2) They know who their ideal client is, what that client needs help with and they LOVE working with this type of client. Their client feels their love and support and their coaches belief in them and their dreams for their future. This creates the powerful coaching relationship that supports clients in moving through the perceived obstacles on their path.

3) They know how to reach their ideal client, whether it is by networking, writing articles to papers or magazines their clients read, using past work experiences or connections or reaching out through the many forms of social media available today. They invest in learning about marketing and getting the expert help they need to develop their company name, a tag line that speaks to their ideal client and really clarifying what these clients want and need, what exactly their coaching will provide and helping clients understand the tangible results they can expect.

4) They learn how to run a business. Being a coach that can enroll clients is great, being able to re-enroll those clients in the next step of their dream is even better (all of us have stopping points that are blind spots). The coaches goal is to keep the client moving towards the life they want, even when they want to give up on themselves. Turning your clients into raving fans who refer to you, having a contact referral management system that supports your marketing efforts and a business plan that keeps money flowing and clients in the pipeline are all skills coaches need to learn and develop to support them doing work they love.

5) Be the best coach you can be! Hire a mentor coach to give you specific feedback to keep you learning and growing and stretching yourself towards mastery. The better you feel about your coaching, the easier it is for you to enroll clients in your services, market yourself and ask for your fee with full confidence, knowing you absolutely deserve it!

Peter and Sarah have recently begun living together. Sarah wishes Peter would just “get it” that she doesn’t like to talk in the morning, or at least not until she has had her coffee.

And Brian bemoans the fact that his boss practically watches over his shoulder while he’s working. Can’t he just give him space and trust that Brian knows what he’s doing?

All of these people, in fact, just about anybody in any kind of relationship, can benefit by learning to “design the alliance” with the person with whom they’re in relationship.

The concept of designed alliance is used in coaching to set the stage for a relationship that empowers clients to be the most successful as they make changes in their work and personal lives. For example, a client might suggest the most effective ways for his coach to support him when he’s feeling scared, resistant or stuck. Once the alliance has been designed, it’s important to update it as individual needs and desires change.

This concept is highly applicable to all kinds of relationships: romantic or business partnerships, friends, parent-child, and more. Imagine a world, in fact, where all relationships begin with a consciously designed alliance, the purpose of which is to create a mutually successful experience. There are many core concepts covered in coach training that assist students in enriching and deepening their personal and professional relationships.

How might things be different in the scenarios above if alliances had been designed from the start?

Perhaps Sarah and Peter could have taken time before they began living together to talk about what kinds of support they would want from each other. They could have saved themselves quite a bit of discomfort by designing it so that Sarah could have her quiet time in the morning without Peter feeling rejected. Likewise, Peter could make his own requests. Together they could bring greater clarity and ease to their relationship.

Imagine what life at work would be like if Brian and his boss had designed an alliance at the beginning of Brian’s employment. Brian might have let his boss know that he is most effective when given space to carry out assignments independently. The boss might have asked for a trial run at this way of working together. Although this communication didn’t happen when Brian was first hired, there’s no reason it can’t happen now.

And what if Sue designed it with Sam that, unless she has proper turn-around time, Sam will have to do the work herself. That might actually inspire Sam to keep to her original schedule, or perhaps even get the work done early! In either case, clear boundaries will make for a much happier working relationship.

Bringing conscious communication and the willingness to listen to and meet each other’s needs is a wonderful way to empower the relationship to serve each person. The notion of creating an “alliance” instills the understanding that “we are in this together,” working to consciously design a successful experience for both individuals. What could be better than that?

They’re all tolerations, the little and big things we and our coaching clients put up with—often without realizing it—that sap our energy and drain our life force. Every time we tolerate something, we deplete the energy we could be using to grow our business or make desired changes or to simply experience joy. It’s like living with a low-grade fever or pain that somehow dulls our experience and zaps our full vitality.

When am I going to get to all that paperwork?
Zap! Ughhh. I wish he would just be quiet.
Zap! My computer just froze again—the third time today. Zap!

At the root of our tolerations are a variety of limiting beliefs that immobilize us. For example: “I can’t take the time.” “That’s just the way it is.” “Don’t rock the boat—play it safe.” “Don’t complain or be too demanding.” “It’s not that important.” “I have no control.”

There are countless limiting beliefs, yet they all serve to dampen our life force and keep us playing small. And, boy, are they exhausting!

If we are committed to creating work and personal life that is balanced and fulfilling, if we want to fully express our unique gifts and be of service, it is necessary to consciously evaluate and eliminate the tolerations standing in our way. Here are some ideas on how to do that:

Appraise. Make an honest appraisal of what you are tolerating in each of the areas of your life: environment, health, work, money, relationship and so on. Write down everything that annoys you or that you feel you are putting up with. You will likely come up with more than 100 of these tolerations!

Choose. Based on your values and goals, you get to choose. What will you say “no” to? “Yes?” Make sure the “yeses” really excite you. Commit to making them real!

Plan. With the support of your coach, friends or family, develop a strategy for eliminating these tolerations. You don’t have to do it alone—in fact, it’s more fun to partner up or create a support team.

Verify. Create accountability around your goals, with specific deadlines for eliminating tolerations. How many and which ones will you eliminate each day?

Evaluate. Examine each underlying limited belief that has kept you putting up with these things. Again, get support to help you break through them. You may be so close to some of these beliefs that you can’t fully recognize them for what they are.

Appreciate. Take an honest look at what you are getting out of keeping things as they are. There is always some kind of payoff for whatever is going on in your life. Who in your life—or what part of you—does not want things to change? Appreciate that person or part, and look for ways for it to be win-win for all concerned.

Request. Remember that complaints are usually unspoken requests. What requests do you need to make?

