Live to Coach

3 Steps to Success

Editor — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:12:58 +0000

For the past few months, I’ve been sharing some of my personal productivity secrets in a series of articles to help you “Master Plan” your life so you can finally accomplish all your goals. Ultimately, it all boils down to how you spend your time. What you do and what you fail to do.

Setting goals is easy. Establishing priorities is pretty simple too. The tough part is following through. Fortunately, there are a few easy steps you can take to coach yourself through the process.

1. You must recognize that good intentions are not enough.

Writing up a list of yearly goals or New Year’s resolutions might make you feel great. It may even make you feel like you are on your way. But you can’t claim to be making any progress toward accomplishing anything until you start acting on your Master Plan.

2. Don’t spend too much time thinking about your future success.

Imagining what you want out of life – the big house, the luxury cars, the yacht – may give you pleasure. But despite what the think-and-be-rich gurus says, it won’t make you successful. You must spend most of your time taking action, not daydreaming about all the toys you will have “some day.”

Most of the most accomplished people I know – and in that group I include some success coaches who preach the think-and-get-rich philosophy – don’t waste their time thinking about success. What they think about is how to do a certain task or solve a specific problem. They know that wealth and success will come to them if they have a good plan and follow it.

3. Break up your busy day.

Once you begin to implement your Master Plan, you will find that you will want to keep working for hours and hours at a time. Because you will be making progress toward your goals, you will be energized by the work itself. (If this has not been your experience with work before, be prepared to start enjoying your days a whole lot more!)

The extra surge of motivation will be very useful in getting lots more important work done. You’ll be working more intensely, more intelligently, and just plain longer and harder than ever. But because you’ll be working longer and harder, you’ll need to force yourself to take little breaks – three- to five-minute breaks to reduce stress, recharge your batteries, and ensure that your body is not stuck in the same position too long.

It’s not easy to take breaks once you are in a groove. In fact, you may be amazed at how difficult it can be. Most of the successful businesspeople I know think nothing of sitting at a computer or being on the telephone for four to six hours at a stretch. This is a testament to the motivational power of having a Master Plan, but it still puts a lot of pressure on your body and brain.

To make sure you take the breaks you need, I recommend a very simple device: an old-fashioned egg timer. Gene Schwartz, the legendary copywriter who was instrumental in the success of Boardroom Reports and Rodale Publishing, never sat down to work without setting an egg timer for 33 minutes. When the buzzer went off, he walked away from his computer and did something else for five minutes. He said the habit made him more productive. He said it was an important part of the process that made him a success.

When I’m writing, I set my timer according to the writing objective I’ve set for myself. Since I’m currently working on many writing projects at once, my daily goal is usually between 300 and 1,200 words. It takes me, on average, about 10 minutes to write 100 words. Therefore, I can knock off 300 words in a half-hour, 600 words in an hour, and a full, 1,200-word ETR article in two hours.

That’s how I break up my time – in half-hour or hourly segments with an occasional two-hour sprint. Between segments, I usually stretch backward and forward over a Pilates barrel I keep outside my office. Sometimes I’ll go outside and just breathe in the fresh air.

My afternoons consist of meetings and phone calls, which have natural breaks so I don’t need my egg timer. (I schedule most of my meetings for 15 or 30 minutes. It is seldom necessary to have a meeting any longer than that.)

Like Gene Schwartz, I have found my mini-breaks to be very refreshing.

Sometimes, if I had a short night of sleep and an intense midday workout, I get very tired in the middle of the afternoon. When I feel that way, I lie down and try to nap for 15 minutes. I will do that anywhere and under any circumstances. I’m not embarrassed by it. I think people who don’t understand it should be embarrassed, not me.

Once, suffering from jet lag in London, I lay down on the floor underneath the conference table before a board meeting. Fifteen minutes before the meeting was to start, NR, a board member and multimillionaire German publisher, came in. Our eyes met. I thought he might say something. Instead, he took off his shoes, lay down next to me, and we both enjoyed a power nap.

To help alleviate the boredom of working in one place all day, I split my time between my home office above my garage (where I do my writing in the morning) and my office at ETR headquarters. I have outfitted both offices with efficient workstations and comfortable chairs. And I have pillows handy in case I need a nap.

In the late afternoon, after a good day’s work, I often reward myself by walking over to a cigar shop two blocks from ETR. I can do some additional writing there while enjoying an espresso and a fine Nicaraguan cigar.

I get home at 7:30, open a bottle of wine, and head to a favorite spot in the backyard where I do some light reading and/or solve a crossword puzzle. It gives me a chance to unwind and, if necessary, blow off a little steam. Sometimes, I’ll jump in the hot tub. The idea is to get into a good mood for dinner, which starts promptly at 8:00.

