## Metadata - Author: [[Kim Morgan]] - Full Title: The Coach's Survival Guide - Category: #books - Topics: [[Coaching (Index)]] ## Summary ### Introduction * Goal of the book: Normalise the feelings of self-doubt felt by coaches, particularly in the early stages of their career. * Terms: * Continuing professional development (CPD) * Coachee: someone receiving coaching in an organisational context * Client: a private coaching assignment ### 1) Credibility * Begin working as a coach in the environment with which you are familiar and in which you have existing contacts, respect, experience, and credibility. * Build a track record of coaching and testimonials. * Let your professional and personal networks know about your new role as a coach and ask them to spread the word about you in their networks too. * Spend some time perfecting your pitch about coaching. Draw on your knowledge and experience in your sector. Demonstrate that you understand their challenges and show how coaching can help. * Set realistic fees to reflect your level of expertise and experience. Raise your fees when you have more demand than you can handle. * Proving your credentials: * Recognised professional coaching qualification * Regular coaching supervision * Engaged in CPD * Member of a recognised professional coaching body * Professional experience in the industry or sector * Many people don’t know how coaching works and think the coach needs knowledge or experience of their work context. * Fit: People like others who are like them. * Establishing credibility in a new and different sectors: * Pro bono coaching: offer coaching for free, and ask for a testimonial and referral to another volunteer client in return. * Establish yourself as a thought leader or subject matter expert: Drive the conversation on the chosen topic. Needs to be an area of genuine interest, ideally something where you have personal or professional experience already. * Gain exposure: Ensure that the right people know you, including those outside of your network. Write articles and blogs on your subject. Do some public speaking and develop a compelling keynote presentation. Host your own event. * Advertising and PR: Consider hiring a PR agency. * Credibility by association: Become an associate coach with a company. Become a committee member on one of the professional coaching bodies. * Guidelines for a successful chemistry meeting to determine fit: * Above all, focus on building rapport and giving the client a memorable experience of being coached. * Think in advance about how the client might be feeling and what they might need from the session. * Give the client an opportunity to tell you their story to feel understood. * Give the client the opportunity to ask questions about coaching. * Tell stories of successful coaching outcomes. * Ask the client what they want and don’t want from coaching. * Reflection: * Which clients do you feel most comfortable working with? * Which clients have had the most value from working with you? * What elements of your own life story have been most significant, helpful, challenging, or developmental for you? * What is it like to be coached by me? See p 15 for prompts. ### 2) Building a coaching business * Work on your mindset and behaviour to develop into a business owner. * Forbes: If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business. * You are likely to put too much focus into working in the business, at the expense of working on the business. * Being a business owner requires different skills from being a coach. * Set yourself clear business objectives. * Self-employed coaches spend about 20% of their time on business development. * Engage with prospective clients. Be adventurous and creative in how you do so. Attend networking groups, arrange meetings, write, give talks. * Charging for your services: * Indicators that you should raise your prices: * Timing: it’s been a long time since the last increase * Market: you’re charging significantly less than competitors * Feedback from clients: they’d have paid more * Overheads: increased costs to running the business * Development: you have improved your services * Consider charging lower fees for private, personally funded clients compared to corporate sponsored clients. * Give your clients as much notice as possible. Let them know the reasons for the price increase. * Forward planning: * Decide what your end goal is; what success would look like for you. * Working back from the end goal, set intermediate goals with clearly defined actions, desired outcomes, timescales, and sales targets. * Choose an approach that will engage you and ignite your desire to plan. * Example of an annual review: Place two chairs in front of you. Sit on the first chair and imagine what the business would be like in a year from now if you made no changes — business as usual. Now, sit on the second chair and imagine what the business would be like if you had made the changes you want. Drill down into the key actions you need to take to achieve those changes. * Wheel of business: key area of focus within a business. Rate your current level of focus, and look for areas that need improvement. Find out what steps you need to take to improve your focus in those areas. * Finance * Sales * Marketing * Vision, mission and objectives * Contracts, legal and compliance * Business structure, team, consultants * Innovation, product * Awareness of coaching markets, industry trends * Wheel of entrepreneurial traits: risk taker, relationship builder, delegator, confident and positive outlook, flexible and adaptable, focus on business objectives, focus on finance, seek