In our Elite Life Coach Certification program, participants go through the training and have access to my team and me through out.

I thought it might be interesting for you to see some real world interaction between someone who is going through the Life Coach Certification and me.

Here’s Life Coach Certification Participant’s question(s):

I’m working with a practice life coaching client who I’ve helped to clarify her goals.

She seemed energized and established 2 small but significant steps towards gaining even greater clarity. Because she is out of work and has had and lost several jobs. As a result, she is “desperate.” She was late to our second session, missed our 3rd session and was on time today.

We reconnected and re-established her big goal ( to be financially independent) but today she told me in great detail why that goal of being a __________ is everything she doesn’t want it to be, yet she is planning on pursuing this!

Can you share your experience with clients who define their goals yet also define why in reality it has so many elements that wouldn’t suit them ( according to them.)

Here’s my response…

Good stuff! Loads of lessons to be learned here. First of all, it really sounds like you are doing a great job with her… so keep practicing! You’re doing a great job.

I’ll just touch on a few things here.

First of all, since she is a practice partner, I’m guessing that she is not paying for the coaching (or maybe only paying a little bit). If that’s the case, that can be a big contributing factor towards her missing calls. Trust me… when clients pay for their coaching, they have true skin in the game and they are MUCH less likely to miss calls. That’s just the nature of the process when you are practicing. Now, you can sure talk with her about what she needs to do to protect the time and follow through, but just know that challenge will diminish greatly when people pay for the coaching.

Secondly, we want people to dream big and at the same time navigate the realities of their current situation. So, if she truly is strapped financially, this may not be the right time for her to launch a business. (Now, it’s up to her and we can sure hold her as capable because other people have launched businesses with little to no funds. However, this does make things much harder to do and means she’s going to have to work exponentially harder to achieve it.)

Now… one strategy that you could employ that would still allow her to “own” her solution is to introduce another expert into the situation.

For example, I might say, “Financial guru and straight shooter Dave Ramsey might say to you in this situation that you’d need to get another job and grow your business as a personal trainer on the side. He’d recognize that this would be hard work, but it would allow you some breathing room and allow you to put food on the table as your business grows. Now… what do you think of that? What do you agree with this that approach? And what do you push back on?”

This elite life coaching approach allows you to interject a strategy but still puts the decision making and the commitment on her.

She may totally agree with it and then you’d help her to adapt her plan accordingly.

Or she may push back and believe that she’d be willing to work hard enough to launch her business.

Either way… this strategy might help her to get even more clear on her plan and recommit.

She’s got a hard road ahead… but that’s because she’s an underfunded start up. Now… some of the best American business stories get started as “underfunded start ups” but she’s got to know that it’s gunna take a LOAD of work.

But help her to get clear on that and help her to decide on the road she chooses.

However, in the end… you can’t do it for her. That’s on her. Your job is to help her get clear on where she wants to go and to hold her accountable to the plan in the way she wants to be held accountable.

So keep up the good work and let us know how it goes!

Here’s our Life Coach Certification Participant’s response to my response (Geeesh… there’s a lot of responding going on here. )

Thank you for this awesome response.

You are correct about her being pro bono and in fact, I started with her before I had a coaching agreement in place. I immediately recognized how one minimizes the value of something for which they are not paying. I will always send agreements in advance now!

Subsequently she has asked if I could work with her daughter.

My first question was did her daughter express an interest in being coached!

I have established boundaries and indicated that I have a waiting list for pro bono coaching. She is willing to relinquish her sessions for her daughter. I can tell I am truly coaching, because she mentioned that she missed talking to me as a friend, (ie meaning the one who listened sympathetically and gave opinions but who didn’t ask powerful questions.)

I will let you know what changes occur and I agree with you about recognizing conflicts that prevent one from having greater success. I was treading lightly on suggesting things, however, introducing another expert to allow her to explore that as a question is a great idea!

Thanks for reminding me of this tool.

That’s it.

I thought you’d dig it.

By the way… what would you do next with this coaching client? What kinds of questions would you ask? Where might you want to take the coaching conversation? We’d love to hear from you. Click comments and join in the conversation!

Keep dreaming big and helping others to do the same,

Mitch Matthews