What Your Coach Really Wants to Hear
I love hearing that working with a member has changed their life. I never get sick of it. I’m excited for them. It’s very nice for my ego. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside and I brag about those members to my colleagues.
But as a coach, hearing “You changed my life,” isn’t actually what fires me up the most. I got into coaching to help people, not to have helped people. “You changed my life,” is an end result that comes after months or years of work. But it’s the work, the process, that I really love. And that’s true of every good coach that I know.
What really gets my wheels turning and gets me excited is when a client tells me, “I don’t feel like this is working.”
Counterintuitive, maybe.
But here’s what I mean… whenever we start working with someone, we make a plan: how often they’ll work out, or what they’ll eat, or what action steps they’ll take. That plan is usually pretty good. It’s put together based on how thousands and thousands of hours of coaching experience relates to the first 30-60 minute conversation I have with a prospect. But there’s only so much the prospect and I can cover in those 30-60 minutes.
The plan we come up with is good. But it’s not as good as the next plan we come up with.
Coaching is an iterative process. It involves questions and feedback about what’s working and what’s not working. Everyone is a beautiful unique snowflake and what’s worked well with 100 other clients will probably work this 101st client, but it’s possible that it won’t. I want to hear what’s working. But when I hear what’s not working, it lets me tweak the plan and make it better.
The best coaching plan for you is always your next plan.
I’m better at marriage now than I was a year ago. I’m a better dad than I was a year ago. I’m a better leader than I was a year ago. Not just because I keep trying to learn what works, but because of all the things that I find don’t work, or don’t work as well as they could.
And this is true of my coaching too. I can solve problems and provide guidance and accountability way better now than a few years ago.
And one of the things I do in my coaching now is to stick with the plan for as long as it’s working.
But to really get our members the best results, it’s so important for me to know when it’s not working. And every good coach I know wants to know the same thing. So please, tell your coaches if you’re discouraged or frustrated or you feel like it’s not working. This is what we’re here for.
We work really hard at this stuff. Because we want to be better for ourselves and we want to be better for you. I promise you won’t hurt our feelings. I promise we won’t take it personally.
And I also promise, most of all, that we will keep trying until we get you where you want to be.