Are you too predictable as a coach?
Any coach worth their salt will go to great lengths to establish themselves as someone who genuinely cares about their clients. In order to not only make clients feel valued, heard, and respected, but also to aid them in accomplishing their aims in a way that is genuine and personally significant to them. To put it another way, as a coach, you aim to provide your clients with nothing short of an outstanding experience.
However, being too polite, too mild, and too predictable will cause you to lose clients if you don’t periodically surprise them. Then make it your coaching mission to put an end to it and instead teach your team the art of the subtle surprise.
To do so, you must accept the possibility that you are too predictable as a coach. Because they know what you’re going to say or do next time, clients tune you out when you’re too predictable. Once they know that, they have you pegged! They’ve got your contact number. You’ve been stuck in a rut, and they know it; as a result, they’re less likely to take risks under your coaching. The day a client starts completing your thoughts and answering your inquiries is the day you realize you’re in a rut.
What Does It Mean to Surprise a Client?
Surprise is defined as “to encounter suddenly or unexpectedly, to catch unawares, to cause to feel wonder, astonishment or amazement, to present something unanticipated.” It comes from sur-over, above, upon and prize to take, to seize. A surprise seizes the mind, it can take over one’s perspectives, understandings, expectations, etc.
In coaching terms, this is presenting an opportunity to your client that he has not considered before. She is surprised by what you tell her since it is different from what she has heard before. And this novel phenomenon may be novel, vague, perplexing, or unsure. The individual feels compelled to continue pondering it in order to find a solution.
How to Surprise Your Clients
Your long-term success as a coach depends heavily on your ability to consistently surprise your clients, but the “how” behind this is easy to become bogged down in.
You don’t have to be the most outgoing, charismatic person in the world who always knows what to say or do. However, it is best to begin doing the things that genuinely make a fantastic experience for clients as soon as possible.
There are lots of ways of surprising a client. Here’s a few ways you can surprise your clients:
- Reframing their problem as a skill, a competency, a strength. “This isn’t depression, it is a great strategy for containing your anger.”
- Exploring a word, idea, or experience in such a way that treats it as fascinating. “Tell me how you are using the word ‘patience’ because it sounds like a bad thing.” “Is this a misguided part within you?”
- Charmingly responding to an insult or criticism as a compliment. “You’ve got me there, I do make stupid mistakes at times, it reminds me of my fallibility.”
- Saying something in such a way it completely captivates attention. “How will you feel when you are completely un-insult-able?”
- Encouraging a paradox by prescribing a symptom. “Your task is to spontaneously offer three compliments on Thursday.”
- Introducing randomness into a stable problem. “Flip a coin and feel anxious on when it comes up heads, and normal on days when it comes up tails.”
- Begin exploring what has not been said or questioned.
- Questioning the message of a symptom. “What message is this symptom sending you?”
- Opening up a large range of other possibilities. “That’s one way of looking at it, what are seven other ways?”
In any of these ways (and many more) you induce the client and leave her in a state of beneficial uncertainty. “What now?” “What does that mean?” “What should I now do?” “How should I respond to that!?” By surprising a client, you could be inducing one or more states into your client (depending on the context, content of the conversation, and how you deliver it). You could potentially induce openness, exploration, wonderment, curiosity, playfulness, creativity, etc.
Surprise Them
It’s gratifying to work as a coach because you get to help people make the changes they want to see in themselves while also being able to surprise and delight those people. An individual’s life can be profoundly impacted by a coach who assists them in removing roadblocks, realizing their full potential, and establishing satisfying and fulfilling routines and relationships.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Certified_meta-coach] 2022 Morpheus #48 SURPRISE THEM! by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
- https://www.bravethinkinginstitute.com/blog/coach-certification/how-to-surprise-and-delight-your-coaching-clients
