Episode #33: Nobody Needs a Coach – Frequently Asked Questions About How to Find a Coach and if You Actually Need One

Where you are now in your life is not where you want to be. If you’re like me, you’ve had a few moments like this in your life. And in particular, this year might be one of those years where you’re really ready for change. And if you’re like me, you’re a self-starter and you have probably been working at this change for a long time on your own reading books, Googling, watching videos, brainstorming in your notebook, listening to podcasts, all of the things. I have done all of them. I have signed up for seminars, I’ve gone to retreats, I’ve been to trainings, I’ve done it all. And I want to tell you that the number one thing that has helped me was also the hardest thing to sign up for. So I’m going to teach you a little bit today about how to know if you should make that big leap and begin to work with a coach in real life, because that’s a really big decision to make actually. It’s a huge investment.

You are worth it, but it’s a very tricky kind of consumer problem to solve of how do I enter this big, huge, confusing industry that is not regulated and it’s hard to tell who’s good? How do I find somebody that’s actually worth my dime and invest in myself? Or maybe you are an employee and you really want to convince your manager that you’re worth it. That you’re worth investing in. I’m going to help give you some facts to get you over the hump to even be able to have that conversation, and I’m also going to give you some mindset stuff because it can be pretty intimidating to ask for that level of support. So wherever you are in this process, today’s episode is here to guide you.

Welcome to the show. I’m your host, Caneel Joyce, and this is Allowed. Before we begin, I just want to briefly remind you that there are a huge array of resources available to you for free at allowedpodcast.com. There, you can find not only show notes and links to the videos, every single one of our podcasts is actually a video that you can watch live on YouTube, but also we’ve got tools for you. We’ve got guides, we’ve got resources. And today, we have a really sweet tool that I am so proud is going out into the world. It’s been something I’ve been working on in the background for a long time and it’s something I really wish that I had had when I first had that question of, I wonder if I should work with a coach. And that was about 20 years ago.

So I’ve worked hard to put this together. It’s an ebook. It’s called How To Find A Coach. If you’re interested in this journey, you can go there. And a lot of the things I’ll be sharing with you on today’s show are jam packed right in there too. It’s a step by step process you can go through to figure out if it is a good time for you to work with a coach, if you’re coachable, or if your employee is coachable, what kind of coaching you or your employee might need, and then how to go through the process from a consumer perspective of searching for a coach, identifying the coach that is right for you and setting yourself or your employee up for success, because we want you to get the highest ROI possible from your coaching investment.

And by far, the biggest investment here, and I want you to think about it this way, the biggest investment is not just your money, it’s actually your time and it’s your attention and it’s your energy. And when I say time, I’m not only talking about those hours that you spend face-to-face with your coach. I’m also talking about that year where that’s the one person that you’ve chosen to invest in that is going to be a guide who is going to have some impact and shape you if they’re worth their salt. So that’s the overview. The cool thing here is to, I’m going to give you a really good understanding of the group model of coaching, which a lot of people don’t know a lot about. It’s highly affordable, it’s extremely effective, and in many ways, it’s more transformative than one-on-one coaching, which is great news for you, your boss, your employees, if you really want coaching for a lot of them, but you don’t want to invest in one-on-one coaching.

And I’m going to give you a little bit of understanding about that too. So please go to allowedpodcast.com. I also want to remind you that that is where you can find a link and more information about my online group coaching program, Forward Fearless. Today, I’m going to talk about group coaching in general. You can find out more about my particular program and how I do it, which is very conscious leadership based. You can find out about that on my website, caneel.com or allowedpodcast.com. All right, now let’s get started.

A lot of what I am going to be sharing with you, these are responses that I have crafted over the years. I have compiled research, but when people email me and ask me these questions about how do I find a coach? Should I get a coach? Is it the right time? How much should I spend? What kind of coaching do I need? Is this employee coachable? Is there any option for them that might be less expensive? Can I just buy him a book? All these questions that people email me. I have been… I’m a data hoarder as you know, and I’ve been saving up all of my answers and adding some research to them. And so I’m super excited to share this all with you. So these are FAQs.