All these little breaks and naps and rewards enhance the pleasure of my day. No matter how much work I have on my task sheet, I’m never more than two hours away from some pleasurable experience.

If you find that your workday is one long trek down a dull road, try breaking it up the way I do and see if it doesn’t make you happier and more productive.

Author: Michael Masterson

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit www.earlytorise.com.

The Right Partner in Business

Editor — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:50:47 +0000

Your business coaching client, who is thinking about starting their own business but is unsure about whether they should become partners with someone they know, asks your the following question: “A friend and I want to go into business together but I’m not sure if we can work together. How do I find out before we start?”

Here’s a response from LCI’s Master Coach Terry Neal…

This statement reflects an increasing occurrence in today’s work environment where more and more people want to start their own business so that they can be their own boss. This in itself requires great planning and organisation even for a sole operator of a proposed new business. However a far greater challenge can occur when two people who may not have worked together before or who may have been in the same industry and even in the same workplace, decide that they want to go into business together.

Your client has raised an important question which probably is underlined by concerns about how it will be to work together away from either their individual or collective current workplace situation (that possibly does provide stability for your client financially and socially), as well as how will it be to work closely with their friend.

Initially as the coach you would need to gather information about your client, the business that they are proposing to create with their friend, what their goal is for the business and what they see as their strengths and challenges in the proposed business.

From this investigation you and they will have a clearer picture of in relation to the intended business as well as their vision for the business. You could then ask questions to help them to start finding out how much they know about their friend and if they could feel comfortable about working with them.

Questions like: How long have you known your friend? How long have you worked together and/or worked in the same industry? What qualities do you like about them? What challenges do you have with them? Do you two mix socially? How did the idea of working together come about? Who approached who? Do you know why your friend wants to go into the proposed business in general and specifically with you?

There could be more questions that flow from this but the point is to assist your client to become more aware of aspects of how well they know their friend as well as becoming more aware about themselves in areas that they hadn’t realised or weren’t sure about before in relation to their friend as well as their proposed venture.

Your client needs to be made aware that the more honestly they look at how well they know both themselves and their friend, the more likely that the proposed business venture will start on a solid footing (if indeed it starts at all).

Following on from this information gathering exercise, you could set your client a task to be done between this and a subsequent session. In this case the task would be to set up a meeting with their friend to talk about some basic issues that have come to light as a result of the questions you asked of your client that may have changed some of your client’s perspectives around both working with their friend as well as the whole business proposal.

Remind your client that this could assist both them and their friend to obtain as clear a picture as possible of how each one of you sees both the working together and the business itself. All of this assists your client to acknowledge as far as it’s possible to do so about what it could be like to work together.

You could provide a list of questions for your client to assist the process with their friend. Questions that you might suggest could include:

If our proposed business were to have exactly the impact that you wanted it to have, what would this look like?
What’s your vision for the business?
Where do you see our individual and collective challenges being?
What do you think are our individual and collective strengths?
What do you think we’ll need to do to get started in our own business?

Your client needs to be encouraged to assist with the best possible outcome when asking these questions by reminding them to pick an appropriate time and place to talk over these questions; a situation where there will not be any interruptions or where the meeting could be overheard by anyone else; so not in the work place but in a relaxed “away from work” situation.

Encourage them also to model open and honest communication and answers with their friend in the same way that they have done with you.

Finally, your client needs to be reminded that the information gained for themselves from both your session with them and those with their friend will assist them to say what is true for them about starting a new business venture and to go with what they feel is right for them no matter how persuasive their friend may be.

You could also suggest another session with your client to allow for any other issues that may have arisen from their meeting with their friend and/or to deal with the result of that meeting which may or may not have gone according to plan.

Fostering Effective Communication

Editor — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 06:06:24 +0000

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” ~ Robert McCloskey

“Seek first to understand and then be understood” is an instruction first delivered by Stephen Covey in his acclaimed book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey’s message is a simple but powerful one. Too often we enter into communications with others with pre-conceived assumptions or notions about what the other person’s expectations, ideas or judgements will be.

Rarely are communications entered into without a predetermined idea of the response we are seeking or expecting. This does little but make communication more complex and susceptible to misunderstanding.

Studies into interpersonal communication have continually discovered that three core qualities foster effective communication. These qualities are defined as:

Genuineness;
Respect and
Empathy.

By incorporating these qualities into your everyday interactions with others, you can ensure that your relationships and communications become increasingly authentic, valid and meaningful.

Genuineness

To be genuine in communication is to be open, honest and self-expressive. The degree to which you behave in this way is the degree to which you’ll be able to significantly relate to another. A conversation devoid of genuineness sees people conceal their thoughts, values or motives. Concealment can lead to defensive responses and ultimately minimal connection between people.

