Ep #155: How to Coach like You

Hello, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 155. To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hey, coach, I am so happy and delighted that you’re here today, as usual. The first thing I want to address is my audio. First, I apologize upfront if it sounds a little different. I’m actually in Sedona, for some reason my microphone is not working and I decided I had to hop on and record this podcast for you today.

So here we are. My producers, I’m sure, are doing the best they can. And if it still sounds a little echoey or wonky, I apologize. But this content can’t wait, you have to get it.

And I just want to tell you, if you love what I’m talking about today and if you’re like, oh my gosh, I want to talk to Lindsay about this, I want coaching on this, I want to think about this for my specific business, for my specific coaching, you must join Coach Week.

If you’re listening in real time, I am doing a free training the week of October 23rd to 27th and this is a topic that we will be discussing and that I will be helping you with, I will be coaching on. It will be a whole workshop dedicated to just this. So let’s just dive in, shall we?

So one of the things that I feel so passionately about as someone who helps coaches be really great at what they do is that there is no right way to coach. There is no one super magical way that you can coach your clients that will just work for every person, every time. So what that means is that you, as a coach, have to decide what kind of coach you are. How you coach specifically. What your coaching style is. What makes you different than other coaches. And what you want to be known for and be really good at.

So I’ll give you some specific examples. But the first thing I want to kind of say is I think when I think about the definition of coaching or what it means to be a coach, to me, and some of you may disagree with this. And if you do, that’s totally fine. But the way I think about coaching is that every single coach, clients hire us so that we can help them create a specific result in their life or in their business or whatever, right? But like anywhere in their life, clients hire us to create a specific result.

What differs about all of us, as coaches, is how we do that and the tools we use, right? So a client is going to hire us for a result, and then we’re going to use the tools we have to coach them and help them create that result, right? We’re going to help them get very clear about what that result looks like. Specifically, what it means for them to want the thing that they want. How they know when they get there. How they know when they reach the results. And then we’re going to use all the tools that we have, as the coach, to get there.

I think this is one of the things that differentiates coaching from therapy. And this is not a black or white thing because I know a lot of therapists help their clients create specific results in their life. But I think for coaching, specifically, it’s like looking forward and moving forward. How do we get to where we want to go? Whereas I think therapy is a lot of understanding of what’s in the way in my life in general and why is it in the way? Why do I have the reactions I have? Why do I feel the way I feel?

Again, there’s a lot of overlap but, to me, that is the distinction. I think it’s really important, and I teach this in The Coach Lab, to know specifically what results your clients want to create. And that might be all of your clients in general wanting to create the same result, which would mean you have a very specific niche. Or it might just mean getting clear on a client to client basis what that specific client wants and how they want to create it.

So if you think about that as the definition of coaching, then your job as the coach is to, one, help them get really clear, right? What does it look like? How will you know when you get there? How do we measure the results, just to explore all of that? And then to help them figure out a plan to get there.

I think sometimes as coaches we’re like, oh, but we have to start with the mindset and start with the thoughts and start with the whatever. But really, for most humans walking around the world, if I asked you, okay, what’s your plan to have a better marriage? What’s your plan to just feel better every day when you wake up? Like let’s make an actual plan, it usually will start with an action, right? Or like a strategy or a step-by-step process.

And then within that where the coaching comes in, of course, is helping them create the strategy or showing up with your specific strategy that you teach. And then along the way, addressing everything that comes up, right? The mindset. The thoughts that get in the way. The feelings that get in the way. The feelings that come up that they don’t know how to process or move through.

The strategy that they’re trying over and over and over that isn’t working, how can we make adjustments to that, right? Maybe inaction that they’re experiencing, why is that coming up? How can we create a new plan? How can we find a plan that they love? All of these things are the purpose of coaching.

So one of the workshops that I’m teaching in Coach Week is how to coach like you. And when I say that, what I mean is how to really own, “Here is the specific thing that I bring to the table,” in that process from where your client is starting to where they want to go. Here are the things as a coach that I bring to the table.

Like, what are you a ninja at, right? I would just ask yourself that question. Maybe you’re a thought ninja, a mindset ninja. Maybe you are excellent at finding those, like uncovering those deeply rooted thoughts that are keeping your clients from having what they want. Maybe you’re incredible at speaking to the feelings, the emotions that your clients are bringing to the table and really helping them shift into how they want to feel, how they want to show up for certain situations.

