coaching skills that would work well for managing. The manager as coach approach, if you like. Management is normally seen as being about telling, directing, this is the outcome I want, this is how you do it. Coaching has more of a reputation of being more facilitating, a partnership, etc.

But those are the skills that can be transferred. It can be collaborative. It can be using powerful questions rather than just telling. You can use all those things in managing but I think you need a clear framework. That’s what I’ve discovered, anyway. It’s the management framework which is the things you’re talking about.

It’s really accountability. Setting up some sort of accountability structure for actions and outcomes, which I guess is part of coaching, too, isn’t it? Let me give you an example. Here’s one way that I do it. One of my pet hates in business is being asked for feedback and then not having that feedback used.

I’m really careful not to be collaborative and consultative if I already know what I want. There’s no point in asking everyone and doing a big strategic planning session when I already know what I want. That’s the first thing. I don’t do that.

What I tend to do is if I already know what I want, I put that out there. I always like to start with putting out some sort of vision, some sort of leadership or direction for the company, and then I ask for consultation/feedback on that direction. Then people do get to feel ownership over it. It can change if some great ideas come up; then we change it. But it’s really clear though that the organization is run by me, not through a client-directed or staff-directed approach.

The second thing is to try and break that up. You can use all sorts of things—words, strategies, goals, targets, outcomes. Just chunk it into really distinct projects with outcomes and then put as much effort as possible into communicating exactly what the end product would look like and being really clear on that.

Make sure the team is really clear on that. The clearer they are, the more able you are to then let everybody go and have more of a coach approach and then setting the accountability structure for reporting or deadlines or things like that. So that’s one way I do it.

Andrea:  That’s such a gem. I hope everybody’s really soaking it in. I think one of the things I’d love to list out a bit more is the timing of it. You might think that as a new coach and a newer entrepreneur, I have my opinion but I’ll let everybody else go first.

From a management perspective that’s actually really terrible. If you let everybody else go first and then you actually have an agenda and you come behind them and say, “Well, that’s nice guys but this is actually how it’s going to go,” then all of a sudden…

Robyn:  It’s so disempowering, isn’t it? I’ve had it happen to me and I hate it.

Andrea:  Why did you ask my opinion if you already knew? So the timing of it, not being as consultative but also stepping out in leadership and putting out the vision first. That’s just a key step.

Robyn: I think accountability is something I struggle with because I understand when deadlines are not met, which is sort of a strength and a weakness. You don’t want to be one of those people that are just absolutely so fixed on a certain deadline and the outcomes for that deadline that you can’t see something that might change in the environment.

In fact, I read a great book on holiday. I just had the most beautiful holiday in Bali where I did nothing but read and swim. I read this great book, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, about Steve Jobs and Apple.

What was really interesting was that I read the Steve Jobs biography last year when it came out and I got about halfway through it and I had to put it down because I just couldn’t stand to be in that man’s headspace for one more minute.

He was just horrible. In this bio he was portrayed as this tyrant who would just walk into meetings after people had spent months preparing documents and plans and then he’d just scrap it and say, “We’re not doing that. It’s hopeless.” He’d have people in tears, all sorts of things, right? He was portrayed as this creative genius.

Insanely Simple is written by Ken Segall, who worked with him. It’s a completely different perspective and a very interesting one. It’s a great read and it really shows a style of management that I think could be a bit softer. I think Steve Jobs could have had a bit more of a coach approach.

What he wasn’t afraid of was plans that change. It was completely okay at any point for anyone to walk in—they might be working on an ad campaign that had been completely locked down but they could walk in and say, “I had an idea last night. I really think it should go in this direction.” And he was completely fine with doing that.

That doesn’t often happen when people get over-invested in the accountability structures, like big companies where they put the plan in place and it’s all on paper. You’ve got your goals, your strategies, your outcomes, targets. Then it goes to all the stakeholders and everybody agrees with it. Then it comes back and goes up to the next level of management and that gets endorsed.

Then that becomes “The Plan.” You can’t change The Plan. I try and walk that line between being flexible and being able to about-face and completely lose a month’s work if we all think that’s a good idea but at the same time not be doing that all the time. I don’t know about you but I find that such a challenge and I always have to watch about being over-complex and letting complexity come in.

There are great stories in there like a piece about Final Cut Pro video editing software that Apple bought from another company to add to their software which normally filmmakers will pay $20,000 just for that. They went through this whole process of designing two boxes and two brand names.

Jobs came into the meeting and said, “Get it, put it in that box there. We’re selling it like that. One box. Just give it to them because it’s cheaper and easier to just give it to them and have one product to sell rather than having to do the marketing and advertising and stock-keeping of two products.”

Andrea: I love it. I have another thought about managing versus coaching. You have a team of how many people there now and I’m running a team of three or four and several subcontractors and such. Managing is quicker. Coaching takes longer. You might, in certain circumstances, be able to get clearer desired results by doing a performance review or add responsibilities to a person’s plate.

You can get there through coaching but managing being much more black-and-white and directive, it’s almost like managing is like a list of bullet points and coaching is like an essay.

That’s one of those things that as an entrepreneur, as you seek to grow your coaching business, especially when you start getting into some good income, up to six figures, your time is at such a premium you’re not going to want to always have to coach someone around everything.