Of course, it is neither advisable nor appropriate to be completely self-expressive in all situations. Genuine communication means engaging in sincere, honest and responsible conversations. It means accepting yourself and expressing who that is.

Reflection:

Take a moment to reflect on the relationships in your life, both professional and personal.

In which relationships do you feel the most genuine?
In which relationships do you feel the least genuine?
What is it about your most genuine relationships that encourage you to express more of who you are?

Respect

Respectful communication is communication that values the other person. When you engage in respectful conversation you appreciate the other person’s separateness and self-identity. To facilitate respectful communication:

Show consideration for personal boundaries. Avoid asking questions that are overly personal or intrusive. We often show this respect to colleagues and acquaintances but can fail to do so with our children or other family members.

Don’t impose your personal values onto others. Appreciate differences in other’s values and beliefs.

Avoid making assumptions. Don’t assume someone is thinking or feeling a particular way simply because that would be your natural response or reaction. Always check with them.

Empathy

Empathy exists on a continuum between apathy and sympathy (see below):

APATHY                         EMPATHY                                           SYMPATHY

e.g. “I don’t care”            e.g. “Looks like you feel down today”   e.g. “You poor thing…”

Under-involvement                                 <>                              Over-involvement

Effective communication means showing genuine care and concern for somebody. It does not mean identifying so strongly with another’s situation that it becomes debilitating or difficult for you to manage. Empathy means viewing the world through another’s person’s eyes. It requires abandoning self-focused communication for authentic connection and understanding.

The more you develop your communication skills the greater the possibility for genuine conversations based on honesty and respect. It is these conversations that have the power to influence your life.

Interactions based on genuine connection and consideration lead to improved understanding. This, in turn maximises the likelihood of successful communication that is not only authentic but leads to results. Increase your professional effectiveness by using your communication skills to identify the expectations of others and express your needs clearly and succinctly.

Source: www.mentalhealthacademy.com.au

Aligning Your Vision with Reality

Editor — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:00:53 +0000

A client approaches you with the following question: “My visions and goals are great but they aren’t real. How can I start living them now?” Master Coach Zahava Starak answers this dilemma…

Wow! A dilemma of a question! How can one start living something that isn’t real? More likely the client in this case has goals and a vision that are very real - but perhaps not realistic or attainable in their view.

Or perhaps they feel that other people in their life might not appreciate their goal or that they are silly to have any aspirations. As a coach it is therefore a good idea to discuss with your client what is happening in their life at the present and what they want to see happening - and then whether there is any synchronicity between the two.

To this end you could follow the WDEP acronym. Each letter of this acronym refers to a cluster of strategies that can be implemented by the coach to promote change and assist the client in living the life they want.

In this acronym the letter W stands for Wants and Needs.

The coach asks a number of questions that encourage their client to discover what their needs are. Clients are given the opportunity to explore every aspect of their life and determine what they want from family, work, friends and so on.

Typical questions include: “What do you want that you don’t seem to be getting?” or “What would you be doing if you were living how you wanted to?” By answering such questions that client is painting a picture of their “quality world”.

Next, the coach addresses the letter D which stands for Direction and Doing.

The coach now discusses with their client the overall direction of their life, including where they are going and where their behaviour is taking them. Once again, through questioning, the focus is on the client’s present reality.

Questions to be asked at this stage include: “What are you doing about this?” and “What did you actually do this past week?” As it is evident, these questions examine the behaviours of the client to determine whether they are helping them attain their quality world.

This then brings us to the letter E which stands for Evaluation. The coach now asks such questions as: “Is what you are doing helping you or hurting you?” or “Does your present behaviour have a reasonable chance of getting you what you want now?” These questions help the client evaluate their behaviour and to honestly look at the consequences of their actions. With this realistic appraisal the client is now ready to make effective choices that may lead to change and goal attainment.

So they can now address the letter P which stands for Planning and Commitment. Clients can now explore the behaviours which can satisfy their wants and help them live their vision. Questions to assist the client at this stage include: “What plans could you make that would result in a more satisfying life?” or “Are there any other ways you achieve this goal?”

By following this acronym the client is empowered to start making their goals real and attainable thereby enabling them to live the life they want. Let’s now see how this acronym works in a real situation.

Case Example

Our client in this case is Linda. She describes her life as one that should be ’satisfying’. She is happily married to an accountant and enjoys looking after her two children aged 5 and 7. Her husband earns enough money so that the family has all their basic needs met without Linda having to work.

Before the birth of her second child Linda worked in the hospitality industry and enjoyed the interaction with people. It is only recently that she began questioning her ‘quality world’ and talking about goals and visions. Linda wants to expand her world and says that she is probably ’silly’ and that she should abandon her ‘grand plans’ and take up a hobby instead.

