5 Reality Checks for Coaches Who Want to Change Their Client's Behavior

Dennis E. Coates, PhD. - ProStar Coaching Enterprise

I've been studying the neuroscience related to learning and behavior change for 25 years. Here are some significant facts that can make a huge difference in getting lasting results with clients.

1. Knowing isn’t the same as doing. Even if you’ve coached your clients about what to do, even if they agree with you and are strongly motivated—none of this means they’ll start behaving this way. It’s because most situations in life don't allow for reflection and conscious decision-making. Especially in a busy workplace, things often happen so fast that there’s little time to consider options. Deeply ingrained habits kick in. They do things the way they usually do them—without thinking. If you want clients to consistently do something differently, they’ll have to ingrain your recommendations as a new habit.

2. It takes a lot of repetitions to rewire the brain for a new habit or skill. This is because ingrained skills and behavior patterns are triggered by neural pathways—interconnected brain cells related to the behavior. If the desired behavior is repeated often enough over time, the brain cells involved in the action will be stimulated to grow together. Once all the brain cells are interconnected, the habit will be ingrained. Only then will the new behavior pattern kick in automatically.

3. Most people get discouraged and quit before they can rewire their brains. Because the new way isn't a habit yet, at first your clients will often forget to do it. Old habits kick in. Even if your clients make a conscious effort, in the early stages their effort will be unpracticed and awkward. These failures are an inevitable part of the behavior change process and can be quite discouraging. The disappointment clients feel is what I call “the crunch point." Many of them conclude that what you’re asking them to do doesn’t feel right and may not work for them. So they give up trying, falling back on what's comfortable. However, if they persist, eventually their success rate will improve as the new skill begins to wire itself. The skill gets easier and ultimately, the new pattern becomes the default way of behaving.

4. It's hard for clients to do this without coaching. It makes a big difference to have someone who cares about your clients’ success to give feedback, coaching, encouragement and accountability. This is the real reason they need you—to be there over the long haul to help them work through the crunch point and ingrain the new behaviors.

5. Core strength is always a component of success. Even if a client ingrains a new habit, without personal strengths and strong people skills the new behavior pattern may not be enough to bring success. Adversity is a fact of life; and nearly everything we do involves others. So your client needs to be strong in these ways, too.

10 Reasons to Get Your Clients to JOURNAL with You

Kim Ades

About 8 years ago, I made a decision that impacted the way I coach forever. I began asking my clients to journal every day for the duration of a 10 week coaching period. I would send them journaling prompts to work with and they would journal in response to those prompts in a private and secure online journal that I could read and comment on. The effect was astounding. Quite honestly, I was shocked. Within weeks people were transforming. The simple act of writing down their thoughts and having access to those thoughts changed everything.

Asking your clients to journal and share their journal with you will completely transform your coaching business and here's why:

1. You Gain Access to Critical Data: When you can see their thinking, you are equipped to address the underlying beliefs that prevent them from reaching their goals. This is the key to having a deep, lasting impact as a coach.
   
2. Calls are RICH - no wasted time: You are up to date with what's happening and can get right to the heart of the matter on each and every call.
   
3. Continuous Self-Reflection: Your client learns to pay attention to the role they play in their own lives and build a greater sense of ownership and responsibility for their circumstances.
   
4. No Loss of Momentum in Between Calls: The online connection provides for ongoing and consistent focus on personal development, especially in between calls. This means that there is no sliding backwards, but rather always forward movement.
   
5. Increased trust and rapport in a shorter period of time: Trust is built rapidly, enabling you to move quickly with your clients.
   
6. Faster results: You are covering greater ground and getting to the meat of your coaching with greater speed.
   
7. Documentation of progress: The journaling tracks their change over time. They can look back to the beginning of their journey and see how far they have traveled with you.
   
8. Proof of YOUR impact and influence: The journal is evidence of their evolution. This is extraordinarily powerful as a testimony of your impact on their success. The value of your time together is tangible.
   
9. Safety Deposit Box for their Story: Their journal lives long after their coaching with you has concluded. This creates a long term bond with you that draws them back over and over again.
   
10. Coaching Groups means journaling together: This adds infinite value to the coaching experience and establishes an online journaling community that stays together long after coaching is complete.

You client’s journal is a vital source of information for deep, poignant coaching that has a long term impact. When you are equipped with the right data you have the ability to deliver lasting impact again and again.

Experience it for yourself. To learn more about the platform that we designed for this very purpose, visit us at www.journalengine.com

Building Connection

David Giuliano, Founder, Without Boundaries Coaching Center

“Coaching is about human interaction and trying to know your players. Any coach would tell you that.” – Bill Parcells

“The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The first step is the most important. It is the most crucial and the most effective as it will initiate the direction you have chosen.” – Steve Backley

I am an iPEC coach, business consultant and small business owner. My unique background and over 25 years of experience has enabled me to help others achieve success, which gives me great fulfillment in my own career. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about ways to further benefit my peers and shine more light on the coaching community as a whole.

Quite the opposite.

I believe coaching needs more exposure … to be brought more into the main stream. In my opinion, the field has not shown what a valuable service it can provide to the general public. Sure, people have access to coaching more than ever before, with programs and seminars and other relative opportunities, and that’s great. But it’s just not as consistent as I believe it has to be to create a sustainable impact.

What I feel is missing is the everyday access to coaching. The world around us today poses challenges in education, parenting, financial stability, employment, self-care and more that have reached critical mass and can often be overwhelming. Coaching is an incredible, untapped resource that can elevate and inspire people and help heighten their awareness, their ability to cope, and drive them to move forward in their lives with success and confidence. Imagine how much culture and society could grow from that!

I see coaching as being in the infant stages of its evolution. As coaches, we have the opportunity to create the industry’s culture in any way we see fit to help it serve humanity in the best way it can. That thought is exciting to me. Whether we know it or not, we’re creating an infrastructure right now, every day, building it on a strong foundation just as you would anything you have great care and respect for. That’s essential.

This is my motivation, my passion. I see having coaching readily accessible to the public on a regular basis as a huge opportunity for people from all walks of life. This is the potential greatness that lies ahead … for us all.

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