Being Non-Judgmental: The kiss of death for your coaching practice
Being Non-Judgmental: The kiss of death for your coaching practice
While this is almost always exactly the right thing to do within the context of a coaching session, it can be the absolute worst thing you do when building your coaching business. If you are trying to be non-judgmental and ‘coach-like’ in every aspect of your practice, you are on the road to ruin.
Let me explain.
We’ll look at the idea of being ‘coach-like’ first.
What does it mean to be ‘coach-like’? From my own observations it means actively listening to people, being empathetic, mirroring and matching body language, nodding along and smiling serenely as someone is talking, very rarely talking about yourself and generally taking the attitude that whatever the person you’re talking to is saying is right in their map of the world.
The down-side to being ‘coach-like’ when you’re not in a coaching session is that people outside of the personal development world can find it very hard to engage with you. They just don’t ‘get’ you.
I often hear business people at networking events talking about coaches saying things like, “It’s really hard to get a conversation going – they just want to listen” and “Don’t they have an opinion?”.
Some even go as far as making comments like, “I find them patronising; they think they’re so perfect” or “I hate it when they start asking really personal questions or putting me on the spot. Sometimes I just want to let off steam and they think that gives them permission to ask me probing questions or ask me why I feel that way!”
When you’re outside of coaching sessions, you don’t need to try and ‘stealth-coach’ people to showcase what you can do. You can do this much better by being yourself, being authentic and expressing your opinions. You’ll also have a lot more fun! Be prepared to talk about things other than coaching when you’re networking. Keep an eye on current events and sports so you have things to say. Read around your subject so you can talk with authority. When you’re asked what you do, be specific. Tell stories and give examples. Remember interesting facts and figures that are related to the market you work in. Don’t just talk about coaching sessions or techniques; mention talks you’re running or articles or e-books you’ve written on the topic. It’s much easier to offer to email information about these to people than it is to try and sell them on a coaching session there and then.
If you’re really being yourself, very quickly you’ll find that the kind of clients you wouldn’t get along with anyway will drift away and the ones who are right for you will be drawn closer to you. It’s a process of natural selection.
You’ll also find that people start to see you as a real, unique individual rather than ‘just another life coach’.
Now let’s move on to being non-judgmental.
This idea that you should be non-judgmental in everything you do has the potential to be very damaging to you. Not just in your coaching practice, but in your life generally.
You need to make judgements on a daily basis, if not a minute-by-minute basis. You need to judge how fast a car is coming towards you before you step into the road, you need to judge whether the food in your fridge has gone off before you eat it and you need to judge whether you’re coaching the right people on the right things.
When coaching our clients to be more successful we tell them to set goals, make decisions and to take action. This requires judgment on the part of our clients. They need to judge whether the goal they are setting for themselves is achievable, whether it’s actually what they want and whether it is really SMART enough (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound).
To make a decision requires them to weigh up all the options, select the best option and discard the others. To take action they must decide what they are going to do and also what they are NOT going to do. Every action comes with an opportunity cost. In other words, if you take one course of action, it means that you are unable to take another.
When our clients avoid setting goals, making a decision or taking action, we might question whether they know what they want. And if they say that they know what they want but still resist doing something about it, we’d ask ourselves whether they really want it badly enough.
As coaches, if we truly want success we have to be decisive. We have to make judgments. We have to decide to take a course of action, even if it means that we can’t take another. Anything less than that and we are abdicating all responsibility for our future success to ‘the Universe’, fate or luck. That’s also called being passive or if we’re being extreme, “wishful thinking”.
But fate, luck and ‘the Universe’ are funny old things.
When you tell them what you want, things start to happen. You might have heard that phrase, “Leap and the net will appear”. When you leap you do it as a whole person - you have to choose which direction to leap in! The other option is you chop yourself up into tiny pieces and scatter them in the wind hoping that they all come back together when they hit the right net!
The leap that I’m suggesting you take is to decide who you most want to work with in your practice. Which coaching clients would you most like to have? And what do those people most want to get from working with you?
Make judgments about the sort of people you like and the people you would prefer not to coach. A good coaching relationship hinges on whether the match between coach and coachee is right. Yes, you can adapt your style to suit the client, but it’s an awful lot easier to concentrate your full attention on the coachee when you can relax and be yourself rather than concentrating on whether you’re building rapport effectively or matching their words exactly.
You’ll be a better coach when you relax.
And when you’re more present in coaching sessions, your clients will get better results and you’ll earn yourself the reputation as the ‘go-to’ person for people like them.
So, while being non-judgmental can be the kiss of death to your coaching practice, making the right kinds of judgments can give an ailing coaching practice the kiss of life.
Being NonJudgmental The kiss of death for your coaching practice - To learn more about this author, visit Hannah McNamara's Website.
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Whether we trained to be a life coach, executive coach, small business coach or another niche coach, we were taught to keep an open mind. To clear our own thoughts and be completely present with our clients. To listen. To observe. To facilitate. But never to judge.