Linda is basically saying that her goals and vision aren’t real - but asking - how can I start living them now.

Based on our model the first step is to determine what Linda’s wants and needs are, and so we can ask Linda “What do you want with your life that you don’t seem to be getting?” We can further this exploration by asking Lind to describe the world that she would like to wake up to if, while sleeping, a miracle happened and her needs were met (the Miracle question).

Linda does know what she wants and she explains that she would like to see the children off to school each morning and then work on her catering and special events business that she has dreamt of for the last two years. With enthusiasm she explains in detail her business concept and who she would have helping her run it. Her wants and needs would be met by the challenge of the business and by the social interaction it would offer.

Next we can ask Linda what she is doing to get her wants. More specifically we ask, “What did you actually do this past week to take steps to start your business?” and “What do you see for yourself now and in the future?”

Linda’s enthusiasm wanes and she indicates that all she has been doing is talking about her dream to both perspective employees and supporters. She has only briefly mentioned it to her husband. She owns up that she feels foolish to have such aspirations and so until now has chosen to dream but not to act.

This statement leads us into an evaluation and we ask Linda “Is what you want realistic?” and although Linda hesitates and stumbles in the discussion of her vision, it becomes evident that her dream is possible. She has the skills, the contacts, the finances and the passion - and so we now ask her “Does your present behaviour have a reasonable chance of getting you what you want now, and will it take you in the direction you want to go?”

Linda, as expected, answers ‘no’ but there is a smile on her face as she now realises that she can actually start doing something to make this goal come true. And we can now enter the Planning and Commitment Stage of the Model. Goals can be more specifically addressed using the SMART format and a vision can be described in more detail.

We can ask Linda to indicate how committed she is to attaining her goal and she answers that on a scale between 1and 10 where 1 is not committed and 10 is fully committed – she is a 10. We are now ready to formulate an action plan and initiate the first steps towards establishing Linda’s goal and having her live the life she wants.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. ~ Carl Jung

Leadership vs Management

Editor — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 06:18:04 +0000

This post’s coaching question could come from someone who is already in a management or leadership position; someone who has recently been promoted within their company; or even someone who has been successful in gaining a position in a new company and it is a change from their previous role.

The question is: What’s the difference between leadership and management? Terry Neal answers…

You may already be coaching a client who presents you with this question to either help them set some personal goals which incorporate some appropriate leadership and/or management qualities in this new or existing role, and/or how they could include the activity of coaching in a team management or leadership situation.

Therefore they may also be keen to be both coached and to learn how they can apply coaching skills in their work environment in their specific management or leadership role.

You could begin your exploration of this question by asking your client about their role as it has been presented to them. Whether it is a new position and they have yet to start or how it is in practice, and for how long that have experienced it for.

You could then follow their description up with an activity you have already prepared, that lists some attributes and qualities of a manager and a leader and ask your client to indicate under which heading they would place each attribute.

These attributes could include:

systems focused person
people focused person
maintenance of current practices
development of new practices
control of practices
trust & letting go
short term perspective
long term perspective
imitators
originators
communicators
inspirational
delegates
embodies confidence
self motivation
shows originality
trail blazer
etc.

Of course not each quality listed above is going to neatly fall under one or the other heading but the idea here is to assist your client to start thinking about their personal concept of management and leadership and then to add the qualities that they may have already used in previous roles that were headed as management or leadership (executive) roles and /or qualities that they feel they would like to include under either of these two headings.

The idea here is to not give your client your definition or description of management and leadership but to assist your client onto the path of self discovery around how others see the definition of these two roles.

You could assist your client in their deeper understanding of these two terms by asking them about others who are in either of these two roles that they have read about or whom they know personally and admire and to note the qualities that these people have used or are using in their management or leadership roles.

If this question is part of a larger coaching contract that you have with this client, then you could set this as an activity for them to do between sessions.

This information could help them form personal values that they could hold in being an effective manager or leader and could also be used by your client when planning the wording that states their vision of best management and/or leadership.

Studying with LCI… What your studies will involve

Editor — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:29:40 +0000

Institute courses are developed to maximise your learning experience. Your course is self paced and extremely flexible in the range. This means you can easily fit your studies around your lifestyle, allowing you to accelerate through your course or progress at a moderate pace. Regardless of how fast you choose to progress with your studies, you will have the full academic and administrative support of your Local Student Fulfilment Centre.

As one of Australia’s leading Life Coaching training providers you are assured that your course curriculum is of world leading standard and will equip you with the knowledge and skills you require to practice as a professional Life Coach.

