Category Archives: Coaching

When to End the Coaching Relationship

As a coach, you work really hard to impact people’s lives. You want every single one of your coaching clients to succeed. It means a lot to you – you wouldn’t be coaching if that weren’t the case.

The coaching relationship has to end sometime, though. I’m not saying that there won’t be certain coaching relationships that go on for years or even over the span of a lifetime. But those times are few and far between. Typically, the coaching relationship will end.

There are different ways to manage this. You might have an end point in mind when you first get started with the coaching. Maybe you’re running a one-month program or something like that. Or, maybe it’s up to the client to decide how long the coaching relationship will last – as long as they keep paying you, you’ll keep coaching them. But, there are some things to consider above and beyond that.

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Improving Your Teaching Skills

Knowledge is power. There’s something you know that other people are desperate to know. Whether it’s information for their business, life, or passions, you can do people a great service when you teach them. It’s an excellent way to help others while leaving your mark on this world.

After all, you’ve spent a lot of time and effort to become an expert on something. You’ve used a lot of elbow grease and spent a lot of your time and money on a particular skill or topic. Surely, it’s a good idea to pass your knowledge along to other people in the form of coaching, right? People are clamoring to know what you know, after all.

But, what about all of the crummy teachers and coaches you’ve had in your life? What about the books you’ve read that didn’t actually teach you a darn thing? What about the confusion you’ve felt when trying to get a grasp on new concepts and your teacher didn’t know the first thing about helping you?

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Getting the Student to Respond

One of the most frustrating things you can deal with as a coach is an unresponsive student. You’ve spent a lot of time putting together some great coaching material. You think you’ve hit a home run—there’s no way people will walk away from your coaching program unsuccessful, right?

Unfortunately, you just don’t have that much control over people. People, even people who pay you big bucks for coaching, will become unresponsive.

They’ll say they’re going to complete an assignment you talked about during coaching and then they’ll forget. They’ll put it off… and they might do it weeks or months late, if at all.

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Building Your Integrity as a Potential Coach

If people are going to hire you as their coach, then they need to trust you. They need to feel like you are a true authority on the topic they are interested in.

Depending on how you view your authority and reach in the market right now, you may or may not need to do a little bit of work. I don’t think it will take a long time to get to the point where you need to be – a lot of this has to do with perception (how others perceive you as a coach as well as how you perceive yourself). You have to be strategic about building your integrity as a coach.

You should know your subject well. You don’t want to pretend anything as a coach. You want to actually be able to help people – not just take their money. If you’re just taking their money and you don’t know your stuff, then you’re not doing your job and what you are doing might be fraudulent. I’m not saying you’d ever do that, but it’s time to make sure.

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Mindset of a Coach

It’s crucial to switch from the mindset of a “coachee” to that of a coach… and then take that even further. Having the mindset of a leader, of a coach, is extremely important. If you don’t believe you can be successful as a coach, if you don’t believe you’re a true leader, you won’t be.

There are certain beliefs that set very successful people apart from those who aren’t as successful. This is true for business in general and it’s true for the coaching business.

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