Robyn:  Absolutely. And particularly coaches that are growing businesses and employing those first few people, like someone to do their website or somebody to be a VA, you do want to have a great relationship. You do need to connect with that person on a human level but really, I agree. It does take a long time.

It’s different, too, because when you’re coaching a client it’s okay for it to take a long time because it’s better for it to take longer and to come from the client. Then they will own it and it will actually happen rather than happen quickly and the client really isn’t onboard. It’s a different paradigm. In the management paradigm you are wanting to get things done as quickly as possible. You don’t have to be Steve Jobs, horrible.

I think something you said before we started recording about being a clear communicator is a really key piece of the puzzle, particularly at the beginning of any relationship. Really being able to communicate clearly what your expectations are and probably in writing is a good idea.

Andrea:  It’s curious because I know some of our listeners may be more veteran coaches. I know I suffer from this, where coaching has started to really integrate with your identity. It’s not so much that you’re a “Coach” but the way you are, the coaching personality.

Managing, on the other hand, there really are some kinds of managing personalities but what I think helps me most is to remember that being the manager/boss is a job. It’s a role, whereas being coach-like can be part of my personality.

The difference helps me because if I’m having to have a tough conversation as a boss then I can be that tough boss when I need to but it doesn’t mean that I am that person. Yet I can still be that coach-like person.

Robyn:  Yes, I cherish that part of my identity. I’d like to highlight that there is a role for coaching in organizations, as well, with staff. There are in-house coach programs, particularly in companies.

Another key difference is that the power relationship between a manager and a staff member is always there. You’re employing that person and no matter how friendly and coach-like you appear to be, you can always let them go the next day for whatever reason. So there’s a power dynamic there. That’s not a coaching relationship.

A good coaching relationship is objective and with no vested interest. Your coach should not have a vested interest whereas with a manager you’ve totally got a vested interest. You really want that person to perform to their peak, not just for them but because it’s got the better outcome for your business. So I think just being clear on the differences there is important.

Coaching is also fantastic for staff to have but probably best done by a different person.

Andrea:  I think a good question to address here–as we wrap up and do some Spot the Coaching because that’s our favorite way to end it here—is when do you know when you should manage and when you should coach? Like if you have just one virtual assistant and you’re saying, “Okay, I get the differences from this podcast but when do you know?”

It’s interesting because there are varying ways you can approach this. My opinion is that it’s good to start from the more disciplinary or authoritarian role and soften from there. My husband used to be a substitute teacher and it was always like when you’re a substitute teacher you go in with a bit stick and then you can crack a joke later. You do not play and crack a joke at the beginning of a class or it’s all over.

So be a manager first, appropriately within your business, in the role where you are, in fact, the manager. Then as the relationship develops and different interactions occur then you can be more coach-like.

Robyn:  I like that, too. I use that approach as well but I’m just wondering—with your dog, is that how you did it? Because I find with dogs and children it’s a great way to practice your management skills and practice being, “Okay, I’m going to set some clear boundaries here.” Then once they learn those, then it’s okay to come in through the dog door if you like or whatever.

Andrea:  You are so right. Everyone gets to practice. Maybe we’ll do a Spot the Coaching in the future around trying to coach our dogs to do things.

Robyn:  When we watch our trainer train our dog she is unbelievable. I just watch her in awe of her very clear boundaries and very—I guess you’d call her a benevolent dictator in her style of management. I said to her, “Listen, can you come back and do my kids?” She’s great.

Andrea:  I bet she hears that a lot, actually.

Robyn:  This is about when we were returning—Australians will know this—but most of the flights out of Bali into Australia were midnight flights. Well, they used to be midnights but people got confused about midday and midnight so they made them 11 p.m. It was painful. A lot of people with young children are flying back at that time.

We got to the airport and our kids are pretty tired. My daughter, Tilda, went to sleep, which is fine. We’d just wake her up in a few minutes. But then what happened is they delayed the flight to 12:30 or 1 o’clock in the morning.

By that stage she’d had two or three hours sleep. There’s a particular thing about Tilda. Ever since she was little, if you wake her up from a deep sleep she just goes nuts. It’s some state of where she’s not really awake. She’ll scream and kick and it’s very difficult. We were like, “Oh, what are we going to do when it comes time to board?”

Then it got worse. They announced the boarding gate and they had changed it to the gate at the furthest end of the airport. So we’re getting our bags and thinking, ‘We can wake Ryder up. He can drag a bag half-asleep but what are we going to do with Tilda?’

We both noticed this like kitchen trolley outside the kitchen that you put all the drinks on and move them off. So I said, “I’m going to get that trolley.” Very purposefully I walked over like I was meant to get it and pulled it back.

It didn’t work. Within two minutes I got a tap on the shoulder and it was a guy from the kitchen. He was like, “Oh ma’am, I’m sorry. You cannot have the trolley.”

So then I was really grumpy—it was one in the morning. I started to argue but then I went, “Just hang on a minute.”

What I needed to do here was work out what’s really going on for him. This was where the coaching bit comes in. I jumped below the surface conversation and started to ask him questions. From that I worked out that his main concern wasn’t about breaking the law or keeping an eye on trolleys or safety or anything.