The Institute’s academic team is there to assist you with your studies from enrolment to graduation. The comprehensive academic support systems have been designed to make your studies as enjoyable and enriching as possible. Some of the support services you will enjoy include:

Access to local Student Fulfilment Centres and specialist support in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth and assessment supervisors in Hobart, Darwin, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.
Cleverly written, purposefully designed and easy to understand learning materials that include individual workbooks, unique industry specific coaching case studies, practitioner tools and worksheets and fully referenced and categorised books of readings that represent over 55 leading coaching texts.
A dedicated national Study Assistance Hotline that puts you in direct contact with a team of accredited Coaching Advisers who are on hand Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm (EST) to support and guide you on your way to the successful completion of your coaching qualification.
A comprehensive and easy to navigate virtual campus on the web gives you the option to submit assessment via e-mail, access practical workshop timetables for each state, contact your coaching advisers to ask a question and network with other students through the community forum.
Weekly FREE Tele-Classes allow you to be part of an interactive study group which focuses on particular units of the course. Each week you can listen in and interact with your accredited coaching advisor and fellow students as you learn how to apply the knowledge, skills and coaching expertise presented within the course.
There is also a series of required 2 day Skills Workshops that allow you to apply, practice and refine your newly formed coaching skills under the guidance and expertise of an experienced Life Coach. These workshops are conducted in a class room setting with a small group of fellow students. Your confidence will grow as well as your skills and coaching know-how as you move through each training session.
You can also elect to be a part of an active student network where you can communicate via phone or e-mail with other local students and become part of an active study group or form a study partnership with someone you connect with.

For more information, visit www.lcia.com.au/lz.

NLP Techniques

Editor — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 23:36:38 +0000

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a popular theory used in the world of coaching. It focuses on how people perceive and make meaning of their world and works with these perceptions to help people understand and make changes to the way they perceive their world.

In this article, we explore some techniques used by NLP practitioners.

Rapport

As many of the current theoretical models advocate, rapport is an essential ingredient in building the relationship between coach and client. Within the theory of NLP, it too states that rapport is essential to any successful communication including the coaching environment and that it is one of the three essential elements for creating change (Collingwood & Collingwood, 2001).

Rapport, in NLP, is developed through the use of a number of aspects including:

Matching the representation systems.
Matching body rapport including posture, breathing, gestures and eye blink rate.
Matching voice rapport including tone/pitch, volume, timbre/resonance, speed and intonation pattern.

Read through the following and have a go at the exercise in your own time.

Practising Rapport: “To practise rapport building, matching another person’s non-verbal signals; the rate and rhythm of their movements, the rate of their breathing, the rate of blinking their eyes, and the postures they assume. If they do something which would be uncomfortable for you, match it by doing something else in the same rhythm. This is called cross pacing.

When non-verbal signals are relatively easy to match, turn your attention to their voice. Match the relative pitch between theirs and yours; match the rhythm and speed of speech, the resonance and the intonation patterns” (Collingwood and Collingwood, 2001).

Reframing

Reframing is a technique used in NLP to consider a situation or conflict from another perspective to bring about change. For example, Kelly has just separated from her husband of ten years and is feeling uncertain about her future. A reframe of this situation could be that Kelly can now go out and investigate what she likes and focus on herself for a while.

There are numerous techniques used by NLP practitioners working with clients to reframe a situation. We will now investigate one such reframing technique.

Reframing With Two or More Parts: This technique is used when two or more parts are in conflict with each other. For example, work versus leisure. It investigates the intent of each part (ie. Work pays my bills which makes me happy vs. leisure time make me happy) and invites them to work towards the same intent (makes me happy) to lessen the inner conflict (ie. I have to work to pay my bills so I can enjoy my leisure time and this makes me happy).

Let us investigate the steps that can be applied to coaching (adapted from Collingwood & Collingwood, 2001). There is an example of the steps on the script below.

Externalise each part that has an interest in the conflict. This can be by imagining each part outside yourself, see a representation of the part, hear it as a voice, or feel it outside your body. See the diagram to the right for a visual representation. Refer to lines 9 to 12 in the script.
Assume each part has a positive intention, purpose or function for its behaviour. Invite each part to state its intention both to conscious awareness and to the other part/s involved. This can be done by expressing the intent as images, in words or in feelings. For example, the intent of work is to earn money. The intent of leisure is to have fun. Refer to lines 13 to 14 of the script below.
If the intents of the parts seem incompatible, investigate the intents further (ie. the intent of the intent of the intent) until coming to a mutually compatible intent. For example, the intent of work is to earn money to pay my bills so that I can live comfortably and have leisure time which makes me happy. The intent of leisure is to have fun to make me happy.
Now ask the parts if they would prefer to integrate with each other to become one composite part or if they would prefer to work together in mutual cooperation. Acknowledge the responses and ask them to wait until you invite them to proceed. Refer to lines 21 to 22 of the script.
Turn your attention inward and ask yourself if there are any objections or concerns in relation to integrating the parts. For example, how do I feel about these parts working together or becoming one? If there are objections, use the same process to establish intent and do not proceed until all objections are clarified (ie. go back to step 2). Refer to lines 23 to 24 of the script.
Invite the parts to either integrate with each other to become one composite part or work together in mutual cooperation (depending on what was decided in Step 5). The diagram shows a visual representation of this step. Refer to lines 25 to 26 of the script.
Now ask the new super part to integrate back into your body and spread evenly through all your physical and personal space. See the diagram for a visual representation. Refer to lines 27 to 28 of the script.
Now imagine being in a similar situation where the conflict had arisen before and ask yourself the following questions: How is it different? Is it more comfortable, resourceful and useful? Refer to lines 29 to 30 of the script.

