One night in the not too distant future I’ll be on my way home on a dark night, will turn the corner and see a cuddle of coaches (I think that’s the right collective noun) wearing Tony Robbins face masks and brandishing rolled up self-help books, ready to give me a right royal talking to.
This post may well get me into trouble with my fellow coaches. It’s been on my mind for a long time, so in for a penny…
Coaching is a great service and does a lot of good, but as a business and as an industry it really needs to step up, grow up and face the issues that are holding it back, or run the risk that it will continue to deliver just a fraction of its promise or even start to atrophy.
The problem can be boiled down to this – there’s no certainty in what the client gets from being coached, if anything at all. Look at it this way – you go to an accountant because you’re getting a professional service that meets a need you have; you go to a lawyer because you have a solid degree of certainty in what you’re getting for your money. All the time there’s no certainty in the outcome there’s absolutely no reason for someone to go a coach. As a business model that really sucks.
Just look around the web at the sites of different coaches and you’ll see what I mean – 90% of them are woolly, vague things that have scant information about what the client’s gonna get. Why would you spend a lot of money on a service where you have no idea what you’re getting?
I got in touch with Christian Mickelson, a successful business coach in the USA, because I knew he’d get what I was talking about. He said, “If a client is going to pay you hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month, they want to know what they are going to get for their money. And what they are buying is speed (they want to go faster), and certainty (they want to know that they are going to get there).”
Spot on.
The problem is that traditional coaching is based on the central principle that a coachee needs to find their own answers and that the coach shouldn’t direct things. What that boils down to is that it’s nearly impossible for a client to understand what they’re purchasing, and that means that coaching remains a niche service despite its huge potential. Six years after I entered the industry that’s still true.
What I call ‘Coaching 2.0’ is about giving ready-to-go clients the benefits they’re looking for and providing solid expertise to solve their problem; it’s about giving people real value for money. This isn’t just about the sales process – a coach can create a nice and shiny sales process that does it’s job, but if the product or service doesn’t deliver then it’s as much use as a concrete parachute.
Coaches need to create processes that deliver concrete results. They need to create certainty for their clients for the industry to grow, and they need to do that looking at the evidence of what works and what doesn’t, and by realising that it’s okay to direct things and add their own experience, knowledge and skills.
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February 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am
Hi Steve,
I agree with your gripes, I deal with it by making certain guarantees to give value to my work, like “You will be motivated, you will be energised, you will achieve goals” If they dont, I refund every penny they have paid me.
I have never repaind a penny because I believe in them, they believe in me and I believe in the system of coaching.
Keep up the good work!
February 8th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Yes, I totally agree Steve!
That’s one reason why I’ve decided not to use the ‘C’ word anymore, or follow the traditional coaching process. Apart from the issue you raise of there being no certainty about what people are actually getting in return for their investment, in my coaching days I increasingly met clients who had inner obstacles preventing them from getting what they wanted. The more I developed my NLP skills, the more I became interested in actively working with clients so they could get what they want, with a large degree of certainty.
It’s also interesting that business coaches recognise they won’t get work unless they have evidence of results. Yet the offer to private clients can fall far short of that. There is a breed of coach out there who bemoan their lack of clients, and expect to get business on trust. As you say, Steve, they need to wake up and smell the coffee – and, yes, I am offering advice! (But then I can, I’m not a coach, I’m a Breakthrough Therapist).
Best,
Ian
February 8th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
2 things come out from reading this:
1.Control. ‘ Need to create processes that deliver concrete results’. Can or should coaches control this process ? Is it a one fit all approach. basiscs, yes to cover ground , but all clients are different.
2. Holistic approach. Some clients open up with time , not processes. The spiritual side should not be ignored.Its not all ablout getting to the end with a known result.We are dealing with people not data.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Hi Steve and readers
Some things that came to mind reading this:
First, I agree in principle with you, and especially with the notes on confidence in your offering. How could you sell the idea of new possibilities and unimagined results if you don’t have that confidence in yourself.
However, I do think that if a client doesn’t fully own their process and results then they will always lack the internal confidence that they can do whatever it takes to change their own lives (on their own). If a coach gives advice/ steers a session in a particular direction (especially a strong, charismatic coach with that easy-to-listen-to ‘X-factor’)then that result (and the ‘rightness of the result) belong to the coach not the client. So as long as you’re around forever thats ok. If coaching stands for the insight that everyone has the full power to do what they need to in their own lives, then the results have to depend on the client’s willingness and committment.
So I think it’s almost the other way round: a coach that promises results and then gives his own advice when the client isn’t willing to discover theirs is the self-help rescuer….we have so much of that in books already. And we all know that books won’t have any effect on you if you’re not willing to drive for results in your life yourself. I actually think that coaching wanted to give itself it’s own niche for this very reason. The expertise a coach has is supposed to be their ability to unlock the results the client already knows on some level for themselves (isn’t it?). I say if you’re a good coach, got your qualifications and experience and are *still learning yourself* then absolutely: sell this ability with confidence. But I would be careful of selling ‘results’….I think that disempowers your client. Just my 2 cents (which in Rands is not much today
)
Alison
Otherwise, what IS the expertise that a coach has
March 1st, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Thanks for your comments everyone.
David: Proving simple guarantees like the ones you offer is such a simple way of providing the certainty I’m talking about. I like it.
Ian: I think NLP has always been a different kind of an animal, and one that comes with more certainty by default. In the corporate environment it’s incredibly hard to quantify the return on investment in numbers that make sense and are evidence-based, although I’ve seen signs that this is moving in the right direction.
Maggi: I know what you’re saying Maggi, but even though my Truly Confident Living method gets results and does what it says on the tin that doesn’t mean that everyone goes through it in the same sequence and at the same pace. The overall method guides the process, and there’s plenty of room for each client.
Alison: You’re right – the client has to fully own and engage with what’s happening, and I’ve made that a fundamental part of the process. Without that, it just won’t work, which is the bug-bear I share with you about self-help books.
Jumping in with the answer and advice every time doesn’t work – I agree. But that doesn’t mean that it should never be done. Dave Buck (a coaching hero of mine and now heading up Coachville) boils coaching down to 3 different interventions which need to be used at different times:
1. Challenge: “Look, it’s time for you to figure this out for yourself!”
2. Collaborate: “Let’s put our heads together and figure this out”
3. Advise: “OK listen, here’s what you need to do”
Couldn’t agree more.