I underscore that because I want to point to the value of those listeners who have taken the time to reach out to me and contacted me whether it’s an iTunes review or my Facebook page or in my Facebook community or on Instagram or Twitter, all the places, or you’ve just sent me an email, that actually does create real value, not just for yourself, but for our whole entire Allowed community. So I want to thank you and encourage you to keep going. Keep asking, keep doing that. I am very, very happy to answer your questions.

So question number one, do I need a coach? If you’re asking this question, you probably already know the answer. At least a part of you does. A part of you is saying, “I really want a coach.” And then there’s probably another part of you who’s saying, “I’m scared.” Now that scared word may not resonate because the feelings you’re having may feel more like skepticism, intelligent hesitation, it might feel like shame. I don’t want to be the one. I’m embarrassed. I don’t want to be the one who’s seen as needing a coach. Okay, so first, let’s just drop the idea that coaching is a remedial kind of an investment. Coaching is not a wise investment to make if people don’t want it.

So if you actually don’t want to coach but somebody has told you that you need a coach, open your mind to the feedback, but if you don’t want to a coach, please do not move forward. You’re not ready, you’re not willing, but there is probably some other model out there that can give you what you want. So please listen to your own heart on that one. There’s no such thing as needing a coach. I also want to drop that idea. Nobody needs a coach. Nobody needs a coach, okay? The best CEOs in the world, some of them don’t have coaches. Most of them do. We have a lot of data on this, but some of them don’t. And some of the best individual contributors and entrepreneurs don’t have coaches.

Now, I would say I have met many who don’t and they’re not necessarily happier or more balanced in their lives, but that’s usually not their goal, and it’s okay. So you don’t need a coach. You’re getting by right now in some way, whatever that looks like for you. The question is more, do you have a desire to change? All of us have resistance to change. All of us do. We are human animals who seek homeostasis. We want things to stay the same. And if I change, that means everything changes because I am the container for my own human experience. I’m not sure I want to change, right? You’re not sure you want to change. That’s why you still have this question. So how do you overcome the resistance to change?

You can actually trace back through your life and you’ll find times when you got to a place where you had no choice. It felt like you had a choice, like change was the only way to get what you wanted. And this can look a couple of different ways. So maybe there’s a big challenge in your life that you’re facing and you don’t know how to overcome it. And you’re looking for help and you’ve tried everything you know how to do and you’re like, “I need more. I need something different. I need some other kind of help.” And maybe I’m having that sense that the kind of help I need isn’t sitting alone on a mountain or reading another 10 management books. I want a person I can ask some questions of, who’s actually going to be here with me and push me. And this is what I hear all the time when I’m interviewing potential new clients, “I want someone who’s going to call me out on my beep beep.” You know what I mean? People want to be challenged and supported.

And it’s that combination indicates that perhaps coaching is a good path for you to go down. So when this challenge comes up and you feel like that’s the kind of help you need, that’s one of the things that can help you overcome that resistance to change is giving yourself that extra support. If the challenge is big enough, you’re going to look for a way to change even though it’s hard. Then there’s the more inspiring, positive feeling, kind of a change scenario where the way we overcome our resistance to change is the thing ahead of us that we want. Like the thing in our vision is just so overwhelmingly compelling. We cannot help, but strive for it.

Those of you who have kids, you may relate to this. If you have a child who’s moved past that toddler stage and you’ve got to watch them learn to walk, oh, it’s an amazing thing. As parents, we tend to learn like, “Oh, there’s an object that my kid really loves.” And for me, I think about my own kids, it might be this pair of sunglasses because it’s like, you can hear it on the microphone. So like clicky and like if I would do this, I could really excite my son and he like, “Oh, there’s the sunglasses that mommy usually doesn’t let me touch.” And like, “I really want to touch them.” And so he could be across the room and even though he might fall six times on the way to get to the sunglasses, his eyes were not on the floor and they were not on his little bumpy knees. They were on the glasses. He had a vision for something that he wanted that was so clear, he couldn’t take his mind off it and it was the only thing he focused on. And so he went for it.