His main concern was that if he didn’t get that trolley back to the kitchen he would get the sack. So once I worked that out I changed the conversation. I went, “Okay. I 100% promise I’ll bring this trolley back. In fact, you can come with us.” He was so happy with that that he said, “Oh, I’ll help, I’ll help.”

He took the trolley from me and wheeled her. It was quite good because it was one of those where the legs are really weird. It’s not meant to have sleeping children on it. So him doing it was 100 times better. He wheeled it the whole way. And not only that, but when we got there at that stage we were such good friends, chatting all the way down the airport, when we got there he ran into his friends at Garuda and grabbed a wheelchair for us.

We transported her to the wheelchair. Then when we approached the gate, because she was in a wheelchair—this was a little bit funny, actually—they pulled us through to the front of the line. I was trying to tell them she could walk but they said, “No, no, wheelchair, wheelchair.” So we all got to board first.

Actually, that was a little bit embarrassing. I was like, “What are we going to do in the morning when she jumps up and all of a sudden she can walk?” Anyway, we decided just to run with it. In the morning we just went, “It’s a miracle.”

Andrea:  See, it is a miracle because it was a coaching approach that led to this beautiful, smooth boarding. What a great example of coaching happening in real life, out in the wild, when we don’t even notice.

Robyn:  CoachStreet. I’m going to put the picture up with this episode so people can see. There’s a photo of her on the trolley.

So that’s a wrap for another episode. This was Episode 9. We’re coming up for Episode 10 with another juicy topic. We don’t even know what it is yet, do we?

Andrea:  Very exciting. You never know what’s going to happen on CoachStreet.

Robyn:  We’ll see you next time.

The post Ep #09: Managing & Coaching – What’s the Difference appeared first on International Coach Academy.

In this episode Andrea and Robyn show you that getting a coach has tons of benefits – how a coach can save you time, money, uplift your health and ultimately keep you right on track on what is most important to your life and family. Being a coach yourself is also important. Listen through or read on to know why.

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Robyn: Hi everyone. Welcome to Coach Street, Episode 8. I’m Robyn Logan with my co-host, Andrea Lee. Today we’re bringing everyone a great episode on “Why You Should Get a Coach.” We’re going to look at personal stories, why Andrea and I both got coaches, and what we got out of our coaching. Also, as a coach, why we think everyone in the entire universe should have coaches. Right, Andrea?

Andrea:  Yeah, but I think we should really start this episode out with a very important announcement, don’t you? Isn’t today a very special day?

Robyn:  Oh, no.

Andrea:  Come on.

Robyn:  Okay, off you go.

Andrea:  Happy Birthday to You. [Sings].

Robyn:  That’s great. Thank you very much. It’s my birthday today and I was just saying before I couldn’t think of a better thing to do on my birthday than a lovely little Coach Street episode in the morning before I go out for my beautiful three-course lunch.

Andrea:  In listener comments we’ll try and coach Robyn into getting some ideas for funner things to do on her birthday than record podcasts. You know what? Isn’t it nice and sweet that she wants to spend time with you on her birthday?

It’s a great episode we have planned. Why the heck get a coach? Sometimes it might seem basic, like everyone knows a coach is a good thing, but when things become a little cliché, everyone needs a coach or everyone benefits from a coach, I think it’s smart to review our assumptions once in a while and drop into the details.

I thought it would be fun if we each shared a highlight of both being a coach and how that would relate to why a person should consider getting a coach. Also, being coached, right? We’ve both had our fair share of coaches.

Robyn:  Totally. Why don’t we start with being coached? I think a great place to start is your first coach. What made you get a coach?

Andrea:  I was in career transition. I didn’t know what to do next. I was actually in some legal trouble and I had a swirl of overwhelm, a lot of confusion about what would be the best thing to do. I was very emotional and I really needed something to change. I actually really didn’t know what. It was just so unclear. I just knew something was wrong and needed to be different, so that was the main impetus.

Robyn:  So that was a while ago, right? Did you actually know about coaching already or did you just stumble across someone who happened to be a coach?

Andrea:  No, I cheated. I knew of coaching before. I had been part of a coaching organization but I hadn’t ever hired a coach before this. I had just been helping people get trained as coaches.

Robyn:  So tell me about your first coaching experience. What was it like?

Andrea:  It was kind of like Heaven and Hell at the same time; a little bit of the agony and the ecstasy, all at the same time. It was amazing to feel like I could be in this safe place and relax and not have to spot myself. I didn’t have to watch out for myself and just trusted that someone else would do that for me. It was a really remarkable sensation.

That coach was able to lift my head up from the details that were right on my desk and in my computer and ask me to look at the horizon. Instead of seeing one tree on one mountain, to be able to see the mountain and even the continent of my life. It startled me awake to say, “My God, I’ve been focusing on the wrong details.”

Robyn: I remember reading about coaching in an inflight magazine. At the time I was running an educational consultancy/training company. So I’d go into companies and train them on all the soft skills. I remember reading about business coaching on an airplane and thinking, oh man, that’s what I need.

I don’t really have any peers. I don’t have a boss. I guess most small business owners are in this position. They have staff; I had subcontractors, a lot of trainers that worked for me. But I really didn’t have anyone I could moan and bitch to about the day except for my partner and I just thought, oh really. I don’t want to come home every night talking about what happened at work today.

The post Ep #08: Why You Should Get a Coach appeared first on International Coach Academy.

