minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
Archive for July, 2011
Know any successful life coaches?
Jul 27th
“I asked the guy next to me what he did and he said: ‘I’m a life coach’. I said: ‘I’m sorry to hear that.”
So joked Topher Morrison at a conference recently.
(Incidentally, he’s speaking at the London YES Group tonight.)
Was he right? Is it inevitable that anyone who describes themselves as a ‘life coach’ is unsuccessful at attracting clients, and that commercial success is available only to specialists?
Or are there actually armies of successful life coaches out here?
I’d love to know.
Not least because later this week I’ll be releasing the tentative conclusions from a Clean Language modeling project which suggest that personal development actually makes you bad at marketing. But I’m aware I’ve been working from a self-selected sample.
I’ve now worked with dozens of people who volunteered for a “sweet spot session” in which I would help them find the place where their unique skills, knowledge and experience coincided with the needs of a hungry crowd.
What I haven’t been able to do is see the other side. I’m not sure I know any ‘life coaches’ – or any non-specialist coaches – who regard themselves as commercially successful
So, shout up in the comments below. Do you know any successful ‘life coaches’?
More >Why Personal Development Makes You Bad At Marketing
Jul 25th
If you’re a “struggling coach”, look away now…
The alarming truth is that reading self-help books and going on personal development workshops literally makes you bad at marketing, in at least two specific ways.
That’s my tentative conclusion from my recent research in the sweet spot sessions. And this week, I’ll be sharing two crucial insights from my modelling so far.
First, here’s the “struggling coach” scenario. Look familiar?
- You are unhappy with your life as it is, and decide to change. You start your personal development journey.
- You go on lots of courses, perhaps even qualifying as a workshop junkie.
- As a side-effect of your personal transformation, you become an NLP Practitioner or an EFT Trainer or a Hypnotherapist or a Supercoach or whatever.
- You transform your own life, outgrow your own conception of yourself, and decide that you want to experience the freedom of self-employment while helping others to change their lives, too.
- Then you set out your stall as an independent “helping professional” and… slowly go broke as you search fruitlessly for clients.
It seems such a natural progression. Sure as night follows day…
Now, here’s the thing. What if the “going broke” part wasn’t the fault of the struggling coach… but was a natural consequence of More >
The Problem Problem
Jul 21st
People have problems. And that’s a problem.
We spend our time obsessing about the things that are going wrong – at work… in our social lives… at home… with our kids…
And if you’re into personal development you’ll already be well aware that it’s a problem, because you’ll know that a consistent focus on what we don’t want makes it harder for us to get what we do want. It means we’re not using our minds optimally.
As my friend Jamie Smart puts it: “Imagine going to the supermarket with a list of everything you didn’t want.”
There are various ways to change this problem focus.
Maybe you use SMART goal setting.
Or perhaps if you’re a Clean Language enthusiast you’ll use the Power Switch question: “And when <problem>, what would you like to have happen?”
Here’s another approach that works well for me. It takes our obsession with problems, and uses it against itself.
Again, it involves a simple question.
“What’s the problem you’d love to have?”
So, for example if you’re a struggling coach, the problem you’d love to have might be attracting too many clients wanting your help. It would be a real struggle to find a way of managing. Would you up your prices, limit your hours, hire support services…?
Then, once you More >
The One Top Tip For Increasing Engagement
Jul 14th
How do you increase engagement?
How can you persuade your staff to give “200 per cent” – instead of the 10 or 20 per cent effort of the average office job?
How can you transform your customers from passive consumers into passionate advocates for your products or services?
Earlier this week I was interviewing Kimberley Hare of Kaizen Training for an article in Rapport magazine. We were talking about facilitation – and the increasing demand for excellent facilitation skills in the corporate world.
She explained: “Everybody wants more engagement – and the best way of getting that is to have people in the organisation who are able to act as the catalysts to unlock all that wasted initiative and energy… great facilitators.”
There’s an opportunity here. Because at the heart of great facilitation is… <drum roll> … listening.
It’s not just about staff or customers being given an opportunity to express themselves, to sound off. It’s about them feeling heard, noticed, acknowledged, respected.
In the article, Kimberley talks about some of the ways NLP enthusiasts can quickly put their existing sensory acuity and other skills to good use in meetings at work.
And though Kimberley and I didn’t talk about it, but I know from my own experience that it’s More >
