When is a coach not a coach?

Transcript

When is a coach not a coach?

Sounds like a trick question, doesn’t it?

It’s not. It’s not meant to be.

We’re in a really interesting time in healing, coaching, professional fields where most people that call themselves coaches don’t even know when they’ve stopped coaching and started teaching.

People that are trained coaches realize the distinction between when you’re being a coach and when you’re being a teacher, when you’re being a mentor, when you’re being a facilitator, when you’re being a healer.

People that tend to be untrained are more intuitive coaches.

Not to shame anyone that’s starting out on their journey – but just from a place of service and education, it’s really important to learn the distinctions between the ways that you can show up for your clients so you can coach.

And when you coach traditionally, like the pure definition of coaching in a professional sense as a coach, you ask questions. You might give reframes and stories. If you move into being an NLP practitioner or a practitioner, you might use processes or hypnotic suggestions, things like that. So using those with precision.

Whereas when you shift into being a teacher or a consultant, you might give advice and talk directly about your experience and your expertise in that particular area.

A true coach doesn’t need to be a subject matter expert because they are an expert in mindset, an expert in questioning, an expert in helping you get around your own blocks.

Most people that call themselves coaches are actually teachers. In fact, some of the most successful coaches are teachers.

The minute that you move into a group coaching program, you’re actually switching hats into being a teacher. And so, that brings a whole different set of archetypes into play, it brings a whole different set of behaviors into play.

I just recently asked this question in a giant coach group that’s out there and someone said, “Oh, I just bring all of me.” And that’s amazing. That’s really important to bring all of you, to bring all of your focus, all of your intention, all of your care, all of your attention to your client. That’s an amazing way of showing up in a being level.

I found in my 15 years of coaching experience and having done lots and lots of different trainings, it’s really useful to understand the finer distinctions between these archetypes and these different ways that you can show up for your clients so that you can be clear in yourself.

Even if you never say it to your client between “I’m coaching now” or “Now I’m teaching, now I’m facilitating, now I’m working as a healer, now I’m working as a practitioner”, there’s some really subtle and powerful, potent distinctions that you become aware of when you know how to cleanly move between the archetypes of how you can show up for your clients.

When you know that, you can move powerfully and change those archetypes with power and precision. When you don’t know that, when you don’t know when you’re not coaching, then you can become sloppy in your behaviors and be unconscious. And so the archetype that you wear unconsciously is in your shadow.

What do I mean by that?

That means that you’re wearing it unconsciously and you don’t even realize that you’re wearing it, which can be problematic when you’re in a space as a paid facilitator for a person to facilitate them to their results to understand and unpack what archetypes they’re wearing, what patterns they’re running. If you don’t even know what patterns you’re running, then you’re not being a clean mirror.

If you think you’re being a coach and you’re actually giving advice, and you’re actually telling personal stories and being an advice giver or a consultant, then you’re not technically a coach. And that’s okay to call yourself a coach because that’s what the market knows that as – because the market awareness is very sloppy around coaching – but it’s important for you to know who you’re being when you show up for that client.

Am I facilitating, am I coaching? Am I giving advice, am I not giving advice? Am I asking questions, am I reframing with hypnotic suggestions, am I offering stories, am I offering metaphors, am I taking them through a process?

You need to know what you’re doing and what’s going to be the best way to show up for your clients. If you don’t know and you don’t have these clear distinctions, then it’s like you’ve got less range to cook with, you’ve got less dynamic range.

When I think about when I used to be a singer, we would always want to expand our range – and one of the presuppositions of NLP is the person with the most flexibility of behavior controls the system.

If you don’t have flexibility of behavior in your precision of how you can show up for your client, if you don’t have clear distinctions between the notes that you can play with your clients, then you’re not going to be able to make the same level of quality of music and show up for that client in a really powerful way as someone that has those distinctions.

And it’s not about shaming or putting down anyone that doesn’t clearly yet have those distinctions – but more about just awakening you to the possibility of what else is available to you, awakening you to the possibility of how much more precise are your professional facilitation, your professional coaching, your professional practitioner work can be when you understand clearly what you’re being from one moment to the next in how you’re showing up for your client.

If you’d like to understand more of this and get some more professional guidance around understanding the deeper nuances and details of these differences and facilitating your own unpacking and upleveling of your skills, then write SKILLS below and I will let you know when I reveal and unleash my Growth Collective for coaches, practitioners and healers which is coming very soon.

If you write SKILLS below, you will be one of the first to get in on the launch prices when I launch.

Speak to you soon. I hope that’s helped.

Kylie x