Now, did he want to fall on the floor? No. Had there been nothing interesting, including me, on the other side of the room, he probably wouldn’t have gone in that direction. He would have done something else with his time. And these elements I’m outlining for you, so we talked about discomfort from a challenge and we talked about vision and we talked about support, all three of these elements are what help us overcome our resistance to change. We have another episode I will link to in the show notes, and I believe we’re going to even make another one soon, which is about the change formula. And that’s basically my discomfort multiplied by my vision, add a little bit of support. That equation is what gives me willingness to change.

So backing up to the question of, do I need a coach? Is that what’s going to help me? The real question I believe you’re actually asking yourself deep down, which is a wise question, and I really want you to listen for the answer is am I willing to change? So if I’m not even willing to become willing to change, that means coaching is probably not a wise idea. It’s actually probably going to be a damaging idea that will hold you back and make it take longer for you to get what you want, because you need to get a little more uncomfortable most likely or have a clear vision, but it could be that you’re like, “With a little support, I could get a lot more clear on what my vision is. And then I would know where to go.”

That was my case. The first coach I ever worked with, I was just spinning and spiraling in my life. And I was living in a little teeny basement with rats in the apartment building. It was gross. And I really was just feeling, very, very lost in my life and like I had wasted a lot of my potential and I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a coach. This was a long time ago before coaching became the multibillion dollar industry it is now. And when I found that coach, she helped me clarify my vision and test if I actually wanted it enough to do anything about it. And then she helped me create steps that made it easier for me to go through that process that was uncomfortable of me creating the changes in my life.

For most people, by most definitions, raising self-awareness is actually the primary function of a coach. They have tools and technologies and techniques and a way of being that helps you to increase your awareness of how you’re showing up and how it’s creating the results that you’re getting or that you’re not getting. And they do this a number of different ways. They can facilitate you having a 360 degree review process, and that’s something I’ll go deeper into in future episodes where you’re getting feedback from a variety of people in your life so that you, as the client can understand how many different ways that you are being perceived. And when you can understand, “Oh, this is how I’m coming across,” or, “These are my blind spots. I had no idea that this was my pattern,” or, “I was really thinking that maybe I was hiding that pattern pretty well and you actually, you guys can see it perfectly clearly.” So like raising yourself awareness through feedback is one way.

Another way might be some of the tools that I offer you here on this show. So I offer you guys a lot of downloadables where you can go to allowedpodcast.com and you can access worksheets and exercises and webinars and videos where I guide you through thought process and a framework and you do some work on paper usually and you do some work like feeling into your emotions. And that helps you to, “Oh, I now realize with much more clarity who I am, what I want, what my mindset is, what my zone of genius is, what my values are.” These are the things that really are going to help you in moving forward and making those decisions that are required to create change in your life.

So that’s a really valuable function as well is you want somebody who can hold up that mirror for you and create enough safety that you’re willing to look in it. And you’re willing to not only see it, see what you see, but to sit with it and feel your feelings about what you see and know when they’re pushing too hard and know when to back off and help you to do something valuable with that discomfort. Because if you’re feeling stuck right now, the discomfort isn’t serving you. Like don’t let this drag out. There’s no purpose in suffering. I would really, really recommend to do whatever thought process you need to do right now or make whatever leap you need to make so that you can move out of pointless suffering and drama and into a place of creative change. And you have that choice. That’s a long answer to the question of, do you need a coach? Yes and no, only you can know. But if you’re curious, I do think it’s worth moving forward to the next step and thinking about what might my goal be?