In this episode Andrea and Robyn swap tips and strategies you can use to provide awesome value to your clients. They particularly look at what you do when your client fronts up with no pressing issues and no problems to solve.

“Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success

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Hi everyone. Welcome to Coach Street. This is Episode #7, “How to Deliver Awesome Value to Your Clients.” I’m Robyn Logan and jumping in before I’ve even gotten to her name because she’s so excited and so awesome is Andrea Lee.

Andrea:  Hey, hey. This is a great topic.

Robyn:  Did you eat jellybeans for breakfast or something today?

Andrea:  You know, I ate a whole bag of them last week so they still might be impacting me a little bit.

Robyn: Yeah, could be. Okay, I love it, too. I just love the word, “awesome.” You know, we didn’t have that word growing up. Did you?

Andrea:  You were ripped off.

Robyn:   I think it’s an American word more than Australian. “Oh, that’s so awesome.” I shouldn’t do that.

Andrea:  It’s funny because in North America I find that it’s overused, which is interesting. It’s all relative. Actually, that point is a good one to kick off on because coaching being as wonderful as it is, oftentimes people come knowing what they want, or at least they think they know what they want.

But in order to deliver extra-awesome coaching sometimes we need to dig a little bit deeper and go beyond the usual suspects. So that’s part of the reason I thought this would be just a great topic.

Robyn: I totally agree, and particularly if you’ve been working for a client for a long time. I don’t know about you but I’ve had clients for two years or more. That’s a really long-term relationship and sometimes they do walk up to a session with no disasters having happened. Things are on track; whatever it is that they came to the coaching for is happening.

But they don’t want to cancel the coaching. They still want the coaching but there’s nothing in that moment that’s really coming to mind. Have you experienced that?

Andrea:  Definitely. It’s like they tick off their wish list and now they get to have extra and they don’t know how to add that extra.

Robyn:  It’s that moment when you go, “Hi, how is it going?”

“Good.”

“So, what are we working on today?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Things are pretty good, you know? I don’t really have anything.”

Okay, what do you do in that moment? Andrea, what do you do?

Andrea:  I just want to make a tiny note. We’re going to cover some really good topics, especially if you’re newer at coaching.

What I do—my go-to place and this is actually even if the client comes to me with a very specific agenda, is to ask what they’re tolerating. What are they putting up with that’s really got them grumpy? Got them in a bad mood? They’re under-producing. The obstacles that are in their way. All of which we call “toleration.” To make a noun out of the things that you tolerate. They’re a rich and fertile arena for a lot of coaching.

This is going to be new to some people who haven’t yet heard of this concept but the prevailing wisdom about playing to your strengths, I actually believe slightly differently from the point of view of the coaches.

How I do it is I think playing to your strengths is great but if you focus on your weaknesses and improve them—like taking what you’re tolerating and putting up with and improving those—you give yourself even more momentum than if you were to work on your strengths.

Robyn:  Sure. Why not? I think the strength thing is, to be fair, more about not focusing solely on your weaknesses, right? You absolutely have to do that. You know, this tolerating thing is such a great concept. Even talking about it is making me want a session on it because I think toleration—well, mine anyway—they become invisible.

They’re like these weeds in the garden that start really little and you think, “Oh yeah, I must do something about that.” Then life happens and you get better at tolerating. In fact, I’m very good at toleration. Then before you know it, you’re actually putting up with things that are really getting in the way.

I can give you one example. It’s not a major thing but the bottom drawer in our fridge dropped off like six months ago. Really, a long time. Just too many big things of orange juice and it just dropped off. So that’s one entire space missing. So I’m constantly trying to put bottles of orange juice on the side and cramming them in.

For the first couple of weeks it was really annoying. I’ve got to do something about that. Then I found a way to just fit the orange juice around the back. I just started tolerating it. Then I had someone come in and do a bit of work for me around the house and she was like, “Oh, what’s going on with that fridge? Let’s get that fixed.”

Bang, bang, bang, two days later, new rack on the fridge. The feeling of putting the orange juice in the drawer was amazing. So that’s just an example but when you apply that to lots of other things in your life it can make a big difference.

Andrea:  This is actually central to some of Thomas Leonard’s teachings. You can just spend a coaching relationship dealing with toleration. That would be incredibly fruitful and valuable to the client. They will return to you and you get a really good reputation.

Imagine your life in every way, like when you get up in the morning and the instant you put your feet on the ground, what are you putting up with? Oh, this sheet on my bed doesn’t fit exactly right. The floor’s cold. I need a rug over here. I go to the bathroom and the hot water’s only warm, it’s not really hot. I need to change that setting on the hot water tank. The mirror has handprints all over it. The list goes on, right?

So if you can, bit by bit in a coaching relationship, and also in your relationship because here at Coach Street we like to over-deliver. It’s something that you can do starting today. Ask yourself, “How can I improve these little things that are speed-bumps in my life?” It will really make a difference.

Robyn:  Has Thomas Leonard got a product out there? I do remember him being big on tolerating.

Andrea:  There is a toleration free class that is no longer available, unfortunately, but the concept is essentially what we’re describing.

Robyn:  I thought in his materials—you’ve published a lot of the materials.

Andrea:  We haven’t got that part published.

