Steve Chandler - 37 Ways to BOOST Your Coaching Practice: PLUS: The 17 Lies That Hold Coaches Back and the Truth That Sets Them Free!

Table of Contents

Chapter

Lie #:

37 Ways to BOOST Your Coaching Practice

Copyright 2015 by Steve Chandler

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Maurice Bassett

P.O. Box 839

Anna Maria, FL 34216-0839

Contact the publisher:

www.MauriceBassett.com

Contact the author:

www.SteveChandler.com

Editing by Kathryn McCormick and Chris Nelson
Cover design by Carrie Brito

ISBN-13: 978-1-60025-080-4

Library of Congress Control Number 2015903991

First Edition

To Kathy, Maurice,
and the angels of the ACS

The most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.

~ Abraham H. Maslow

Part One

37 Ways to BOOST Your Coaching Practice

Introduction

Why d oes coaching matter?

According to Career Partners International, 40% of 400
U.S. and Canadian business leaders interviewed chose coaching as their preferred method for leadership development. Research is accumulating that shows a return-on-investment (ROI) of five to eight
times the cost of coaching, or 500%-800%.

David Rock and Linda J. Page
Coaching with the Brain in Mind

N otice how the outside world finds it to be a startling NEWSFLASH that coaching is now recognized as the best thing a leader can do to improve professional development.

Those of us who have been coached already know the impact of coaching. Our lives have been changed profoundly.

We also know that anyone who chooses to be great at what they do (including living a good life) will benefit by choosing a coach.

Any actor needing to learn a character for a film shoot will have a personal dialect coach (see The Kings Speech for the value of coaching). Any athlete wanting to go to the next level has at least one coach to get him or her there. All the singers entering the semi-finals of American Idol and The Voice have coaches. All of themwhich is 100%, not 40%.

So maybe its not surprising that coaching is actually worth it.

Everyone has always said that two heads are better than one.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat or a ladder.
Help someones soul heal.
Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

~ Rumi

Chapter 1

Time to dance with the universe

Ill rip a tree
out of the ground
and flip it upside down
before I turn over
a new leaf, clown!

Eminem

White Trash Party

C oaching is about change. When you get a prospect on the line, you will do well to focus on what they want to change. Instead of what most coaches do: they focus on themselves. They focus on fees and tactics and strategies for persuasion.

That does not work.

Stay with the possibility for change.

Change scares people, even though its only always the best thing.

Especially personal change. As in turning over a new leaf.

Zen masters ask their students to meditate upon the beauty of impermanence. Then to meditate upon its eternal being.

The best businesses follow this credo:

CHANGE BEFORE YOU HAVE TO.

The best people do, too.

The whole idea of nailing things down and securing them is the root cause of anxiety and misery.

Dance with change In other words: dance with the universe. The soul is not a static thing. The soul becomes. Life is better than we think at any given time. Life is crazy good.

Chapter 2

Act proud of your professional skill

T here came a wonderful moment in my life when I stopped all my workday friendship-seeking behavior and chose, instead, to turn pro.

What about you? Are you giving a lot of free advice to people in your world? Do people take you to lunch because you always have such great advice for them?

Do you get your sense of personal significance from helping all these people (even when you notice they rarely follow your advice)?

Stop doing it. That would be the tip Id give you if I only had one tip to give.

Other tips?

Well, are people asking for all this advice? If so, do they know youre a coach and do this advice thing professionally?

Its certainly okay to love people and really help them.

But if I have a professional service Im proud of (and only proud because of all the time I devote to making it masterfullike you dowatching videos more than once, reading books more than once, going to seminars and listening to webinars more than once, coaching people all day) then I want my service delivered professionally, and not as a social gesture of friendship.

Just like a doctor would not go around swabbing people at a dinner party. He wouldnt walk up to you and say, Id love to operate on you.

My best practice to break the addiction to advice-giving is to just listen to people quietly and love them instead of giving advice.

If they are clear about what I do for a living, they will know to ask for a coaching session instead of asking for free advice.

And their clarity about this issue is mine to create for them.

Chapter 3

Do it for the love of it all

Hey, Steve, I love the Donald Trump question you ask when someone is stuck in inaction and is saying they dont know what to do or how to do it. (If Donald Trump said hed give you a million dollars if you got a new client today, how would you do it?)

The thing that struck me, though, is that when I think about getting a client, I immediately feel a sense of desperation or neediness. I am DESPERATE to close this client so I can get the million dollars. I NEED to get them to sign or I dont get the million.

I feel like I would throw service out the window in an effort to get that client. Am I exaggerating the exercise or do you see where Im coming from on this one?

Y ES this thought experiment can cause BIG TIME mental excitement. But it doesnt have to be a needy type of excitement. It can be a WOW! type of fun game in which you raise your consciousness and awareness SKY HIGH to become super clever and creative.

Years ago, before you were born, a coach I worked with used an even scarier version of this game. He would say to me, If I put a gun to your head and said Id shoot you if you didnt get _______ today, what would you do?

And we would talk from there. Of course, the exercise opened my mind and all kinds of wild ideas flowed outmany of them quite good!

The Donald Trump version I use is a little more gentle. But you can engage the weaponized version of this mind game with a client or prospect if they give you permission. It will help them think at a higher level.

And yes, you could still get a client TODAY without being needy or creepy if you really wanted to, and if you pursued it with a singular focus.

And no, you would NOT throw service out the window and try to CLOSE the client, because that would push them away. And you want to get a client, right?

What you would do is INCREASE and INTENSIFY the service. The opposite of throwing it out the window.

Service itself is always the answer.

We just have a hard time seeing it. (At the beginning)

My favorite Emmet Fox quote applies here and I can promise you that if you want prosperity from your coaching, this would do it for you:

If you could only love enough, you would be the most powerful person in the world.

~ Emmet Fox

Chapter 4

Leave the conceptual world behind

T he more committed you are to creating a long and strong introductory conversation, the more likely that coaching client prospect will want to work with you.