That’s your next job here is to identify your goal. Now, coaches can help you identify your goal, but you already know what you want and/or you know where you’re uncomfortable, where you want some degree of change. The answer to that question of what do you want, even if it’s, I don’t know. I want to know what I want. That answer to that question can help inform the kind of coach you are going to look for. There are lots of different kinds of coaches out there. One of the most common is a life coach. So life coaching can look a whole bunch of different ways. There are life coaches who help you get organized. I don’t know too much about this field, but there are ones that are really focused on time management, goal setting, getting organized. There are some who are more focused on more of like the inner world, the soulful and emotional, there are coaches who focus on creativity. I personally put all of that in the life coach arena.

Then there are leadership and executive coaches, and that’s what I am. I’m an executive coach who focuses on the whole person and the whole life, and I focus on transformation. Okay, so what does that mean? When you compare my style of coaching to some other executive coaches, there are some who really are very focused on your professional life. They’re focused on you hitting the goals that have been set for you at work. They are focused on things like specifically drilling down into your communication style in meetings or your ability to present information. They might be focused on you setting up like basic management structures, which is a game changer and really, really important. And that these are kind of niche types of executive coaching that are very focused on your professional life.

Then there are others where you’re going to be talking mostly about just your professional performance as a whole and what can you do to boost that performance? Then there are ones like me. I’m more holistic. So I have found in my experience, we often have figured out how to navigate our shadows and some of our blind spots and our character flaws, if you want to call them that. We’ve figured out how to navigate that in the workplace, because that’s where we have all of this accountability around us, right? People can see us and there are incentives baked into us behaving a certain way and looking like we are a certain way. So we get up in our image and there’s good reasons for that. And so for that reason, we can kind of skate by for a long time at work without dealing with the things that are really holding us back.

And what do I mean really holding us back? I mean there might be a completely different life available to you if you are not yet the founder of your own company, but that’s really what… Like deep down, there’s a little voice that says that is my dream, but right now I’m a middle manager, a really big change would be you saying, “I’m stepping out and I’m going to go do that and I’m going to do it in a big way.” And being equipped for it. So not making a hasty or a silly decision, but like, “I’m going to get myself ready for being that and I’m going to get myself ready for all of the ups and downs of it.” That would be a pretty big transformation.

There’s also the transformation that we work on mostly here on Allowed, which is a transformation in your level of consciousness. A transformation from being a person who lives mostly in drama or even unaware that you’re in drama, so being in victimhood, powerlessness, blame, guilt, self-blame, resentment, all that drama and all that it leads to, and then transforming into a person who has clarity about what you’re committed to in your life, how far you’re willing to go for it. You can create clear agreements. You have clean relationships that are drama-free. You are the creator of your own life and your own circumstances and you are fully enthralled with accepting that responsibility. And you live in ease and flow.

And it’s not like people are either one or the other, but the first step of it is waking up and getting that awareness of, oh, this is a different way of looking at my experience. That itself is a transformation. And then once you have that experience, now we can ask the question of what you want and get a really different answer because before, I was living in my close little world of what was possible from drama. “Oh, well, there’s nothing available in my company. Nothing is good. So I guess what I’ll just work on is time management so I can spend less time on this job.” Oh gosh, aim higher is not even the right way to put it. See it differently. Recognize your own power.

When I talk about transformational coaching, that’s what a transformational coach would do is things of that magnitude. And then the whole life of course comes in because at work I can skate by, but in my home life, in my personal life, that’s where I’m going to find the juice. I’m going to find the meaty stuff. The issues that in my reactivity, because I’m with those that I most love, save their souls, that’s when the worst of me shows up oftentimes. And so I like to bring those issues into the coaching conversation when they come up. And I might even ask. I might even ask about it. I probably will.