Robyn:  Well then, we need to create something on tolerating, don’t we? I think a little worksheet on that would be so handy for coaches to use with clients. It can even extend to behaviors and relationships. You know the classic saying, you get in your life what you put up with, particularly if there’s an abusive relationship going on. That can only actually happen if you allow it to happen.

It’s interesting—the minute you decide you know what? I’m not putting up with that anymore. I’m not tolerating that anymore. You draw the line in the sand, that’s the first step to changing something that you don’t like about your life.

Andrea:  So tolerations are a really strong go-to place to deliver awesome value to your clients, even if they come to you knowing what they want. You can approach that topic from the perspective of getting rid of the toleration.

Robyn:  What if they say, “I’m not tolerating anything?”

Andrea:  Oh, I would eat my shirt if I ever heard that. I really, really would. It’s just from so many years and so many conversations and experiences. “Really? So it’s perfect? Then what are we working on then?”

Robyn:  That’s a great one, excellent. The next way to deliver awesome value to your clients is one of the things I like to do. It’s the life spring-clean concept, which is just checking in with yourself. This is not even just with clients. I do it on my own life, as well. Every now and again, just checking in with your clients. Are they really doing what they want to do?

Even just asking the powerful questions, “Is what you are doing now what you really want to do? If you could wave a magic wand, the day that you had today, is that the day you would have every day?”

The reason I think this is a great question is because clients set goals when they first come and we all have some sort of plan or vision of where we’re going in the next few years at least. But then life gets in the way and you take on things that you might not have really wanted to take on. Some people don’t have a very good ability to say no. Me, for example.

And before you know it, your life is different to what you had thought it would be. So it is a little bit like a spring clean. It’s like a de-cluttering of things that are going on in your life. I think that’s another great exercise to do with clients.

Andrea:  It’s just like with a rocketship. If your life is a rocketship and you’re off course by even a .01%, over the course of your life you will end up off-course. That’s true of all our clients so asking this question actually delivers incredible value. It’s one of those questions that people don’t think to ask themselves. They’re in it to the degree that they don’t realize that they’re off-course, so your value as a coach really goes up if you ask it of them.

Robyn:  You have to ask it more than once because sometimes people think that they’re fine. I guess it’s back to tolerating. Sometimes as humans we don’t actually realize the vision that you could have for yourself because you’ve had so many people telling you your whole life that it’s not possible. You have to settle. It’s the settling mindset that people get. I think if you dig down underneath the settling mindset you’ll find that there are dreams there that they might not have had a chance to consciously bring to the surface.

The purpose and the surface. So I think that’s a really good one. There are lots of exercises for that. You can do vision exercises which is another great way to deliver awesome value. You can do these on the phone. You can run a short mindfulness exercise or a vision exercise.

A great one that I often use is the Martian from outer space arriving on Earth and discovering your life and deciding to create it in an entirely new and different way.

It’s just a silly exercise but what it does is it enables people to move outside of where they are now and to think about themselves completely differently. As if it didn’t matter; without taking into account what their husband thinks or what their parents think or what their employers or the children think. To forget all of that and just think about themselves.

Andrea:  I love that. Another really cool thing that is similar to that is to imagine the doorbell rings. Ding-dong. You go to the door and it’s CNN with video cameras rolling. What is it that you’d race to hide or change before they come in? You have just five minutes. Those are often the things that people need to work on.

Robyn:  Okay, I’m thinking about what I would race to hide.

Andrea:  For me, at this point it’s a little bit late. I live my life in a way that if CNN were to arrive it would be okay. You know what I mean?

Robyn:  I think I’d just welcome them in and say, “Listen, if you want me you take me how you found me. This is my life. Come on in.”

Andrea:  I think your coaching is done. I like that.

Andrea:  Mindset is especially valuable for clients who come to you asking very insistently for a nuts-and-bolts solutions and tools and tricks. Those of you who are in corporate coaching or business coaching or financial coaching, things like that, oftentimes they say, “Look, I just want to know exactly what to do. Tell me in what order and when and exactly what to do.”

This can be very frustrating. Obviously if you’re very good at what you’re doing you will give them what they’re looking for but to dig deeper into what greater value you can deliver to clients is to ask, “What’s the mindset with which they’re approaching the concrete to-dos?”

So often that is the root of what might be at issue. It doesn’t matter how genius your to-dos are if the mindset hasn’t been addressed.

Robyn:  Can different clients easily do that, though? How do you identify your mindset?

Andrea:  It’s one of those things that as a coach, over time, you start to gain an intuition. Maybe an example or two would help. For example, just today I was coaching a business owner. She’s a coach and she’s been doing really well one-on-one.

She’s just recently launched a group program and she wanted to know exactly how she should earn more money. So she filled her group program. My advice to her was to change her mindset about selling the next group program if her current group program is full. She was like, “It’s full. I need more tactics on how to make more money. Tell me exactly what I need to do. Do I write an ebook? Do I raise my fees? What do I do?”

Well, in fact, what it was was a simple mindset. She thought that she couldn’t sell the next group that was starting in a month. The existing group was on; she was delivering to that existing group. She pre-sold the next month’s group program. What kind of money was she going to earn next month?

It almost doesn’t matter why she thought it. She had this mindset that she couldn’t. And it’s like, “That’s really strange. Why can’t you sell that program now and tell people that it starts then and just keep going?”