support, persistent, resilient, curious, passionate about business. * Create ideal client avatars: Create a list of your ideal clients. Ask yourself who they are, what their age, gender, background, job role, appearance is, where you find them at work or in their leisure time, what problems they are facing. ### 3) Overcoming imposter syndrome * Feelings of inadequacy, have nothing to offer to clients, lack of a sense of identity and credibility * Real imposter syndrome or false modesty? If it’s the latter, it might be a way to manage expectations of others and manage their own fear of failure. * Consider all your previous professional and life experiences. Appreciate how those have contributed to you becoming a coach. * Coaching is an adult learning experience, which relies on learners bringing their own experiences and opinions to the training. * A coach does not need to know the answers. Your role is to provide the conditions for the individual that will enable them to think about their lives in a meaningful way. * Contract throughout the assignment. Find out what the coachee wants to achieve. Make sure to stay on track with what they want. * Ask for testimonials and referrals at the end of coaching assignments. Keep all feedback and testimonials somewhere easily accessible. Reread whenever you need a confidence boost. * Keep a log of all your coaching sessions to remind yourself of all the coaching you have done. * Mange your own expectations about change. Few coaching sessions contain transformational moments. If you are in a hurry to see transformation in your clients, this will put pressure on them. Work with ease, not urgency. Aim for the client to leave each session feeling more capable of mobility. * Appraise your level of confidence (from low to high) and your degree of competence (from none to expert). Determine how you can increase both competence and confidence in equal measure. * Get supervision to maintain rigorous self-reflection and gain perspective on your work. Do peer coaching sessions. See how other people coach, get coaching yourself, get honest feedback from other coaches. Join a coaching network. ### 4) Contracting, pitching and client meetings * Three-way meetings with the coachee and the sponsor: * Do after the chemistry session and the initial one-on-one contracting discussion with the coachee. * Cover: Purpose of coaching, Process and objectives, Measurement of progress, Reporting, feedback, Responsibilities. * Agenda see p 45. * Contracting with one-on-one clients: * Lay a firm foundation. Clarify mutual expectations. Make them feel safe. Get procedural details out of the way. * Do in the very beginning of the assignment, after (or as part of) the chemistry session and before (or at the beginning of) the first actual session. * Keep written documentation — probably in the coachee’s worksheet. * Cover: * Logistics: duration of sessions, timing and frequency, fees and cancellations, contact between sessions, venue. * Boundaries: confidentiality, roles, responsibilities. * Ways of working: phone/Skype, coaching methodologies, outcomes, measurements of success, preparation or work between sessions. * Your professional practice: code of ethics, supervision, etc. * Preparation * Find out as much as you can about the coachee and their firm. * Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself what they’re looking for and might be worried about. * Tell stories: * Use anecdotes and real-life examples to illustrate what you’re saying and offer evidence of the way you work. * Tell true stories with enthusiasm and passion. * Avoid using coaching jargon. * Be true to yourself: * Consider not taking on an assignment if it’s not a good fit. * Don’t sell coaching, but coach during sales conversations. ### 5) Managing client boundaries * Boundaries build trust and show a respect for the confidentiality and personal nature of the coaching relationship. * Deliberate self-disclosure: * During the chemistry session where you give some information about yourself. * Sharing your thoughts and feelings about something the client is saying. * Share a personal experience. * Unplanned self-disclosure: * How you speak, how you present yourself physically * Your surroundings (on webcam) * Your online profiles * If the client becomes emotional, show that you are comfortable with these emotions. Be still, wait, listen, demonstrate warmth and care, continue providing a safe space. Demonstrate your trust in their ability to manage themselves. * Avoid conflicts between your interest and the interests of your clients. * Transference: The coach reminds the client of a person in their life to whom they have warm feelings which they’re now transferring to the coach. * Countertransference: The coach brings their own feelings or experiences into the sessions to the extent that they lose their professional objectivity. * Coaching is a professional relationship. Manage clear boundaries between your professional and social life. * Attend to your feelings about your client. If necessary, bring it up with your supervisor. Questions for reflection p 64. * If you lost objectivity and can’t change that, end the coaching assignment and make the client understand that this is about you, thereby leaving their self-esteem intact. Refer them to another coach. ### 6) Boundaries of time and space * Create a safe physical environment that says “you matter”. * Your home: * Blurs the boundaries between your personal and professional life. * Have a designated area for coaching with a separate entrance. * Client’s workplace: * Clients will find it difficult to switch off from the stress of the office and detach from their usual