And that gives both of us, the client and the coach, a lot more to work with that is more meaty. It’s going to cut deeper and help you to get that both the discomfort and the big vision that we both know you need to find the willingness to make the big change and get out of the land of incremental changes. So I always tell people in my first interviews I am not a performance coach. I am not here to boost your performance. That’s not my primary goal. My primary goal is for you to step into your full consciousness as a leader, and to really create the results that you want in your life and to recognize all of your power, your claimed power and your unclaimed power. Big distinction.

That said, all of these kinds of coaching are valuable. And I myself have hired performance coaches. I have hired a business coach who coached me when I was early in my days as a solo entrepreneur, before I even had a team I think. I probably had Heather. I did. Thanks Heather. [inaudible 00:22:29]. She’s been through a lot. So, these are all really, really valuable kinds of coaches. You might also work with a coach that kind of blends, at least when we talk about leadership coaching, they blend coaching with other models of service. This is something I do as well. So I have a background as a startup operator. I’ve run teams, I’ve been part of being acquired, I’ve helped with fundraising, all of those things. So I have tactical and strategic experience and I never would want to leave any of that on the table, but me offering advice in those arenas is not coaching. That’s advising.

And I would do it more from the standpoint of I’m brainstorming with you. Here’s some things that have worked for me or here’s really what my gut is telling me about it. Take it or leave it. I’m not right. What do you think? Where does that land up for you? But I’ll usually be explicit that I’m shifting out of a coaching mode and into an advisory mode. And some clients want that and some don’t. So you might work with a coach who is focused on something like your organizational culture. This is a lot of the work that my colleagues and I from Evolution and from the Conscious Leadership Group, those groups both really focus a lot on culture. And that’s one where you can’t change your culture unless you change yourself. And so it really makes a ton of sense to blend the two and to help you get to that place where you actually can be the creator of your culture, while informing you about some of what we have learned about culture and what works and what doesn’t and how to get there. So we bring in that experience as an advisor.

Okay, so I hope that gave a little bit of a flavor of what you might look for in terms of the type of coach that you might need at this point in your life. And I would say that in each of these areas, there’s a massive spectrum, massive, massive spectrum in terms of how much depth you’re going to find. Some coaches really do feel more like there’s a blend of coaching and therapy, and others it feels much more like a really great basketball coach might feel or a not so great basketball coach might feel like.

So I mentioned therapy, and this is a question I get a lot too. So I’m going to move into this one now. I often get asked, do I need a coach or do I need a therapist? My answer usually is, if you think you might need both, you probably should get both. The two go together really, really well. I have almost always had both in my life for myself, coach and a therapist. The distinction between the two is sometimes unclear, and so I want to speak to that real quick. So a therapist is somebody who they help you to understand who you are now and maybe what you want now based also on understanding what has happened in the past. This is like all models, a dramatic oversimplification, and it’s a generalization. It’s probably not true of all therapists. But in general, therapists help you work with your own psychology and with a lot of rich understanding of how that psychology got formed.

And we know from our episodes on Shadow that a lot of our psychology gets formed in those early days where we learn to hide or disown parts of ourselves. And by early days, I don’t mean your first day at IBM. I mean your very early childhood. And we know that even that psychology begins to get formed in the womb. So really, really powerful. Therapy is extremely powerful. And I’m not going to get into how to pick a therapist or go much deeper in that area. I’m not an expert in how to navigate that field. But I would say that if you are working with a therapist and it’s not yielding any results or big ahas or insights or it’s not feeling good, stop. Do not move forward.

Do yourself the favor. You would not buy a car, like you would not buy them very first car that you ever saw. You’re going to do some research. You’re going to sit in some, you’re going to take them on a test drive. At some point you may have bought a car and you realize, “Oh, this car doesn’t work for my lifestyle anymore. I need to… I got a new job, I had a baby, I moved to New York City. This car doesn’t work for me.” And then you give yourself that permission to change your car. And I would say the same is very, very important to give yourself that permission to change with your therapist as well as your coach.