Robyn:  It’s questioning your assumptions, as well, isn’t it?

Andrea:  That’s true.

Robyn:  Because we all have so many of them going on all the time. I love that about coaching. This is one of my favorite things about coaching, is when my coach will challenge some of the assumptions that I’m making. “Does it have to be like that? Who said it has to be like that?”

Andrea:  So that’s sort of a mindset thing. It’s definitely a little bit advanced. It’s one of my favorite things because as you get a bit more experienced listening to this episode of Coach Street, you’ll know what I mean when I say you can coach the tactics until you’re blue in the face. But if the mindset isn’t quite right, you’re not going to get as far as you could. So it’s a place to dig deeper to add more value to your clients.

Robyn:  I should think that increasingly people are open to that now because there’s a lot more written about mindset now. A lot more businesspeople talk about how important mindset is. I’ve even noticed in bookstores, like if you go to the airport bookstore–which is one of my favorite places to hang out–the self-help section and the business section used to be on opposite sides of the store.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but they’re slowly merging. The self-help section’s right next to the business section, and sometimes in it. There are just so many more books now about the importance of mindset to success in business.

Another thing I like to look at all the time for delivering awesome value to clients is leverage. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Back in my consulting days, when you tried to get a result for a client there were only three things you could look at. That’s the time, money, quality thing. You’re familiar with this, right, where they say you can only have two of those things. This isn’t good for a girl like me who wants to have my cake and eat it, too.

Anyway, so the concept is that these are the limited resources that we have at our disposal, time, and money being the main two. So if you want to do something cheaply and you want to do it fast, then it’s hard to keep good quality. If you want really top-quality and you still want to do it cheaply, it could take a long time. That’s the concept with that.

But I love to look at that just with life. So if your client was a business coach that’s an easy one to work on any time. You look at how you can get the result you’re getting now with less time or with less money. Just that question is a great question for anyone in business or anyone who has a client who is a business coach. It should be the question you’re asking yourself every week.

You can also apply that to your life. How can you leverage your time and money? I’ll give you an example. After-school activities are insane now. My kids are ten and eight now. I thought it was tough when they were three but when they’re three they’re not really in dance class and they’re not playing football, so it’s a little bit easier at the end of the day.

Now they’re playing sports, they’re doing all sorts of things. I’m always looking at how I can leverage my time. That’s my limited resource. So how can I leverage that?

They want to do all these after-school activities, so what I did is I tried to find activities that were on at the same building at the same time. So I found this big sports center that did a swimming squad and girls’ basketball at the same time. It took a while to find it but I finally did find it and that’s what we do.

Luckily it wasn’t ballet and I didn’t make my son do ballet or something like that. They did actually want to do those sports. Still, if I hadn’t tried to look for it I would have been doing them on separate nights in separate locations. You know, driving 40 minutes across town. So that’s an example.

Andrea:  I think of that, Robyn, for me personally the way I put it is I’m getting more done than I think. I might not realize it but I’m getting more done than I think when things are overlapping. It will become more clear later exactly how productive I’ve been.

Robyn:  You’re saying just generally speaking that’s how you feel?

Andrea:  Generally speaking as well as specifically. Let’s say, in my business if I’m coaching a client privately I also know that I’m—in a sense—writing my next book or preparing for my next workshop. If I’m teaching my next workshop, I know that I’m also preparing for my next private client. It kind of goes both ways.

So that concept of leverage takes the pressure off of me. So many of us are over-achievers or high-achievers. It takes the pressure off of me that I can trust that leverage is occurring.

Robyn:  I think it’s a way of thinking that unless you’re aware of it or even know that it’s a possibility, that it doesn’t necessarily happen. I think of this friend of mine, Maria, who’s Spanish. Her mother used to cook. They were from rural Spain, about an hour and a half outside of Madrid. She would get a chicken and cook a big casserole thing but she would cook six meals with that chicken.

So I think what happens sometimes, particularly in the Western world, is you just roast the chicken and eat the whole thing. That’s it. That’s dinner. She would have a broth, a soup, come from that. They would take all the innards out and cook sausages with that. They would have about six meals with that one chicken.

That’s why I’m always looking at something and thinking how I’m going to invest my time and money in this activity to get two or three times the benefit or the output.

Andrea:  That’s a woman after my heart, a six-meals-in-one chicken. I love that. Can we have an episode on Coach Street on the six ways to cook a chicken?

Robyn:  Yeah, get her on as a guest.

The next way to deliver awesome value to your clients is financial freedom. Are you going to talk about that?

Andrea:  Financial freedom is a fairly obvious one. However, depending on what kind of niche you’re in in coaching it might not necessarily occur to you to deliver value in that arena. It is present in every human being’s life so it doesn’t matter if you’re coaching them on their health, on parenting, on career or whatever.

Financial freedom is actually a backdrop within our coaching occurs. So don’t be afraid to go ahead and relate back to financial freedom. Ask questions like, “Well, as you bring up your kids, is the idea of your retirement or providing for their college tuition important to you? Would you like to work on that?” That’s a simple way to add value to the coaching conversation.

Robyn:  Like who doesn’t want financial freedom? That’s always got to be a topic you can work on. It was a rhetorical question but then I started to take it seriously. Maybe there are some people who are already financially free so they don’t need it. But then, what does that mean? How free can you be? There are very few people that I know who are so completely free that they’re not working at all.

