Are you winging it with your coaching?

Do you have a system for predictably getting results with clients?

I’ve heard some version of this story many times over the last 10 years.

I feel like a fraud because I don’t really have confidence as a coach. I freeze up when a client resists what I am saying and I start beating myself up when a client is stuck.

This article will help you become an adept coach.

Adept –

noun

ˈadept,əˈdept/

– a person who is skilled or proficient at something.

“they are adepts at kung fu and karate”

synonyms: expert, past master, master, genius, maestro, doyen, virtuoso;

informal wizard, demon, ace, hotshot, whiz, maven, crackerjack

However, before you can become an adept, you need a form, a system or a method. And not only that, you need a method that has a lineage. You should be able to trace this method down through teachers and teachings over decades and centuries of evolutionary improvement.

Makes sense right?

So why are so many coaches (you?) winging it in sessions?

Let’s investigate this idea of a formula for a moment. Three areas of life where I use formulas to great benefit.

Cooking

Professional Speaking

Gardening

Cooking:

I made Doro Wat, a spicy Ethiopian Stew last week. It required two and half hours of prep. The two cups of onions needed to be chopped finely (I used a food processor) and then sautéed for at least an hour and half. The chicken was marinated in lemon juice for three hours before cooking. The seven spices needed to be in precise measurement. The end results was eagerly gobbled up by everyone in our family, from my nine-year old daughter, to our Chinese exchange students (teenage boys).

While I love to cook improvisationally, I have to start with learning the fundamentals and a recipe is just a formula that you can rely on to get a predictable result.

Professional Speaking:

A local USDA satellite just contracted with me to come in and do leadership development for their employees. What an amazing opportunity to share higher consciousness principles with mainstream audience!

I am not going to go into that new environment with an improvised plan, hoping that it will work out. I am using a predictable form for presenting that has a definite beginning, middle and end, with approximately eleven distinct phases that lead to feedback sheets that consistently rate my presentations 10 out of 10 stars. A presentation form is another formula (form – formula).

Gardening:

I have a permaculture landscape, which essentially means that I have a highly efficient system for producing food in harmony with the landscape.

I tend to 17 fruit trees, blackberries, two varietals of grape, a quince bush, perennial rhubarb, asparagus, sunchokes as well as 7 raised beds.

Last year, I raised 50 kale plants that grew large enough to make walking sticks from their stalks.

Our chickens not only provide eggs, but valuable nitrogen-rich fertilizer that ignites our compost (all of our household food waste, lawn clippings and leaves and dead plants) into rich soil each year.

None of these decisions and designs are random. They follow a predictable pattern. Growth follows seasons, lunar cycles, and predictable rain patterns in the spring, summer, and fall.

Doesn’t it make sense that you would want to learn the cycles of a coaching session?

I mean, your coaching is a natural phenomenon that follows laws and patterns just like everything else.

Why leave your sessions to chance?

Learning to be an adept coach is not only the right thing to do for your client, but it is also a way to earn more. Great coaches get results. Clients that get results tell their friends. They love how they feel, and they can’t wait to share it.