Okay, so a coach is, in contrast to a therapist, a coach kind of works from the here and now. Like who are you now? How did you get here? Some of it is what has formed you, but usually, a lot less emphasis on the past, a lot more emphasis on the future. I’m helping you get clear on what’s the big mountain that you want to climb. What’s your vision. And because our natural tendency is to look down at the rocks, look for all the things that are going to go wrong as we try to ascend that big mountain, as humans, we’re going to just tend to keep discouraging ourselves and getting caught in the weeds of how hard it is to achieve the goal.

And a great coach is going to be really good at continuing to help you remember to bring your eyes up and to focus on that mountain ahead. So it’s about taking you through a journey and giving you the sustenance that you need to go over those rocks and to have those trips and falls. And one of the things that gives you sustenance is meaning. And for me, that’s where this connection to your past often comes up is it can be very disheartening and challenging when we’re continuing to run into roadblocks, especially if it’s the same roadblock again and again. When there’s a lack of meaning of why is this worth it? Like, why is this going to just keep happening to me? Understanding our past can really help inform what this means for us.

So I’m not going to want to go through the really tough phases of that entrepreneurial journey if I don’t understand that the challenges of that journey were created exactly by me to teach me exactly what I need to learn for the journey that my soul is on and to help me heal the wounds from my past. I wouldn’t be as good of a coaching client if I hadn’t had a lot of therapy, if I didn’t understand like where are those raw spots for me? And it gives me a lot more access.

I’m a skillful client. I’ve been told this a lot of times, I’m a skillful client by one of my therapists and my coaches because I have so much understanding, not just of my internal typography, but also of how to do that inner work of navigating all of it and helping me to interpret what the sensations and feelings and thoughts might mean. How they might be useful to me in learning what I need to learn in that journey. So the more you work at it, the more and harder you work at working with a coach, working with a therapist, the more you will get out of it because you will become a much more skillful client. And that is a thing. That’s a real thing.

All right, next question. Do I want one-on-one coaching or group coaching? So just like therapy can be done in a group setting and you can join a support group, there are also many different models of group coaching. It’s not known about as much, but it’s very valuable and there are a lot of fantastic coaches out there that offer group coaching models. And I have been part of them. I love this format. And here is why.

So, in a group coaching setting, when it’s properly constructed, there will be very clear boundaries around confidentiality. It will be very clear what you’re allowed to share with people outside the circle, if anything, and what you’re not. So objection number one to joining a group is often, I don’t know if I’m going to feel safe sharing anything with anyone. Well, I would say you’re not going to feel safe if you don’t have an extremely skillful coach who is also a facilitator. Facilitation is the skill of making things easy. In a group setting, that’s the key. How do we make it easy here to experience the safety and to create a real safety by establishing that super, super clear container, that boundary, that sense of we are a group and there’s something holding us together and we ought to actually now have learned we trust each other, that we’re clear that this stuff in the group is confidential?

Now, in some groups, that may not be an agreement that gets created, but it also could be created in a really strong way. And that the strongest form that I have heard of is what happens in this group stays in this group. We are not to discuss what has happened in this group with anybody, including each other. So after the session is done, we don’t talk about those issues again. So it’s kind of like it’s confidential from our future selves. We are also not going to reveal who is in the group, and we’re not going to even reveal where the group happens or even that you are in this particular group. So we’re going to keep all… You can say that you’re in a group coaching setting and they can’t talk any more about it. That’s as extreme as it could get. And then usually it’s like a slightly less than that, right? But you can ask for what you want. And that’s an important thing when you’re interviewing coaches is to find out what the confidentiality clauses are.

Why the group coaching model works so well. And truly you won’t believe it. With a great coach facilitator, you will find yourself opening up. But the reason it works so well isn’t just because of you opening up and sharing, or you being the one who’s in the hot seat or receiving that coaching. It’s actually because when you are sharing, no matter how small of a thing you choose to share, and I’ve seen people share some doozies, whatever it is that you’re sharing, the power of being witnessed cannot be stressed enough. If you’ve never had the experience of sharing anything about yourself in a group setting, I think you will be surprised how moving it is to be witnessed in a supportive way by others who have also taken that step to share and been vulnerable too.