Even people with really successful businesses, even when they have time freedom and flexibility—you and I both are running very successful businesses, right, and we can just pick up and go over here or there or go on a trip. But it’s not like you’re not working in the background. So I think there’s always space to have a little bit more of that financial freedom.

Andrea:  And quite frankly, I’ll add this little piece. Here and now we’re talking in 2013 and for the next decade and a half for sure, this idea of money and the economy and all that is going to be very strong as a trending conversation in life for human beings in general.

So as a coach, if you’re looking for ways in which to add additional value just for the joy of it in your coaching relationships, relate that to the grand scheme of things. How much debt our society is in, the credit card culture, all of that is without question going to be relevant to your clients for a long time to come.

Robyn:  Do you have any exercises you do with clients on financial freedom?

Andrea:  You know, there are lots of exercises. Probably the best place to start that anyone could start with and it’s just a really beautiful coaching question and anyone could use it and follow an inquiry into it would be to say, “Have you ever thought about how much money is enough?”

It can be taken as a philosophical question. “I never thought about enough. What does enough mean? Does it mean not worrying? Does it mean having ten times as much as I actually need? Is that what’s needed to feel like I have enough?”

But it can also apply to a very tangible set of numbers, like a calculation that we often do in coaching groups around how much reserve is enough. Is a year of financial reserve enough?

If you have 20 years that you’d like to work and then you figure you have about 20 years of retirement, how much money per year of retirement do you really need and is that enough? If we use that number and then divide by the number of years that you want to work, that means you need to earn X amount. Are they on plan to do that?

Robyn:  People just don’t do that simple step, do they? It’s really weird. I think you could combine your mindset with the financial freedom.

Andrea:  That’s a great point to make.

Robyn:  I think really, just the beliefs people have about money—that’s a great question to ask a client. “What are your top three beliefs about money?”

They might say, “I don’t know. What do you mean, belief?”

Everybody has a belief about money. I believe money is easy to make. I actually truly believe that. Money is easy to make. But that’s a very different belief to a belief that there’s never enough money. Both those two beliefs are going to make a significant impact on how much money you’ve actually got.

Andrea:  Yeah, I love that, Robyn. I think what you’re doing is pointing to a specific way to add value to clients in a very deep way. It’s different from mindset. I think that takes multiple beliefs to have a mindset, but if you want to drill down on a specific belief or assumption that’s operating and holding a person back like money is hard to make or money is the root of all evil, things like that, those are things that can be very good to work on.

It would probably take a little bit more skill, a little bit more personal experience, a little bit more coaching experience, to do really good belief-change work. It’s a bit tougher than some of these other things but beautiful, beautiful stuff happens when you go there.

Robyn:  I interviewed a financial coach once and I thought that we would talk a lot about ways to make more money, really, or get more money in your life or whatever. Most of the interview was about mindset. It’s really interesting.

Oh, that’s it. We’ve actually ripped through our awesome value to clients list. Are there any more that popped up for you?

Andrea:  Yeah, I think that once you start thinking along the lines to be proactive rather than sitting back and wondering what the client wants to work on today, it’s proactive to think about your clients.

I talk frequently about how, especially for private clients, I have what I call a “crock pot” inside my heart for each one of my clients. It has their photo and name on it and I’ll talk to it and say, “What’s cooking in here? What might be in their blind spot? What can I put into the conversation actively without them prompting it?”

I’m convinced that’s one of the reasons why people seem to appreciate the coaching with me. I don’t take that sit back attitude and say, “What do you want to talk about?” I’m in there with them, you know?

So different things like relationships—you’re working on helping people succeed in business. Well, how are their relationships, both internally in that business or team or staff? Is the business doing really well? Is the spouse really upset and on the verge of leaving? These are bigger picture things that often a client may not bring to you but you as a coach can add value.

The physical health of the client—I remember earlier on in my coaching career that things were going so well for this client. Then they went to the hospital with a nervous breakdown. I coached them through it. I’ve coached people from jail, I coach people in Hollywood, I coach people in the hospital. But I learned that the hard way. So it feels good to share with everyone here on Coach Street. Keep an eye on your client’s health.

Robyn:  But then, really, what can you do with that sort of thing unless the client speaks up and says something?

Andrea:  Well, in that particular case it was like, “How is your energy? What kind of hours are you working?” If they have set a really ambitious goal for this month you’re supposed to be spotting the client, not just taking them at their word.

Robyn:  Right. It’s that thing of being a bit more proactive and not the “What would you like to work on today” coach. So what I thought of in line with that in providing awesome value to your clients is to bring things to the session or to them that they might be interested in. There are resources like reading.

Often I’ll see something that think, that would be great for that client. I just shoot it off in a quick email or connect a client with someone who might be able to help them achieve a goal. I’m sure you do the same thing. That’s another way to bring awesome value to clients.

Andrea:  See how fun it is? Did you just hear how we hit so many things by thinking of our clients proactively? It’s a completely different thing than just sitting back and punching a clock. “Okay, what question do you have for me today?” That’s not really coaching. That’s not a coaching relationship.

Long-range clients—sometimes clients will come to us with short-term issues that are presenting like acute problems. Once you’ve gotten them past that, it can be really wonderful to say, “Well, have you thought about what you’re going to do next year?”

