328. Advanced Coaching Tools

I’m Jody Moore, and this is Better Than Happy, episode 328, Advanced Coaching Tools.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me, I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello, everybody. How are we doing today? So, I know a lot of you that follow me here and listen to the podcast are coaches. And I wanted to create an episode specifically for you. Those of you that are not coaches, I think you’re going to find this episode to still be very interesting. I know a lot of you love learning a little bit about the coaching tools.

And some of this is going to be applicable in various situations where maybe you’re teaching or guiding your kids or mentoring people in various ways. But I do want to preface by saying that the things I’m going to teach today, these advanced coaching tools build on the tools taught at the Life Coach School, which is where I am certified as a coach, and I know many of you listening are as well.

So, I hope that they will be applicable and relevant to a lot of people who are coming from a lot of different backgrounds. But specifically, they’re going to be very powerful and relevant to those of you who are Life Coach Scholl certified coaches, who use the self-coaching model and the similar tools to what I use.

The reason I wanted to speak to you is, first of all, because I realized the other day, I have so many coaches that follow me and I don’t really do episodes for them very often. And I probably won’t regularly because this is – you know, the podcast is for my more general clientele.

But on occasion, I want to speak to you. And I do also have actually a sort of master’s level coach training program that I put together and have run for a couple of years now. And we’re going to be opening up the doors for enrollment for that this fall.

So, we have an information call happening on November 10^th where I’m going to go through exactly what that program is, how it works, who it’s for, who it’s not for, and all of the details. It is for already certified Life Coach School coaches, because again, everything I do builds on those tools. So, you will need that foundation.

This will take you much deeper in your coaching and it’s designed to give you coaching experience and coaching confidence and make you a better coach. So, I won’t go into details on that program. If you want to join the information call, go to jodymoore.com/coach. There’s actually quite a bit of information on that page about it as well. But I’ll be going into detail about specifics on November 10^th and explaining how to get a spot, if you want one, because we have very limited seating in that program.

But for today, I want to give you some tools that will take your coaching to the next level. And I will say that I know that these tools will help you and I believe that, for most people, they’re what you need when you’re a coach who has been certified and maybe has a little bit of experience but can tell you haven’t mastered it at the level you want to, because I’ve been there.

And so, all of these observations that I’m going to share with you are observations that I had first and foremost of myself. Some of them, I noticed. Some of them, I had other more seasoned and experienced coaches point out to me. But they’re things that are little and not super challenging to master, but they require a level of awareness and they will require some consistent practice.

So, there are five things I want to offer to you today. And the first one, I’m just going to say rather abruptly, the first thing you have to do if you want to be a better coach is you have to shut up. I’m sorry to say it that abruptly. We don’t really say “shut up” in our house. But I’m saying it abruptly because, again, that is how I had to say it to myself a few years ago when I realized, “Oh my goodness, I talk so much.”

And I still do. I still probably talk too much when I’m coaching. Now, here’s why we do that, I think. First of all, we are so excited about the tools that we have and the knowledge we have. And we love our clients so fiercely. And we – if you’re anything like me – we coaches are obsessed with learning the tools, with listening or reading self-help and podcasts and listening to other coaches. And we just love it all so much because of the power it’s had in our own lives that we get excited and we want to share it with our clients.

This is not coming from a bad place. And it’s not even wrong. It’s not doing any harm to talk a lot. In fact, your clients will love it. A lot of times, when I’m working with coaches in my advanced certification program, I’ll say, “You need to talk less.” And they’ll say, “But my clients love it. They tell me how helpful it was and how much they learned and how much that thing that I explained to them really made a difference.”

And I say, “Of course they love it. And you’re not doing any harm. And you’re probably even doing some good. But you’re barely scratching the surface. You can do 10-times more good when you coach instead of teach.”

And that is why I have a whole coaching program. People say to me, “Why would I come into Be Bold? How is it different than the podcast?” I say, “The podcast, I hope, is helping you. I’m glad you’re liking it. I’m glad it’s resonating. It’s barely scratching the surface. When I coach you, it’s different.”