Adapted from: Collingwood, J., & Collingwood, C. (2001). The NLP Field Guide. Double Bay, NSW: Emergent Publications.

Transcript

The transcript begins as a normal coaching session with the coach working towards establishing rapport with the client through matching voice and body movements.

Coach: Hello (name), welcome to your first coaching session. What brings you to my office today?

Client: Well, I’m just so frustrated with work at the moment.

Coach: Mm-hmm.

Client: I’m just sick of having to go to work… I just got back from holidays and it was great not to have to worry about anything and just have a great time.

Coach: So, you feeling frustrated with work and you’d rather be on holidays.

Client: Yes, that’s correct.

Coach: I’d like to do an activity with you to look at the situation at hand. Would that be ok with you?

Client: Yes that’s fine.

STEP 1

Coach: Let’s get started. Firstly I want you to externalise each part- one for work and one for leisure. I would like you to imagine the parts outside of your body as a representation.

Client: (Imagining that one side they see the word “work” and on the other side “leisure”).

Coach: How did you go with that?

Client: (using hands to explain the process) Great, I am visualising the word “work” on my left side and “leisure” to my right.

STEP 2

Coach: Now what I’d like you to do is to assume each part- work and leisure- has a positive intention. It is important for each intention to be positive so that we can move forwards. State each intention out loud for me.

Client: Ok… The intention for work is to pay my bills. The intention for holidays is to have fun.

STEP 3

Coach: Great… Let’s look at the intention of work for a moment… to pay your bills. What is the intent of paying your bills?

Client: So that I can afford to live comfortably and take holidays.

Coach: And what is the intent of you being able to live comfortably and take holidays?

Client: To make me happy.

Coach: Let us take a look at your holiday intent… What is the intent of having fun?

Client: I guess it is to make me happy also.

STEP 4

Coach: Excellent, so both underlying intents are to make you happy! Now for each part, ask them if they would like to integrate with one another or whether you would like them to work separately in mutual cooperation.

Client: They would like to integrate to become one.

STEP 5

Coach: Ok, now what I want to do to is ask yourself how you feel about the two parts becoming one. Are there any concerns or objections that you might have?

Client: (thinking) No, I am ok with that.

STEP 6

Coach: Now I would like you to visualise these two parts coming together in front of you.

Client: (thinking)

STEP 7

Coach: (pause whilst client is thinking) Once you have done that, I want you to visualise bringing this one super part back into your body spreading throughout your personal and physical space.

Client: (thinking)

STEP 8

Coach: (pause whilst client is thinking) I want to take you back to the thought of preferring to be on holidays and not going to work. How do you feel now?

Client: I feel ok with going to work because that will lead to my happiness.

References

Collingwood, J., & Collingwood, C. (2001). The NLP Field Guide. Double Bay, NSW: Emergent Publications.

Source: www.counsellingacademy.com.au

Helping a Client in Managing People

Editor — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:37:56 +0000

Your client approaches you with the following question: “I’ve just been promoted but I don’t have a clue how to manage people. How do I start to do learn what I need to do?” Master Coach Terry Neal answers…

In this situation your client may have come to you with a feeling of panic or at the very least feeling “ill at ease” with the thought of being a manager of people. They may have never been in a working situation where they had to interact constantly with their fellow employees face to face (for example, they may have been an “on the road” representative for a company visiting and staying in contact with their customers sometimes face-to-face, but mostly over the phone and/or via email).

They may also have been working in the same office each day and have gone from being one of the staff to being the manager for a section of the company. Also, they may have come from an entirely different organisation to work for this new company and this is a promotion for them.

Whatever direction they’ve come from, it would be useful for the coach to know this background information in order to assess the client’s current knowledge and skillset against their needs.