Another really like ninja thing about group coaching is that we always say is your learning is our learning. So whomever is the one kind of the focal point of the group at that particular moment, and there’s all sorts of different formats for doing this work, but let’s say there’s one person who’s in the hot seat. They’re receiving the group coaching. In my model, they might be on the drama triangle, and the rest of the group is there supporting. Whether it’s just witnessing and the coaches working with them, or perhaps you’ve even received some training in the group context, which is how I do it, and you begin to learn how to ask those coaching questions of the person as a form of support to help them get clear. You’re watching them and your ego gets to relax because you’re not the one who’s in the center. It’s not as vulnerable for you. And the ego then is kind of asleep at the wheel and it doesn’t know that it’s supposed to protect you from what you’re supposed to learn.

So it’s not going to steer you as stray as much and close you off to learnings like it might if you were the one in the center, so you can see somebody else learning and then that learning actually becomes the learning that sinks in best for you about yourself. Because there are only so many human experiences out there, and when you see somebody else grappling with something that in some way is relevant for you and you see them have an aha moment or not, or not have an aha moment, that can be the most powerful coaching experience that you had and you didn’t say a word. It’s incredible.

The other benefit of a group coaching setting is that you are going to get to build these connections. And it’s in the relationships, for instance, if you have a learning partner like you do in my Forward Fearless Group where you’re meeting with a learning partner or a couple of learning partners every week for a call, those relationships get quite deep and you now have a team of people who has been trained in the same model with a great established agreements around trust and they’re trained to challenge you and to call you out on stuff and to support you and not to be harmful and to be your advocates and your allies. And then you have people you can ask for advice, you can ask for resources, introductions, tools, examples. You can get into anything and then you have all those people to draw from.

For me, it is definitely hands down been the most transformative work that I have done has been in the group setting, and it is usually a fraction of the cost of working with the one-on-one coach. Sometimes dramatically so. And for Forward Fearless, it is a fraction of the cost of working with me one-on-one.

So then that brings the question of, well, why would I ever work one-on-one? And here’s why. Group coaching, one of the downsides, I guess, is that because there’s a whole group that has to come together, there’s not going to be a lot of flexibility in when sessions happen. So if you want to be there for the live sessions, and in some cases, you might be allowed to skip some or in my case, we have some provisions in place for if you need to miss. We help you make that up, but it’s still not… We’re not squishing our schedule around for each and every person’s scheduling conflicts because it would just be logistically impossible. In a very small group, that might be possible. Maybe that would be like three people. Leaders are busy people.

So I know that one of the reasons I would recommend for some people like a CEO in the middle of fundraising, who’s bootstrapped and has no employees. I don’t know, an extreme example, or someone who’s just constantly traveling and isn’t able to feel good about committing to showing up to a group coaching session. For them, I’d say, do one-on-one, because then you and the coach can flex around each other. It doesn’t give you that kind of consistent drumbeat that group coaching does, but sometimes that’s not what you need. You need flexibility.

The other reason is you have really, really a lot of deep inner work to do and you want all that time for yourself. Another one might be you just can’t get over the hump and you don’t want to do it in a group. You really don’t feel comfortable. There is a lot of confidential information that you want to share and you’re not at liberty to discuss it in a group setting. That could be the case too. So those are good considerations to have.

How to go through finding a coach. That’s where I want you to go to allowedpodcast.com, where you’re going to get a lot more of a detailed walkthrough. But here’s the gist of a high level overview of what it includes. First thing is I want you to begin to ask people for recommendations. Word of mouth is a really good way. You can certainly listen to podcasts and Google and that’s also a good way to put together a list of who really resonates with you. And then see if you can get some referrals or testimonials that you can read and get a sense of is their audience… Do I resonate with them? Is there some sense of connective tissue where I feel like their clients, that could be me?