Coaches, you know the difference. We’re not teaching. We’re coaching. We’re digging into someone’s brain to find what’s going on in there. and no two people are alike. So, in order to find what’s going on in someone’s brain, you have to stop talking and start listening more.

So, when I first discovered this – and like I said, this is still a weakness of mine, I still love to talk. And people like it when I talk. But when I first discovered it, I decided, “Okay, I’m going to shoot for the 80-20 rule.” Which is I would like to get my client talking 80% of the time and me only talking 20% of the time. That was the goal I aimed for.

I don’t know that I’ve ever hit that goal. But setting an 80-20 goal helped me get closer to 50-50 instead of 20-80, where I otherwise easily land. So, if you just want to take one thing and practice it, just try telling yourself, “I am not allowed to talk so much.” It will force you to stop teaching and start coaching. Alright, that’s number one.

Number two – again, I’m laughing at myself as I even read it because I remember when I was so guilty of this. I’ve gotten way better. But this is, stop being wise and smart, and start being curious and confused.

Here’s what used to happen to me. A client would come on and they would start explaining their question or challenge or problem. And as they were talking, I would start thinking, “Oh, I know what this is. I know what’s going on here. I know how to coach on this one. I know how to handle this,”

Because even if I haven’t coached on it before – which a lot of stuff you have, after you do this for a while. You’re going to hear that all human beings have the same problems that are just organized in slightly different ways. But even if you haven’t coached on it, you’ve probably heard somebody get coached on it by the time you become a certified coach and then especially if you’ve been around a year or two or three, like I had at this point.

I was like, “I know what this one is.” And as soon as we think we are so wise and smart and all-knowing, we become less effective coaches because we stop listening as intently. We stop asking genuine curious questions and we start asking leading questions. Now, there’s a time to ask more closed-ended questions, but not at the beginning. Not when you’re just exploring your client’s head.

So, again, I put a sticky note on my computer when I was practicing this that said, “You don’t know.” Because my brain was like, “Oh, I know this. I know what this is.” No, you don’t. You don’t know, I promise you. Because even if it overlaps with some things you’ve heard or some other people you’ve coached, every human being is unique and individual.

And I love – one of my most favorite parts of coaching is when I’m surprised. I’m surprised by the client, the way they answer a question or what they say or what we discover as we do some digging. That is so powerful. That is our job as coaches, is to help clients discover things about themselves that they haven’t been able to discover before. And if we just assume we already know, we’re not discovering them. We’re just telling them.

They could go read a book about self-help if they want to just hear about people’s patterns in general. That’s fine and all. But that’s not what they’re paying you for. That is not us doing our job as coaches. So, don’t be wise and smart. Be curious and confused, “I’m confused about this…”

Don’t think, “Oh yeah, obviously I know why that bothers her.” No, I love to be confused, “I’m confused. Tell me why that bothers you. Tell me what the problem is here. Tell me why you think that.”

I don’t mean that you have this agenda about it. I mean, you’re genuinely curious, genuinely confused. We are like scientists. Scientists are supposed to conduct experiments and see what happens. Of course, there’s a hypothesis driving them. But ideally, they want to see what happens. That’s how we are as coaches. We are mining the brain; this particular client’s brain. And we have a hypothesis, but we might be wrong. We might be wrong.

Number three, be a question collector. Your most powerful tools, as a coach – this is probably true for us as parents as well. This is probably true for us as teachers. This is true in a lot of situations. But I like to be a collector of good questions.

Because we tend to get in patterns – we all have our own go-to questions and that’s okay. But when I’m listening to other coaches or listening to other teachers and things, if I hear a question that I like, I grab it and I pop it into the notes on my phone, under questions. And I’m constantly trying to challenge myself to ask better questions.

Let me give you an example. I used to ask people as a coach, “What do you want?” It’s a great question, right? What do you want? It’s uncomfortable for clients sometimes. Because many time, we don’t know what we want, or we have judgment of what we want, so we shut it down. So, as a coach, it’s a really powerful question, “What do you want?”

