For some time now, I’ve been transitioning from full-time brokerage to coaching to increase significance in the next phase of my life. Learning has challenges, but the journey is rewarding.
People often don’t know what I mean by “coaching.” Their image of coaching comes from sports where coaches exhort, instruct, and encourage. The coaching I’m learning is different.
My Experience with Coaches
Several years ago, I engaged my first coach to help me improve our brokerage practice. My coach was knowledgeable and used a proven framework to guide me and hold me accountable. Our revenue more than tripled. The process was very directive.
A few years later, I engaged an author coach to help me write Building Legacy Wealth. He was a subject matter expert who understood what worked and what didn’t in a business book. I followed his advice there. But my author coach was mostly non-directive. We recorded 100+ hours of conversation, and he honestly and graciously identified the bits that would help the reader.
I was introduced to another kind of coaching when I went through the Halftime Fellows program. The program assigned each of us to a coach, and my coach created a different experience from my brokerage or author coaches.
The coaching was non-directive. My coach’s wisdom came via questions, making me think more deeply than I would have if he had only shared brilliant advice. He was a thinking partner. He challenged me to develop my own solutions. This coaching is closer to the model used by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Professional Christian Coaching Institute.
What Non-Directive Coaching is Not
Non-directive coaching is not advising, consulting, counseling, mentoring, teaching, or therapy. In many of those roles, the client expects an answer from the professional.
What Non-Directive Coaching Is
The best coaching relationships are partnerships. Generally, the client sets the agenda for each session. Both parties sometimes work more away from the sessions than while together.
A good coach helps you reach where you want to go. The coaching is client-centered, future-oriented, and results-focused. The coach enables you to solve a problem or capture an opportunity.
Coaching involves developing shared goals. You and your coach agree on your objective and how success will be recognized.
Coaching involves listening. Listening demonstrates humility and respect. Reflective statements and a wise question can generate a fresh outlook or reveal extra options.
Coaching involves questions. Great questions can help assess assumptions, clarify goals, expand thinking, foster learning, examine motivations, reframe perspective, and redefine situations. People think while answering questions.
Coaching involves planning. Considering options and anticipating obstacles boost success chances. Coaching success is enhanced when the client is clear on who he wants to become or what she wants to accomplish. Significant progress is unlikely without a plan. Coaching without a goal is simply a conversation.
Should You Have a Coach?
The elite, including top athletes and successful businesspeople, have coaches. Few who attain elite performance lack a coach. Asking for help is not a weakness but a show of wisdom.
Sometimes, coaching can be transformational. Clients often come in “stuck” and frequently leave with enhanced understanding and a coherent, practical plan that they have designed for their unique situation.
A superior coach helps you reach important goals. A good coach enables you to succeed faster. A great coach is your thinking partner.
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What is your experience with coaches and coaching?
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Terry Moore, CCIM, is the author of Building Legacy Wealth: How to Build Wealth and Live a Life Worth Imitating. Read his “Welcome to My Blog.”