patterns. * Their colleagues will know that they’re being coached. * Outdoors: * Physical mobility often increases mobility in our thinking. * Risk bumping into friends. Confidentiality compromised because there are other people around. * Coffee shops and hotel lobbies: * External distractions, noise and visual. * Hotel lobbies are intentionally blank. * Telephone or video-call: * Make the technological process seamless. * If you use video, make sure the client sees the same background view behind you each time. * Time management: * How well you manage time will tell your clients about your general management of boundaries. * Have a clear framework with a beginning, middle, and end for each session. Remind them throughout the session how much time is left. Signal when the session is coming to a close. * Door handle moments: Often, the client begins to reveal something important at the last moment of the session because there’s no time left to explore the topic, which makes it more safe for them to share. Be attentive in the closing moments. Put those items on the agenda for the next session if the client wants that. * Always start and end on time, irrespective of when the client shows up or how much progress you’ve made during the session. ### 7) Facilitating change * Understanding and enabling change form the essence of coaching. * Balance an acceptance of their current situation with a belief that change is possible. * Common elements of facilitating change: * Readiness to change * Gap between the current reality and the desired change * Obstacle Analysis Grid (Neill 2006): Nine major obstacles prevent us from making the changes we want. The categories are: information, skill, belief, well-being, motivation, other people, time, money, fear. Score yourself from 1 (weak) to 10 (strong) in each area to determine which areas are blockers to your desired change. * Desire and commitment to changing * Transtheoretical Model of Change (Prochaska and DiClemente): * How important is this to you? * What are you prepared to sacrifice to achieve the change? * What support do you need to do this, and from whom? * What will be the benefit to you of achieving this change? * What could cause you to give up and how would you overcome a setback? * How will you reward yourself for the progress you are making? * Experimentation, practice, and action. You need to overcome deeply ingrained habits through repetition. * Working with limiting beliefs — sits at the heart of most coaching work * Limiting beliefs are generally formed in childhood and are usually about ourselves, other people, or the world at large. Children have no reference point on their own and tend to believe whatever adults tell them. * Recognising limiting beliefs: * Watch out for repeated statements about themselves, about others, and the world at large that are expressed as unquestionable, fixed truths. Notice any discrepancies between your view of your client and their self-concept. * Working with limiting beliefs: * Are they true? Do I actually believe them? Was it once true? Is it helpful to me? Where did it come from and how reliable was the “witness”? * Help your client identify what they habitually think, say and do which perpetuates the belief. * Ask them what they’d do differently if they had some more empowering beliefs. * Invite them to gather the opinions of people they trust about their limiting belief. * Free association list exercise: p91 ### 8) Group coaching Skipped because it didn’t seem relevant for now. ### 9) Coaching dilemmas * Have a clear cancellation policy. Make clients aware in your initial session. Decide case-by-case whether to enforce it, but make sure the client understands if you do waive. * If their enthusiasm starts to wane, point that out: “I get the sense that you are not as enthusiastic about coaching as you were before.” If that’s the case, ask what you could do differently to rekindle enthusiasm. ### 10) When will I know enough? * Create standards: * For instance, have a six-session plan. * Create a matrix of tools and techniques, noting when you have used each item to good effect. * Maintain unconditional positive regard for the client. * Think in terms of concepts and principles rather than merely tools and techniques. * Using metaphors: using objects and symbols. The client can talk about the object more easily than they can talk about themselves directly – distance and safety. * Changing perspective/disassociation = moving away from your own perspective: Standing outside of our own viewpoint enables us to see a wider picture. “What would you advise someone else to do if they were in your situation”? Useful if the client can’t generate any options and is stuck in their own set of perceptions. Diffuse negative emotions. * Opposite – association: If the client is experiencing positive emotions, encourage them to take time to experience that feeling so they can claim it as their own and remember it. * Acting “as if”: Ask the client to act as if something was different about them and their situation, as if they had already achieved their goal. “What would you be thinking, feeling, and experiencing?” They’ll be able to assume the new behaviour quite easily and realise that they can do it since they already have a wider repertoire of behaviours than they routinely use. * Associating current behaviours with long-term consequences: “If you keep doing things the same way, what will that be like for you and what will have changed?” * A lot of detailed questions for “Reality” stage of GROW at the end of this chapter in the book. ### 11) Self-care for coaches * If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.