Coaching Tool: When Your Client Feels Stuck

Appreciative Dialogue is based on the popular approach to organizational change called Appreciative Inquiry that focuses people on what’s working rather than trying to fix what’s not. This is an excellent technique to use when your client feels stuck and can’t solve a problem. Taking an appreciative approach, they see their issue through a new lens, not the normal critical lens assigned to problem solving. They jump outside of the box that their logical brain likes to play in.

In fact, the sorting and arranging of information involved in typical problem-solving processes works against their ability to see the problem in a new light. They can try to shift and rearrange what they know, but their thoughts end up swirling around in circles. Many times they will give up and keep doing what they have always done.

Appreciative Dialogue goes beyond assessing capabilities—what they can do—to being mindful of everything they can access to create a peak experience. As the coach, you guide them to explore everything that contributed to the creation of peak experiences in the past and then consciously apply those contributions—strengths, values, gifts, emotions, attitudes, and perspective—to a challenge they are currently facing.

As a result, your clients can align their best energies to powerfully conquer roadblocks and create amazing results. Here is the script you can use:

Step One: Set aside current issues. Instead, think of a time in your past when you felt energized, significant, and fulfilled. This moment could have happened yesterday or years ago. It could have been when you completed a project or event or when you were doing something special. Can you recall a particular peak experience?

Step Two: With this memory in mind, answer the following question:

What five things did you contribute to creating this peak experience?
- Strengths, Talents, Gifts
- Emotions/Attitude
- Values
- Unique Sense/Perspective

Step Three: Looking at your list of contributions, what can you carry forward to the challenge you are now facing? What is possible for you now?

The intent of Appreciative Dialogue is to teach the brain how to make the shift from problems to possibilities. How can your client look at the present moment in light of their past peak experiences? New ideas will appear in the conversation as you connect the positive past with the present moment.

You can also use Appreciative Dialogue to extend and repeat a positive experience. The focus is on “what can I continue?” Your clients detail what they did to create the glorious moment so they know specifically what to repeat.

Remember to have these conversations often so your clients can determine what mindset and energy patterns will best serve them. The results will help them adjust and revitalize their daily activities.

Adapted from Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction by Marcia Reynolds, PsyD, MCC and a past president of the ICF. Contact her at Marcia@outsmartyourbrain.com.

Waking up to Happiness

One of the joys of getting older is gathering a wealth of experience to guide myself through life. Though of course, being older, I’m not sure I remember it all. Hmmm.

Anyway, thankfully through my work as a coach I have lots of lovely people around me who continue to teach me so much. A Head of Talent Development in a major commercial organisation recently said to me: “Success is how you feel when you wake up in the morning”. Wonderful. I had to ask and thank them for their quotable quote.

And it appears our government here in the UK is waking up to this wisdom too – the Prime Minister has asked the Office of National Statistics to find a way of measuring the county’s happiness. The intent is to build this into government thinking, policy and action and so that the monopoly held by the ‘Continuous Economic Growth’ lobby has some balancing force. And about time too.

The economic growth has undoubtedly been good. It has brought clean water and warm housing and universal education and health service and food to the shelves of so many. And it’s something that is to be still more widely enjoyed globally. But as I often find myself exploring with clients, ‘a weakness is a strength overplayed’.

The sustainability of delivering these benefits in the way we currently do is clearly questionable. And with over 30 million anti-depression prescriptions handed out in the UK alone every year, greater wealth has clearly not led to universal happiness. So getting a grip on what we want, what we really, really want is now approaching it’s time.

Which brings me to coaching. Is there a profession better placed than coaching to help people unravel their thoughts, hopes, feelings, and indeed prejudices and misconceptions so that they can see the connections, and find what it is they truly want and who they are? Is there a profession better placed to help people help themselves to take action, build new, more useful choices and habits and achieve what they want in the ways that are right for them?

And of course, the real power of what we do lies in the fact we are not preaching as experts, but simply inviting and enabling people to see their work and life and options from many different perspectives, then giving the support to do something about it. They discover. They decide. They act.

We truly have a role in shaping the future, because we enable people to choose to see the world through many different lenses. As more people see themselves in a bigger way, I believe they will see us all in a bigger way, and this will change direction from a highly individualistic ‘me/more/now’ culture to a wiser, interdependent view of ‘us and them and you and me/enough is just fine thanks/and is this good for future generations?’

I hope there will be a future time where happiness is more widely felt and enjoyed, because one person’s success is not about beating another in some ranking/performance/level of ownership table, but rather the success (and fulfilment) comes from one person helping another, and another….Coaching conversations with clients, and the wisdoms that emerge from them, has shown me how we are connected to everyone and everything around us, the past that got us here and the future of those who follow us. A strong vibrant profession will enable more and more people wake up feeling good. That would truly be a mark of success for our profession. It’s a great time to be alive.

Now where have I left those reading glasses?

Neil Scotton, PCC, December 2010

A new way to market yourself

Fresh beginnings…we all love them. There is something so promising about a blank slate. Maybe that’s why so many people make resolutions at the start of each New Year.

As we march through the remaining days of 2010, our minds inevitably think about what we expect or hope to accomplish in the New Year. Maybe we want to lose ten pounds, eat better, exercise more, start writing that book, get over your fear of public speaking, make new friends, create a better work-life balance and build a social media platform all in 2011. So many resolutions start strong only to fade into some distant memory before we flip the calendar page to February.

It seems that often, the problem with keeping a resolution is lack of ongoing support and accountability. As a coach, that’s where you come in. Use this time of year to your advantage and market yourself and your coaching services as that accountability needed to make resolutions stick.