When you do this, what we’re coaching on right now, you can repeat that this time next year. Wouldn’t that be fun to have something to do again? All of a sudden you’re giving them a vantage point that’s completely different than they may have thought of.

Robyn:  You know, just thinking back on all the things we’ve covered today, I can’t imagine why anyone would not have a coach. Why would you not have a coach? How fantastic would it be to have someone doing all of that for you? It would be so cool.

When I think of all the value that a coach delivers to a client, particularly just listening to the passion when you speak about your clients and how you really take them into your heart, I’m like, everyone wants to be your client. Why would you not want to have a coach like that who’s going to deliver such awesome value?

Andrea:  For our listeners who are listening to CoachStreet, we appreciate you so much because you care enough to want to improve. That is a huge difference. Stand in your values as you embrace these things.

Robyn:  I just love that there’s more and more coaches joining the profession. It’s just so exciting to me how it’s growing and how different all the backgrounds are now of people coming into coaching. It’s just fantastic; so much better than 10 years ago.

Andrea:  What are some of the new areas people are coming from to get coaching from? What are some of the new areas that you’ve noticed? I’m just curious.

Robyn:  One I’ve noticed is one we were talking about the other day. In the company we were looking at some stats and when we first started about 10 to 12 years ago, about 80% of the students who came to us wanted to be a professional coach. They were what I would call the “career change” coaches. They were coming in and changing careers and setting up as full-time professional coaches.

What I’ve noticed now in the recent stats is that it’s flipped around. We have something like 60% to 70% of our coaches who are coming in with the view to blend coaching with what they’re already doing. We’re doing a lot of work on what we’re calling the “blended coaching model,” which is actually helping people do that even more.

What I’ve noticed is that people are not throwing out the baby with the dishwater. They’re not turning their backs on their past experience. They’re looking at how they can integrate that with coaching to provide a more rounded offering. It could be the coaching area or it could be in the area they’re in.

For example, the yoga teacher who is doing the life coaching course but still staying with yoga teaching and yoga workshops but just putting in a coach approach. There’s that concept or there’s the yoga teacher who is becoming a life coach for yoga teachers.

So I’m noticing that there’s a different style and approach to coaching than I saw before.

Andrea:  The way that I would describe it is like a shift from the noun of coaches and being a coach to being the proliferation of the verb or the action of coaching. Moving from “coach” to “to coach.” The act of it can be blended with anything. Maybe fewer people are calling themselves a plain old coach.

Robyn:  Yeah, maybe. Maybe that’s the other thing that’s happening. It’s fascinating. I’d like to do a whole episode on that, too, Andrea. We should write that down in our notes.

Robyn:  Mine is from last night, watching telly before bed. Cyndi Lauper is out in Australia at the moment and she was on this late night talk show. Did you know I saw her perform live in New York last year? Did I tell you about that? Let me just tell you, it was the best concert. We were just walking down a street randomly. I was in New York for a week or so.

We walked past this theatre and saw her name in lights and thought, oh yeah, I remember her. Let’s go in and have a look. They had just had a cancellation and we got four tickets three rows from the front. It turned out to be a benefit concert, which was even better. It had all sorts of people performing—Whoopi Goldberg was there. It was extraordinary.

Anyway, she was amazing. I went in thinking, Oh, really? How old is she? Can she sing, still? She was extraordinary and she was up and on stage just totally being herself.

So last night when I saw that she was on I sat down and watched. She was talking about her relationship with Lady Gaga and one of the news raters asked a question about whether she supported her.

She gave this whole little speech about when she first met her, she said, “Listen, don’t do what happened to me. I was really different. I had lots of ideas about how I wanted to perform. And really, in many ways, it was performance art, not traditional standup, just singing into a microphone. And all the music producers told me, ‘Don’t do that. You really need to just stand still and you need to get your voice like this and like that.’” And she listened to them.

Her advice to Lady Gaga was, “Just don’t listen. You’re unique; you’re different. You can just be totally who you are and set your own agenda.”

I thought, that’s just great coaching for anyone.

CONCLUSION

Andrea:  Beautiful. I love that. Coaching is really everywhere.

Robyn:  It really is everywhere. The verb, to coach, is everywhere.

Andrea:  Well there you have it. How to deliver awesome value to clients. It’s always fun chatting with you. What have you been up to lately?

Robyn:  It’s winter here so it’s really, really cold. Lots of sitting in front of a log fire and reading. I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I’ve just started Insanely Simple, the Steve Jobs book. Have you heard of that one?

Andrea:  I have heard of it but I haven’t read it.

Robyn:  That’s what I’m reading and actually, in answer to your question about what I’ve been doing, I’ve been simplifying, in my business particularly. I just finished the other Steve Jobs book, the really big one, the biography. In that book he says that he wrote on the wall at Apple three words: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” And then he crossed out the second and third simplifies. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Andrea:  It sounds like Heaven. I so enjoy these episodes and the listener feedback. Glad to hear you’re enjoying CoachStreet.

Until next time with another exciting episode. Right, Robyn?

Robyn:  Totally. We’re getting up to #8. We’ll see you guys soon.

Andrea:  Bye-bye for now.

END

The post Ep #07: How to Deliver Awesome Value to Your Clients appeared first on International Coach Academy.