Exercises

A suggestion is to start by helping the client to determine the details of their role in this management position. Ask them to describe their new role in as much detail as possible. Through your questioning and summarising you can help your client first to have a clear picture of their new role within the company.

You could also ask if they’ve had any management experience in any area they were involved in the past, whether in business or otherwise e.g. community organisations, sporting clubs and so forth. This could help tease out where they may have utilised management skills before - and what they could transfer to their current position.

Then you could ask questions such as pertaining to the number of people they have to manage and their individual details (their names, location, working area within the organisation, networks or communication circles they belong to within the workplace, experience levels, time working in the company and so forth). This allows your client to assess how well they know the people they are now being asked to manage and where the gaps are in this knowledge.

From this information gathering from questions about themselves and the people they will be managing, you could suggest that they set up a meeting with these people ideally individually as soon as possible.

Now this may or may not be logistically easy but remind your client that they need to give these people an opportunity to meet with you face-to-face to talk about their new working relationship and to get to know each other for the first time in some cases.

To assist your client to understand how this initial meeting could be structured, ask your client to imagine themselves as an employee who is going to be introduced to their manager for the first time. Ask your client to consider such questions as: What would you like your manager to ask you as an employee? What types of things would you like to say to your manager? How would you like your manager to act towards you? Where do you think such a meeting should take place?

So as their coach, you have started to assist them in a number of ways. You have:

Helped them to identify questions that could be asked as well as reminding them to allow time for each employee to talk about what they feel they need to talk with you about. This could be done by asking the question: Is there anything that you’d like to talk about with me?
Identified appropriate time and venue for such meetings.
Initiated a process of building up confidence in your client through suggesting some concrete steps as well as helping them to be aware of skills and abilities that they may have already developed, which they had not been aware of or which they hadn’t thought they could transfer to this new situation.
Reminded your client that both they and the people whom they are now managing will possibly take some time to feel comfortable enough to talk openly and honestly with each other. The relationship here will take time to develop.

Having worked with your client to create a ‘first meeting’ plan, encourage them once again to set up these meetings with staff on a one-to-one basis. Other meetings may have to be in groups due to the numbers of staff but if this one can be individual, it could potentially provide your client with much more relevant information about the group they’re managing as a whole.

Over time you may need to be a sounding board for your client to help them assess their progress in their techniques of managing people and to suggest some next steps in their learning. For example, you could suggest that they contact someone who your client knows, who’s been in a management role and who is willing to be a support person for your client; in other words a mentor.

You could also suggest networking with other managers in similar fields of work, management courses, management journals, seminars and informal gatherings of those who are in a similar role to your client. There are loads of useful articles and information readily accessible over the web.

Through activities suggested above, over time your client will potentially begin to feel more confident and skilled in the management of people.

Helping a Client “Find” Love

Editor — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:21:00 +0000

Your client is in a relationship but has doubts about the validity of his emotions. He asks you the following question: How do I know if I really love my partner? As his coach, what would you do? Master Coach Terry Neal answers…

Initial Questioning

A client with this question needs to be treated sensitively. The client may be in a position of concern about ‘what is love really’ which may have come from comparing themselves in their relationship with other couples that they know personally or have observed in recent times.

Their concern may also have come from reading, hearing about or seeing reports on celebrity couples who are quite often held up in the media to every possible scrutiny and public comment by those who claim to ‘know’ what is and isn’t “real love” in a couple relationship.

On the other hand, your client may be asking this question because he is feeling that the fire or spark that may have been in the relationship in earlier times now seems to have diminished or even disappeared.

The feeling that they may now have towards their partner may not have much or any resemblance to the feeling that they experienced in earlier stages of the relationship.

Initially, you would need to let your client talk about what they see as the core of this questioning. Through careful listening, you will be able to begin to determine some important aspects of their relationship at this time and why they have come to you for coaching.

Perhaps they’re in a relatively newly-committed relationship that has begun to settle into the daily routine (that’s part of most relationships at some stage) or perhaps they and/or their partner have talked about commitment and living together and your client is wondering about their current feelings towards their partner (and whether this will be enough to make this move and to support them in the next stage of their relationship).

Thus, sensitive questioning will help you to establish where the relationship is according to your client and some of the challenges that it’s bringing.

Strategies

Now, if you realise that issues were raised through the initial questioning stage which need to be addressed by a relationship counsellor, then you would be ethically bound to let your client know this (and therefore you will need to talk with your client about a referral to such a practitioner).

However, if you believe that your client is wondering in general about whether they really love their partner, you could begin by asking them to write down what they think and/or feel are the qualities that express love in a couple relationship.

Ask them not to limit themselves with or judge the expressions they write on this list: ask them to write down as many qualities as they can think of, including those they’ve heard others say to be such expressions. This list could consist of actions, words, thoughts, feelings… whatever they feel or think constitutes an expression of love.