While this is almost always exactly the right thing to do within the context of a coaching session, it can be the absolute worst thing you do when building your coaching business. If you are trying to be non-judgmental and ‘coach-like’ in every aspect of your practice, you are on the road to ruin.
Let me explain.
We’ll look at the idea of being ‘coach-like’ first.
What does it mean to be ‘coach-like’? From my own observations it means actively listening to people, being empathetic, mirroring and matching body language, nodding along and smiling serenely as someone is talking, very rarely talking about yourself and generally taking the attitude that whatever the person you’re talking to is saying is right in their map of the world.
The down-side to being ‘coach-like’ when you’re not in a coaching session is that people outside of the personal development world can find it very hard to engage with you. They just don’t ‘get’ you.
I often hear business people at networking events talking about coaches saying things like, “It’s really hard to get a conversation going – they just want to listen” and “Don’t they have an opinion?”.
Some even go as far as making comments like, “I find them patronising; they think they’re so perfect” or “I hate it when they start asking really personal questions or putting me on the spot. Sometimes I just want to let off steam and they think that gives them permission to ask me probing questions or ask me why I feel that way!”
When you’re outside of coaching sessions, you don’t need to try and ‘stealth-coach’ people to showcase what you can do. You can do this much better by being yourself, being authentic and expressing your opinions. You’ll also have a lot more fun! Be prepared to talk about things other than coaching when you’re networking. Keep an eye on current events and sports so you have things to say. Read around your subject so you can talk with authority. When you’re asked what you do, be specific. Tell stories and give examples. Remember interesting facts and figures that are related to the market you work in. Don’t just talk about coaching sessions or techniques; mention talks you’re running or articles or e-books you’ve written on the topic. It’s much easier to offer to email information about these to people than it is to try and sell them on a coaching session there and then.
If you’re really being yourself, very quickly you’ll find that the kind of clients you wouldn’t get along with anyway will drift away and the ones who are right for you will be drawn closer to you. It’s a process of natural selection.
You’ll also find that people start to see you as a real, unique individual rather than ‘just another life coach’.
Now let’s move on to being non-judgmental.
This idea that you should be non-judgmental in everything you do has the potential to be very damaging to you. Not just in your coaching practice, but in your life generally.
You need to make judgements on a daily basis, if not a minute-by-minute basis. You need to judge how fast a car is coming towards you before you step into the road, you need to judge whether the food in your fridge has gone off before you eat it and you need to judge whether you’re coaching the right people on the right things.
When coaching our clients to be more successful we tell them to set goals, make decisions and to take action. This requires judgment on the part of our clients. They need to judge whether the goal they are setting for themselves is achievable, whether it’s actually what they want and whether it is really SMART enough (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound).
To make a decision requires them to weigh up all the options, select the best option and discard the others. To take action they must decide what they are going to do and also what they are NOT going to do. Every action comes with an opportunity cost. In other words, if you take one course of action, it means that you are unable to take another.
When our clients avoid setting goals, making a decision or taking action, we might question whether they know what they want. And if they say that they know what they want but still resist doing something about it, we’d ask ourselves whether they really want it badly enough.
As coaches, if we truly want success we have to be decisive. We have to make judgments. We have to decide to take a course of action, even if it means that we can’t take another. Anything less than that and we are abdicating all responsibility for our future success to ‘the Universe’, fate or luck. That’s also called being passive or if we’re being extreme, “wishful thinking”.
But fate, luck and ‘the Universe’ are funny old things.
When you tell them what you want, things start to happen. You might have heard that phrase, “Leap and the net will appear”. When you leap you do it as a whole person - you have to choose which direction to leap in! The other option is you chop yourself up into tiny pieces and scatter them in the wind hoping that they all come back together when they hit the right net!
The leap that I’m suggesting you take is to decide who you most want to work with in your practice. Which coaching clients would you most like to have? And what do those people most want to get from working with you?
Make judgments about the sort of people you like and the people you would prefer not to coach. A good coaching relationship hinges on whether the match between coach and coachee is right. Yes, you can adapt your style to suit the client, but it’s an awful lot easier to concentrate your full attention on the coachee when you can relax and be yourself rather than concentrating on whether you’re building rapport effectively or matching their words exactly.
You’ll be a better coach when you relax.
And when you’re more present in coaching sessions, your clients will get better results and you’ll earn yourself the reputation as the ‘go-to’ person for people like them.
So, while being non-judgmental can be the kiss of death to your coaching practice, making the right kinds of judgments can give an ailing coaching practice the kiss of life.
Being NonJudgmental The kiss of death for your coaching practice - To learn more about this author, visit Hannah McNamara's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Casey GollanCasey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website |
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Joe DagerJoe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as Lean Six Sigma Marketing and organized referral marketing. What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe’s ability to combine his expertise with “out of the box” thinking is unsurpassed. He has always delivered quickly, cost effectively and with ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with.” - James R. If you want to learn more about Business901, start a conversation with us. We can be found @ Web/Blog: Business901.com Web/Blog: FundingYourNonprofit.com LinkedIn Profile Follow me on Twitter - Visit Joe Dager's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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