Where Do Your Clients Turn When You’re Not Around? Part 1

In our February Blog we discussed how the coaching process you use helps to produce the client’s desired results and opens your client to opportunities for lifelong learning.

Using a powerful process enhanced by your coaching skills will produce transformative outcomes for your clients. But does your process support your client’s transformation when you are not around? Is that even possible?

It is!

Your coaching process, when applied as multiple learning experiences, can result in an autonomous, self-directed client who understands and applies the continuous growth models you teach them. They come to their coaching sessions with stories and examples of how they used those models to move their goals forward even when you aren’t around.

We have learned through years of coaching that our client’s success is directly tied to the autonomy we help them create around the coaching process. Over time, our clients have learned how to apply coaching models that keep them motivated and on track between coaching sessions. Yours can too. The object is to create lifelong learners and deliver coaching that lasts a lifetime.

Let’s look at the first two stages in the coaching process: Uncover and Discover. Make note of the coaching and teaching you can do in each step to provide your client with tools they can use to develop skills they can use on their own.

Uncover –This stage of the process involves examining life events that have brought your client to where they are today. Uncovering life lessons involves reflecting on situations and experiences and extracting insights that can aid in their personal growth and development.

To extract life lessons from everyday experiences:

Acknowledge the experience. Give the client time to acknowledge and process the event. Allow and encourage them to feel the emotions surrounding that event.
Reflect on the experience. Have the client honestly think about what happened. What did they learn? What could they have done differently to produce a more effective outcome? What did they do especially well that can be replicated moving forward?
Identify the lesson. Ask the client to identify what the experience taught them about themselves, others, or the world.
Apply the lesson. Coach the client to consider how they can apply the insights from this experience to future situations.
Express gratitude. Show the client how to find gratitude for the lesson. Even if the experience was difficult, it may have provided valuable opportunities for growth and learning.

This process can be repeated for both positive and negative events so that clients can gain a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and better understand their place in the world. The lessons uncovered can lead to personal growth, increased self-awareness, and a more fulfilling life.

Self-reflection is an essential skill you should encourage your clients to develop during the coaching process. It helps them assess their thoughts and actions, confront their fears, and highlights what they should do more of and what they should avoid doing while working to achieve their dreams. Self-reflection can highlight weaknesses and strengths of character that might otherwise be overlooked.

Discover– Once your client has uncovered life lessons, guide them through a process of imagining and visualizing a future where they apply the lessons learned and focus on their strengths, values, mindset, and priorities. All are profoundly linked to who your client is – who they really are – and identifying them will be foundational to your client’s future and your ongoing coaching.

Strengths can be assessed by reflecting on personal and professional situations when the client’s strengths were front and center, times when they excelled, and received positive feedback. In addition, CliftonStrengths is an ideal tool to help clients to identify their strengths.

Encourage clients to ask others, such as friends, family, or coworkers, for their perspectives and taking personality assessments, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator can provide additional insights. The better a client understands who they are and how they perform, the better equipped they will be to build a successful future.

Values also play a part in imagining and creating a fulfilling future because values are a person’s basic, most fundamental beliefs. They help to define what a person prioritizes, who they want to be, and how they want to live their lives.

It may take some time for your client to identify their values, and that\’s OK. The process of discovery is ongoing and values may change as your client changes over time. Taking a client through the following steps will help them discover their values.

Help the client reflect on past experiences and observe what was important to them in those situations. Make note of the values that surface and make note of them for a values discussion.
Guide the client through a written exercise. Have them write down their personal beliefs, morals, and principles.
Ask them to Identify what motivates them and brings them JOY.
Suggest they evaluate their relationships and what they value in them.
Once the client has a list of their values, have them consider how those values influence their everyday decisions.
Encourage your client to regularly reassess their values to ensure they align with their current behaviors and goals.

When clients are clear about what their values are, they are better able to establish priorities and make wiser decisions.

The Discover stage of the coaching process also involves examining the client’s underlying beliefs and assumptions (paradigms) that may limit them and helping them create the mindset they need to set the stage for success.

These paradigms can limit their ability to see things from a new perspective, find creative solutions, and grow as individuals. They often develop from past experiences, cultural backgrounds, and social conditioning. By becoming aware of limiting paradigms, clients learn to challenge and change them, leading to more open-mindedness, flexibility, and personal growth. This can be a transformative process that expands the client’s capacity to understand the world around them and to live a more fulfilling life.

Plan to use this step-by-step process to help clients uncover limiting paradigms and create a productive new mindset moving forward:

Ask open-ended questions: Encourage your client to reflect on their beliefs, experiences, and behaviors. Use questions that encourage them to think deeply about their situation.
Listen actively and identify patterns: Pay close attention to your client\’s words and body language. Look for patterns in your client\’s thoughts and behaviors. Ask questions to help them see these patterns for themselves.
Explore limiting actions and beliefs: Encourage your client to examine their actions and beliefs and the impact they have on their life. Help them see how these may be limiting their potential.
Help reframe limiting beliefs: Assist your client in reframing their limiting beliefs into more empowering ones. Encourage them to replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
Reinforce new beliefs: During ongoing coaching sessions, help your client integrate their new, empowering beliefs into their daily life. Encourage them to practice their new beliefs and to continue to reframe limiting beliefs as they arise.

It\’s important to realize that this process takes time. Throughout the coaching relationship, continually coach with the client’s new beliefs and paradigms in mind. The goal is to help your client gain new perspectives and grow accustomed to shifting their limiting beliefs into empowering new ways of thinking and believing.

Identifying priorities is a process of self-reflection and decision-making. Setting priorities is part of the goal-setting process and helps to keep clients on track when life gets overwhelming. Take clients through the following steps to identify their priorities:

Reflect on values: Embedded in your client’s values are their priorities. Priorities should be considered in relation to what is most important in your client’s life, such as family, health, career, personal growth, and spirituality.
Have your client assess their current situation: Ask them to evaluate what areas of their life are currently most fulfilling and which areas need improvement. Ask in what area of their life they most need a breakthrough. This will help your client decide what they need to focus on first.
Re-evaluate: Regularly take time to reassess priorities and make any necessary adjustments. Keep in mind that priorities can change over time as circumstances change, so it\’s a good idea to revisit this process periodically with your client.

Conclusion: Transformational coaches help clients achieve goals and learn life skills that help them manage their own journey when the coach is not around.

This article has covered transferable learning activities for the first two steps in the coaching process (Uncover and Discover). Compare your process with the learning activities listed here and incorporate those that really resonate with you.

In the first two stages of this process, your client will have learned lessons from past experiences, identified limiting actions and beliefs, and created a mindset to propel them forward. They have also identified their values and priorities and are now ready to visualize and plan for the life they desire.

Without progressing through these steps in the coaching process the next parts of the journey, Visualization, Creating The Plan, and On-Going Coaching, would be based on old values and beliefs that no longer serve them.

More to come next week. Thanks for reading.