Next, ask them to indicate which qualities they consider to be the most important expressions of love in a relationship. Finally, ask the client to indicate the qualities they are expressing or doing now within their current relationship.

Encourage your client to look at the complete list, particularly noting those that they’ve indicated as important in general and especially those that they use now as expressions of love towards their partner.

You could then follow the creation of this list with questions like:

What do you notice about your list of qualities in general?
What is the correlation between the expressions you’ve considered to be important and those that you actually express now?
How do you feel about this correlation?
What aspects (if any) of your expressions of love that you already use now towards your partner would you like to change?
What would you like to include from the larger overall list?

Once again, sensitivity would be required as your client could start to make negative comparisons about themselves through how they currently express love towards their partner by comparing themselves with their ideal list.

However, there are three things you could do to alleviate this comparison:

You could remind your client that the list of the expressions of love came from them and so this means that they do have the awareness of what love and its expression can look and feel like. If they reply that they were just saying what they’ve heard others say to be expressions of love, suggest that this is OK as initially you asked them to list as many as they could think of or felt were expressions and not whether they would use them.
You could ask them if there are any qualities in the most important list that are ’shoulds’ for them ie: “I should express this or feel like this”.
You could also suggest some web research about love and relationships from reputable sources that present a ‘down-to-earth’ approach e.g. Relationships Australia, Counselling Connection Blog (www.counsellingconnection.com), etc.

By the end of the session, your client may at least have a more positive perspective around the qualities of love that they already express and can be supported to see that they are perhaps already expressing some or many of those qualities that they regard as important to their partner.

Further sessions with you may assist in highlighting those expressions of love that your client may choose to include and express within their relationship.

Building Value

Editor — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:37:21 +0000

One of the main reasons small businesses, coaches included, fail to maximise their potential, is that they do not focus on selling. Small business operators by nature are technicians.

This practice is obviously counter productive to success. If you can not effectively sell your service, you’ll have little to no clients to deliver your service to. It’s similarly counter-intuitive to believe that high technical competence will underpin sales.

If you have few clients, and provide them the best service available, your business will still only grow organically at best. And besides, your clients have little to no ability to discern good technical competence from excellent technical competence. The effective marketer will ALWAYS outperform, in multiples, the technician.

Why selling effectively is crucial?

We often talk leverage. In business, how you leverage each function of your business will differentiate whether you just scrape by or make massive profits. If you can make an advertisement generate 100 leads instead of 20; get clients to purchase 5 times per year instead of 3; upsell clients to a $3,000 ‘package’ instead of the standard $1,500 offer; develop a referral process that generates 1.5 new clients per client.

These are examples of leverage. And this is where massive hidden profits exist in your business. How well you leverage your sales is critical to your success.

Advertising and marketing is one of the biggest cost bases in small business. The money you spend to acquire new clients directly impacts your bottom line profit. If it costs you $1,000 to acquire to new client worth $1,500, you make $500 bottom line profit. If you can reduce the cost to acquire that client from $1,000 to $500, you have effectively DOUBLED your bottom line net profit.

If you extrapolate that across your business you can effectively double your net income almost immediately. You can easily move from $30,000 income, to $60,000, to $100,000. Simply by improving this one stage in your sales process. This is the power and importance of selling.

One of the most important steps in effectively selling your coaching services and products involves building value. Once you’ve identified your prospects buying criteria through the qualifying phase, you need to build value into your proposition.

There are several ways to build value, including:

Quantifying cost/pain of NOT buying. Humans are a bazaar species. They’ll often go years and years in discomfort without seeking a simple solution. It’s likely your prospects have experienced the same problems and challenges, which you can assist them overcome, for a significant time.

This means they can survive without your service. It also means they’re well aware of the cost of NOT finding a solution. To make survival easier, people diminish the extremity of the problem or push it into their subconscious. You need to bring it abruptly into consciousness. You need to attach an emotional and financial value on it.

Theory of Contrast. Once you’ve brought your prospects challenges into their consciousness you can contrast the cost/ pain of not having it solved, with that of solving it.

Social Proof. You can build value in a very leveraged way by showing that your prospects peers (and particularly authority figures) are already using your service.

Focus on benefits. When building value it’s important to focus on benefits rather than features. Your prospects invest in, and emotionally attach to, the benefits of your service, not its features. As such you must communicate to them in terms of benefits.

Authority. When you establish yourself as an authority in your niche, rapport is a natural side affect. It’s like social osmosis.

Provide Proof. Where possible provide evidence that your service delivers value. This can be provided by detailed testimonials, data, reports, etc. Use this information in a manner that supports your claims and relates directly to the core benefits desired by your prospects.