And especially if you can do a great job of holding space for them to explore what they want and they don’t even have to know the answer, we’re just going to help them explore it.

But then, I heard my fellow coach and friend Kris Plachy ask the question this way, “What do you really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want?” It’s a different question, right? Don’t different things come to mind? Doesn’t it bring up some different emotions and some different thoughts for you than just, “What do you want?”

Another great way to ask that question – a little bit better than, “What do you want?” is, “What do you secretly want?” Sometimes, I will purposely ask the question that way because what I’m trying to do is open my client up to explore her brain. And if she thinks, “I shouldn’t want this. I certainly shouldn’t let people know I want this. I shouldn’t say this out loud. This is a selfish want or an evil want or a worldly want, or whatever, or it’s something I want that I know I can never have, who do I think I am?” then people tend to shut down their wants.

So, I might say, “What do you secretly want?” Because it speaks to that part of the brain that says, “You shouldn’t want this. And you certainly shouldn’t tell everyone.” And we’re just agreeing, it’s a secret. We’re not going to tell anyone. But it’s there, nonetheless.

So, notice how just a little shift in your question like that can change, a little bit, the way your client is able to open up and access their brains. That’s what we want to do as coaches.

So, be a collector of good questions. Be listening and looking out for interesting unique ways that open people up, that open you up when someone asks you a question that you find fascinating, grab it. And then practice using these great questions.

Remember, we’re going to be talking less, so we’re going to need to ask questions to get the client talking more. And we’re not going to know what’s going on. We’re going to wonder what’s going on. So, we’re going to need to ask questions. Lovely, right?

Okay, the fourth thing I want to offer you that will help you be a more advanced next-level coach is to stop making it about you. Again, this took me years to master and I still have to work at it sometimes. But nowadays, we tend to do most of our coaching on video, through a computer, which is awesome because we can connect and we can read a client a little bit better when we can see them and they can feel safer with us, when they see us. But the downside is it requires more work, for me anyway, to not make it about me.

Because I can see myself in the video. So, my brain wants to pick apart my appearance. And even if I can’t see myself, I can hear myself, I can hear myself, so my brain wants to pick apart whether or not I should have said that thing and what they might be thinking of me.

Or I do all my coaching now in group settings, so my brain wants to pick apart what other people might be thinking of me or of what I said. And that is not going to make you a next-level coach, if you are thinking about yourself. It’s not about you.

It’s not about getting your client to like you. Remember, we are trying to show the client their brain and show them how their brain is playing out in their lives. And what they do with that is up to them.

So, if I’m worried that when I show my client what I see or tell them what I see, that they’re going to be offended and not like me, I’m not going to be as effective of a coach. I have literally had people come back to me and say, “When you said that thing to me, I was mad.”

And I always tell myself, “Good job telling the truth.” Not that I’m trying to make people mad. I’m not. But if I am not telling the truth, if I’m worried because I don’t want them to be mad, I may withhold information.

Like, as a coach, my job is to tell you you’ve got lettuce in your teeth or your fly is down. And people sometimes get embarrassed when someone says that to them. So, a lot of people don’t tell you that because they don’t want you to feel embarrassed. But as a coach, my job is to tell you that so that you can decide whether you want to get the lettuce out of your teeth or you want to zip up your fly.

I don’t need to tell you what to do. I’m just here to tell you what I observe. I’ve found that this comes with practice. But a great way to start is to notice when people want to make it about you and to notice how that’s so kind and lovely, but not true.

So, for example, when I first started coaching, people would write me letters. They would send me emails and messages saying how much I had helped them. And I just soaked that in.

I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so amazing. It feels so good.” And I remember, I would print the email and I would read it to my husband or I might read it to my mom or dad or my sisters or somebody. And I’d be like, “Look at what this person said. Look how they said I helped them.” And I soaked that all in.

Okay, but notice how I’m really making that about me. Like, I did such a good job. But that wasn’t about me. It wasn’t. It was about that person taking what I gave them and doing something with it. And it was about all the other forces in the universe that guide people, like the Spirit and whatever else you believe in.