Want some research to back this up? The latest study from the ICF found that people are turning to professional coaching to attain goals in their personal and professional lives. More than two-fifths (42.6 percent) of the ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study’s respondents who had experienced coaching chose “optimize individual and/or team performance” as their motivation for being coached. Following this reason was “expand professional career opportunities” (at 38.8 percent); “improve business management strategies” (at 36.1 percent). The study also showed that coaching is being used to help people increase their self-esteem/self-confidence and manage work/life balance.

Not only is coaching allowing people to attain their goals, but coaching has proven to be a very satisfying experience as a result. The study also found that 83 percent of respondents were “satisfied” and 36 percent were “very satisfied” with their coaching experience.

Right now is the perfect time to market your coaching services to clients wanting to meet their newly made resolutions. Couple these findings with examples of how coaching can help them reach their goals and resolutions (through goal defining, action plan creation, accountability, etc.).

What about you? At the start of a New Year, do you find yourself working with clients on reaching their New Year’s goals?

How do you plan to market yourself to new clients in 2011?

I Care For…tell the world during International Coaching Week!

As a coach, we know that one of the things you care for is the coaching profession-at-large. And in just a few weeks, you can share it with your community.

Founded in the late 1990s as a way for coaches—regardless of geographic location—to celebrate the coaching profession, International Coaching Week (ICW) is a weeklong opportunity for you to share what you care for with the world! Traditionally, it is held annually the first full week of February and is celebrated by coaches and clients alike.

Through the years, people have celebrated ICW is numerous fashions…from offering pro bono coaching services to planning and executing multi-day conferences. Regardless of how it is celebrated, its main objective is to educate the public about the value of working with a coach and all that can be accomplished through a coaching partnership.

That said…how do you plan to celebrate ICW 2011? The possibilities are endless—your imagination is really your only barrier. Still stuck? Run through these questions to find something that works the best for you:

• What kind of availability do you have during ICW? This will determine what kind of project you can take on.
• Will you be working alone or will you have a team? ICW is a great way to involve your entire chapter or colleagues who live in your community.
• What kind of message do you want to share? The kind of message you share will determine how you go about sharing it. A few message examples: “Coaching works! Here’s why…” or “Coaching is…” or “Coaching is not…”
• What is the most beneficial way you can share coaching with those in your community? Think through different options you may have…if you have the opportunity to rent out a local café, perhaps hosting a speed coaching event would suit you well. Or if you are working alone, maybe you can offer pro bono coaching hours to people in your community. Or maybe you can offer special rates to those who sign a coaching contract with you during ICW.
• How will you market your event? The size and scale of your event will truly determine the kind of marketing you need to take on. The only key in marketing and event is to not wait until the last minute! Start planning now to give yourself plenty of time.

Learn more about ICW at Coachfederation.org/coachingweek.

Don’t forget, if you want to be eligible to win one of several great prizes, there is still time to share what you care for! Submit your video or written message here by 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 2010 and your name will be included in the drawing. Learn more.

Building an Audience With Social Media: Got the Three C’s?

What’s the biggest difference between people who are successful in social media and those who aren’t? Simple—the successful people have built themselves an audience.

An audience doesn’t necessarily mean having 10,000 followers here or 5,000 friends there. At its most basic level it might be that. But what’s a bunch of friends and followers if they aren’t helping you to grow your business?

Consider this: what if your “audience” isn’t anyone who would be interested in what it is you offer? What if they were people just looking to boost their numbers without any interest in engaging you in any sort of dialogue? What if they were primarily focused on promoting their own stuff the majority of the time? These types of scenarios are clearly not ideal.

So what should you really be looking to achieve? Building the right kind of audience with social media means your participation there is leading you to be seen as a credible, trust-worthy source who may be able to help others solve whatever problem they may be having. It means you’re reaching a market of people you’ve deliberately sought out through search strategies who might need what you have.

When you’ve grabbed the attention of your followers and friends and built interest and credibility, you now have a way to gain traffic to your website, capture more leads and continue building and strengthening the relationship.

It’s all in the three C’s:

Content

Content is the lifeblood of successful social media marketers. What reasons are you giving people to listen to you? This goes two ways: sharing your own helpful posts, links, and resources—and promoting and sharing the content of others. This does three main things: establishes your expertise, drives traffic, and provides your audience with helpful information. Remember, the content you are sharing should not always be your own.

Conversation

Simply by being seen as someone who provides great content in the social media space you will naturally find yourself engaged in conversation. Having these one on one conversations is what is going to make you stand out among the noise and deepen the relationship. In addition, when you make it a habit to promote others, this brings more “social appreciation” your way. These interactions cause others to seek out more information about you beyond where you’ve made the initial connection.

Conversion

Once you have converted someone to a newsletter subscriber, blog subscriber or paying client, you’ve taken steps toward acquiring another raving fan. These loyal folks will not only bring you more sales, but will be much more likely to sing your praises to others out in the social media universe. This is how you grow your “tribe.”

Do you see how simple and effective it is to build an audience of captivated friends and followers? Do you see the difference this could make in your bottom line?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Anything else you would add?

Christine Gallagher, MLS, MSIS, founder of CommunicateValue.com, teaches small business owners and professionals how to conquer the overwhelming aspects of online and social media marketing to increase business and maximize profits. For FREE tips on how to build profitable relationships, leverage technology and create your own successful online business, visit http://CommunicateValue.com/subscribe.