Maybe you’re a strategy expert. Maybe you have certain strategies for certain things that you teach every single client, or maybe you’re even just an expert at helping them, helping your clients create their own strategy. Maybe you’re an expert at uncovering the subconscious things that they don’t even know are there. Maybe you’re an expert at tapping into things that they’ve been experiencing for their entire lives that they don’t know why and really shifting them out of it.

Whatever it is that you’re an expert at, what I find a reason a lot of clients hire me is instead of just owning those things and knowing that it’s enough for your clients, for the clients that need those specific tools, what a lot of you want to do is go find the next tool, right? Like, oh, here’s one more tool. Here’s this new thing.

There are always new things, new tools in coaching, right? There’s kind of like fads, I think, in coaching. In my opinion, honestly, they are all excellent. And there’s a reason that people are using them, probably because they work, hopefully, right? But what I see a lot of clients doing is using that against themselves, oh, here’s this new thing, here’s this new tool, I need more, I’m not an expert until I have every single tool.

And I hate to tell you this, but that’s kind of impossible. You’re never going to learn every single tool. And I think sometimes it can be very inefficient and actually hinder your client’s progress because it will keep you showing up without all of the confidence in the tools that you already have. It will keep you questioning, do I know enough? Have I learned enough? Which, by the way, there’s a lot of safety for a lot of us in learning, right?

If I’m just learning more, then I don’t have to tap into my inner wisdom. Like the thing that I’m already an expert at can feel a lot scarier for people, for a lot of my clients than going out and doing more learning, right? If you’re just doing more learning, that feels easy. Like the intake of the learning is easy.

So much of what I am constantly coaching on and constantly helping my clients with in The Coach Lab and in my certification, which are my two main offers right now, is finding that inner genius. Now, in The Coach Lab I’m obviously doing some teaching, here are the foundational skills that you need. But then I really help you take those from theory to everyday practice, right?

In theory, it’s easy to learn the things. But how can you take those simple foundations and transfer them to excellent coaching? That’s what I help you do. And then in the more advanced, in the certification, what’s the next level of that, right? How do you become an expert at what you do with all the tools that you already have? How are you an expert?

How do you create your specific process in working with your clients? How do you lean even more into, “I am an expert at these specific things. I always know how to create the results that my clients want to create. I am known for these specific things.” What does that look like?

I posted, and this is available to the public so you can go look at it if you want to on Facebook. I don’t know, a week, maybe two weeks ago, I posted something on there. I was just really curious, I said something like, tell me something that maybe you teach your clients that is right for your clients, that is right for where your clients are, but isn’t right for everyone in the world.

And you should definitely go check out the post because the comments were incredible. And even as you scroll through and read the comments, you can see how some of them are opposites. And it doesn’t mean that any of them are wrong, right? Even when I read through the comments, some of them I completely agree with. I’m like, yes, oh my gosh, yes, I teach my clients this too, right? Or, yes, I had to learn that in my life.

And some of them I’m like, oh, that wouldn’t really be for me, but I can see how it is the right thing that some people need to learn. So for example, in The Coach Lab, one thing I teach is I just teach foundational coaching skills. I believe that if you have these certain skills, you can be an incredible coach for your clients.

Now, in my opinion, that is right for most coaches. But I know some coaches will hear that and think, ooh, I don’t like that. I really want to have 100 different tools and all these different ways to work with my clients. And so maybe that’s not the right message for them. But that’s okay because it is the right message for the people that want to work with me that want to be really good at what they do with the tools they have.

And I do want to be clear, this doesn’t mean that you’re never going to go out and learn new tools. In my advanced certification one thing that I teach as we’re working through the process, one thing we start to look at, is there anything missing from your process? Is there anything that you actually do need to learn from a place of I already know what I’m doing and I could sprinkle in this or it would be really useful to add in this. But that’s a very different thing than I’m not an expert or I don’t know what I’m doing until I have every single tool.

Another example might be, let’s say you’re a marriage coach. And one thing you teach your clients is, I’m going to teach you to feel totally confident in your relationship with or without your partner. That wouldn’t be the message that someone might want to hear if they have certain beliefs that are like once you’re married, you never get a divorce, right? Or you never leave that relationship. Those might be conflicting things, and that’s okay.