It was never about me. Plus, I didn’t create these tools in the first place. These tools have been around for centuries. They were taught be ancient philosophers and stoics and religious leaders and they’ve been around for ages. It’s not about me. I just happen to be the one holding space for them. I was sort of the mirror. But the mirror doesn’t really get the credit in the end. The mirror just is there.

So, when I used to soak up all the positive, then it made the negative really challenging to hear too and it made me more nervous about, “Am I saying the right or wrong thing? Or is this person going to like me?”

So, over time I learned, “Okay, that person’s success and happiness is about them. And they associate me with it. But ultimately, I know the truth, which is it’s not about me. And therefore, when people are unhappy, that’s not about me either.

They associate me with it, but it’s not about me. So, that takes a little practice. Or it did for me, anyway, like all of these things. But ultimately, when you get yourself out of the way and stop making it about you, you can do so much more good in the world and become a much more effective coach.

Okay, the fifth and final advanced coaching tool I want to give you today is sort of a two-part. So, you’re getting a bonus here. Are you ready? Coach your face off and evaluate yourself along the way.

So, in other words, get as much practice coaching as you can. Coaching, at least the way that I learned it, the way that we all learned it at the Life Coach School is so much harder than it looks. You guys know this.

I used to teach coach training at the Life Coach School and whenever I would get classes of people who had maybe been in my coaching program for a while, or they’ve been in another coach’s coaching program, and they always come in pretty confident that they know what they’re doing.

And then, it’s their turn to coach and they really have a hard time not judging themselves for how much they struggle with it. I see this happen all the time. They think that they should be good at it because they’ve been listening to it for years. But actually coaching is so much more difficult than it looks. And that’s one of the things I love about it.

My two sisters who are both coaches and myself always talk about how we love how complicated it is because it’s not something that I’m bored with yet because I still have room to improve. I love that about it. Mastery is boring, actually.

But it’s so challenging to do that it takes a lot of practice to get good at. So, the way to get better at coaching is just to coach, coach, coach. Which is why we give you lots of clients to coach in my master’s level advanced certification program. Because I want you coaching people.

Honestly, even if you didn’t have any of these other tips or the dozens of other things that I teach you in that program, if you just coached tons of people, your coaching would improve. But even better, if you can evaluate yourself along the way.

I used to listen to every coaching call that I did afterwards because, just like a sports team will sit down and watch replays, watching myself coach helped me get better at coaching. Because when I’m in the middle of coaching, there’s a lot happening in my head. And when I would watch myself later, I would realize, “Oh, I talked more than I realized I did. That wasn’t a great question.” Or “That client just said that thing and I didn’t even hear or notice it. I went in a different direction and I don’t even think that’s what the client meant.” Like, I could listen better from afterwards.

Now, many people don’t do this because they have so much judgment of themselves. People say to me all the time, “Oh, I don’t know how you can listen to yourself.” And I say, “Well, I’ve been doing it for so long that I’m used to hearing myself, so I don’t have the judgment I used to have. I got over that.”

And I also listen because I want to be better. So, I don’t beat myself up. I don’t say that I should be better. I don’t go, “Oh, what’s wrong with me?” I’m not harming people in my coaching, even in the beginning when my coaching wasn’t great. I wasn’t hurting people. It’s just that there’s a deeper, more effective level of coaching that comes with time and practice.

And you can start to do some more creative things. You can be a little bit more artistic about it and that’s what we teach you in the advanced certification program. And that’s when it can become really, really fun. But you have to be willing to evaluate yourself and not beat yourself up. And that’s just as simple as listening.

I like to acknowledge what I did really well and acknowledge one thing that would make it even better. That’s it. So, just to summarize, number one, shut up. Number two, be curious and confused instead of being wise and smart. Number three, be a question collector. Number four, stop making it about you. And number five, coach your face off and evaluate yourself.

Alright, I’m going to be taking all of this much, much deeper in the Advanced Certification Program. Make sure you don’t miss the information call on November 10^th. Go tojodymoore.com/coach if you’re a Life Coach School coach and might want to join me. I’ll see you then. Take care.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one, I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.