But I want you to get together a list. I would recommend having at least three coaches on the list, at least, maybe five, and then you narrow it down from there. Some coaches will offer you a free group session. Some coaches it’ll be like a 15 minute. I used to do two hours. I don’t do that anymore. But there are a whole bunch of different ways that you could get introduced to a coach. You might also be able to get like a one off session. Even if the coach only does packages. I do that sometimes. And I want you to interview them and spend some time with them and then you go into this stuff of really trusting yourself with where you land.

Should you shop by price? Mostly no. Here’s why. If you could spend an hour with someone and it dramatically changes your life and you’re done versus spending six months with someone, saving some money and you haven’t moved, which one would you rather do? Your time in terms of your hours and your months and your years of your life is much more valuable than usually your dollars. Now, there is a point where things become unaffordable. And I would say, you can always ask if they’ll move their price. You can always ask. But I would say look for the coach that’s really going to move the needle and do the work to get the results you want.

When you go to allowedpodcast.com and you download the ebook, How To Find A Coach, you’re going to find in there a list of interview questions. I want you to select some that you really want to focus on in your interviews. And you can just take some notes, you can go with your gut, you can track it in a spreadsheet. I’ve had people who ended up hiring me and they had 50 people on their list of coaches and they interviewed me at a detailed spreadsheet with scores. You can do it however you want to, and you will learn in the process. That itself will be a good journey for you.

But you can ask him some questions. I’ll give you some suggestions for what they might be. I’ll give you some worksheets to fill out so you can track your progress in moving through this, and I’ll also give you some evidence that you can present to the logical part of your brain that really needs to hear things like the main reason that startups don’t scale is because of co-founder issues and leadership problems. You’re also going to see something called the coachability model, which for those managers out there, you’re interested in coaching for your employees, will help you to assess how coachable is this person? And there’s a scale. So there’s a seven point scale where you can really get a sense of, is this going to be a good investment or a waste of time?

So it’s a really, really great resource that I really want you to go and grab. And I also would recommend you look for some group coaching programs. Mine is called Forward Fearless. So I am going to plug it. I believe in it a lot. We’ve had extremely high retention rate, big transformation and change. And in this time where we are all missing some social connection, there couldn’t be a better time to have a community of people who really is there and has your back. We happen to be in the enrollment window right now, but we’re in the very end of it. This program is filled up really, really quickly, so we’re actually going to be closing the door like in a matter of days. If you’re interested, we’re not opening up the enrollment for months. Potentially not until next year, 2021. So if you’ve already missed the window and you’re listening to this episode a bit later, please get on the waiting list at caneel.com, and if we’re still in the enrollment period, you’re going to be able to sign up and secure your spot right now.

We do like to keep the group small for this program. And like I said, this is almost definitely the last enrollment period we will have this year. It’s a great group. I really recommend it. And if you’re on the fence, please just go and read about it. Check it out and do a gut check. Any other questions that I haven’t answered on this show, I’m happy to do another episode about this or host a Facebook Live or something like that. Just reach out to me and let me know what would be of service to you. I want to help you get matched up with a coach if and when it’s the right time for you and to find the model that really supports you in stepping into your leadership. The world needs you out there leading from a place of wholeness in your zone of genius. You deserve to enjoy that journey and you deserve to get where you want to go.

Thank you for being here today. Thank you for taking the time to get curious about what’s possible for you. I am here at caneel.com and allowedpodcast.com. You can find a link to the video from today’s episode as well as the hint out. Next week, you’re going to go deeper into the topic of 360 degree reviews. This is the review that I mentioned at the top of this episode. We’re going to go deep into detail there about if that’s a good idea for you, for your employees, how you might want to go about it and some resources there. All right, we will see you next week. Hope you’re having a great summer, despite all the important things happening in the world right now. There’s never been a time where the world has needed you to lead more. See you next week.