So there might be another marriage coach who speaks to those people, right? Who speaks to the people who are like no, leaving this relationship isn’t an option. So how do I feel great about being in it no matter what? That would just be a very different message.

Notice when you hear those two things, you probably have an opinion about which one is right, right? Just because of what you’ve learned in your life, what you’ve been taught in your life. But really, your opinion isn’t right or wrong, it’s just your opinion. It’s what’s right for you.

The same is true with what you teach your clients, with what you teach in your coaching, with the way you approach coaching, with the way you specifically help your clients. The tools that you use, the messaging that you use, the things that you teach, they will be right for the people that want that specific thing, right?

I saw a thread, I don’t even know where it was, maybe on Facebook or somewhere, recently where people were kind of talking about like, oh, mindset isn’t the only coaching tool or it’s not the best coaching tool, or even some people were saying, I don’t even use that anymore. I thought that was really interesting because I think there’s a piece of it where it’s like I think mindset is so important. I think the subconscious is so important. I think the actions that we take are very important, right?

I think all of it’s important, it’s all different pieces to a puzzle. And as coaches, we might offer one of the pieces. It doesn’t make it less important, just because there are other pieces, right? You can’t make a complete puzzle if you’re missing a piece. So if what you offer is one piece, great, that might be the one piece that your clients are missing.

I know when I first hired a coach, when I first was just working with a coach, before I was a coach. When I was just working with a coach, one of the most important things I learned was that I had some control over my thoughts. Now that seems so simple. But at the time, I had had so much therapy, I had worked with so many different types of professionals and I thought, oh, anxiety is just something that’s here to stay and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I learned so many ways to handle it, to cope with it, to calm myself when I was having a panic attack, for example, to understand where the anxiety was coming from, to understand why I was feeling anxious, right? I learned all these things and they were so amazing and they were so useful. But it wasn’t until coaching that I learned the part about being able to stop some of the thoughts that were amplifying the feeling.

So for me, my experience of it was I would start to feel anxious. And sometimes that would just be coming from my body, right? I think that there are hormones in our body reacting to the hormones and chemical reactions happening in our body that produce feelings that aren’t necessarily coming from, like we can’t necessarily identify, here’s a specific thought I’m having that’s creating anxiety.

But for me, what was happening is I would start to feel that and then my thoughts would start to match that feeling, right? And then I would start spinning in my thoughts and ramping up the anxiety and having these circular thoughts that just kept coming back and coming back. And my anxiety will get worse and worse.

So with mindset, what I learned to do, which was the answer that I needed at the time, was, oh my gosh, I don’t have to allow my thoughts to match the anxiety. I can just feel anxious and just be there and be okay. I don’t have to ramp it up. I learned that that was an option, it literally changed my entire life, right? That was the coaching I needed. That’s not the coaching that every person needs in every moment.

So what I teach is to find the thing that you’re really good at and learn who needs that, right? Like, how does it help your clients? How does it help the specific clients that you work with, and to lean into, these are the tools that I have that I am incredible at.

And that affects everything in your coaching. It affects the way you show up to coach your clients. It affects the confidence that you have. It also affects how you talk about your coaching, how you talk about the tools that you have and the importance of them.

So that is what I want to leave you with today. That whatever you have, it is what your clients need. Whatever you know how to do, whatever you’re incredible at, that is what your clients need. If you want to learn more about this, come join me either in The Coach Lab, if you’re just like, okay, that did it, I want to learn more about this, just join The Coach Lab. We coach on this all the time.

If you’re not quite sure and you’re like, I want to learn more, I want to apply this coaching to myself. If you’re listening in real time, you’re in luck, come join Coach Week. It is a free week of coaching, of workshops with replays and you can just get a little taste of what it’s like to work with me or to just do this work in general.

All right, so hopefully I will see you there. I apologize, again, for the sound today, but you stuck through it. Thank goodness. I’ll see you soon. Goodbye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mastering Coaching Skills. If you want to learn more about my work, come visit me at lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com. That’s Lindsay with an A, D-O-T-Z-L-A-F.com. See you next week.