As you eliminate tolerations, you will feel the joy of being at choice, an increase in your vitality and a sense of empowerment. And then YOU will be in the driver’s seat, and won’t that be a beautiful and worthwhile ride!

“In a world that is changing as rapidly as this one, we need to think differently about leadership,” says Susan Collins, author of Our Children Are Watching: Ten Skills for Leading the Next Generation to Success. “Leading is not done by those few in high places, but by parents and teachers and managers and those governing all working together to create the world that we want.”

When we dare to stand up for our beliefs or to follow through on our big dreams and ideas, when we act as though what we say and do in the world matters greatly we are leading.

In other words, leadership is a way of life, an expression of our fullest and best nature, our unique gifts. And it starts on the inside.  Coaching deepens the natural everyday leadership skills you already have and helps to develop new skills that will help you and your clients experience more levels of joy and success in their everyday life.

“Everything rises and falls on leadership,” writes John C. Maxwell, in his book The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader. “If you can become the leader you ought to be on the inside, you will be able to become the leader you want to be on the outside.”

Qualities of Leadership

Because leadership is inextricably connected to who we are deep down, every leader has a different style. Some lead with their eccentric, charismatic selves on full, charming display. Other leaders bear no banners and sound no trumpets. But the inner qualities that make for effective leadership remain constant among all types of leaders.

Positive attitude. Leaders know they can alter their lives by altering their minds. Self-discipline, a sense of security and confidence blossom in the presence of a positive attitude.

A drive for learning from others, from opportunities, from mistakes, there are no mistakes only lessons. Those who stop learning, stop growing.

Unwavering commitment. No great leader has ever lacked commitment. True commitment requires and inspires courage, passion, focus, initiative and responsibility.

Good communication skills. Sharing knowledge is essential; even more important is listening. As President Woodrow Wilson said, “The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people”.

Genuine interest in others. The best leaders thrive on helping others achieve their personal best; they are motivated by a desire for the highest good for all rather than personal glory.

The challenges and opportunities of today’s marketplace and of today’s world require that we all step forward and lead every day, becoming the directors of our lives and finding more of our own personal best to give to the world.

Cyndi thinks she’s a good listener. After all, she’s not interrupting or sharing her internal dialogue, is she? But what Cyndi is actually doing is hearing her friend. Like so many of us, she’s just not listening.

As toddlers, we learn to speak and to hear what others are saying. As we grow up, we learn to read and write, along with other useful skills. But few of us ever learn one of the most vital skills of all – how to really listen.

To really listen takes our whole attention and focus. The rewards are huge though: happier marriages and families, better communication at work, fewer misunderstandings between friends and others, calmer and less stressful lives. And another bonus: when you listen well, you become someone other people want to listen to.

Real listening can be learned and it is a key foundational part of forming a powerful coaching relationship with any client, whether the client is a young woman in transition or the Vice President of a large corporation. At ACN we take the art of active listening to a completely different level by combining active listening skills with NLP, to train coaches to learn how to really listen to not just the words their clients are saying but the modality and language patterns they are speaking in: visual, auditory or kinesthetic, the meta-programs (subconscious mental and emotional filters) that clients view and interact with the world through and how to calibrate or match their clients tonality, breathing , postures and gestures to build a deep level of rapport. This level of rapport creates the safety and space for deep coaching to take place.

Research and books such as The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships, by Michael Nichols, and Mortimer Adler’s How to Speak, How to Listen agree on these key points about listening:

Anyone can learn to be a good listener. While some might be better at this skill than others, listening isn’t about being educated, rich or popular. (Although being a good listener can lead to being well-liked.)  Men as well as women can learn to listen, and some of the best listeners are young children who have the ability to drop everything and focus intently on something or someone.

Listening is active. Many of us think of listening as a passive act, just showing up. But real listening requires paying attention, not just to words, but body language and sometimes to what is not being said. It also means responding, not in words but with our facial expressions, head nods and exclamations (“uh huh”) that show we are present.

Listening means turning off the noise inside ourselves. To listen we have to ignore all those voices inside, those judgments and criticisms…Oh, I would never have done that or He just doesn’t see how he’s making a big mistake. It means ignoring the urge to advise and give suggestions (unless asked) and not trying to “fix” the problem or change the other person. Most people don’t want advice, solutions, criticisms or our own stories – they just want to be heard.

Listening means no defenses. Often, when someone tells us something we don’t want to hear, we shut down. Or we lash out or justify. True listening requires putting aside our emotional responses and the need to defend ourselves. Perhaps we believe the talker doesn’t have the story right or is being unfair; that’s okay because it’s his story and it’s not about right or wrong, fact or fiction.

Listening is unselfish. Listening takes time – and who has a lot of that? It’s about ignoring distractions and the urge to interrupt with your own great story. As author Nichols puts it, “Listening isn’t a need we have; it’s a gift we give.”

Listening, like many coaching skills, does not just assist you in deepening your coaching skill set, it can literally change your life by taking all your personal and professional relationships to a new level of intimacy. I have been coaching for 14 years and believe the skills I have learnt over the years from a variety of coaching schools I have studied with has profoundly changed my life and relationships on all levels. Coaching is not just a profession, it’s a way of life.

When I chose to do the NLP training, I was also going through a major life transition on a personal level, a divorce that was shifting and changing my life both personally and professionally. The NLP training not only added to my coaching skill set, it also empowered me through this major life transition and allowed me to heal and learn. At the same time I was creating a new identity for the next stage of my life.

Taking on the Opportunity

It came as a complete surprise when directors of the NLP Institute of California, Tim and Kris Hallbom, took me out to dinner and offered me the opportunity to become a coach trainer for the NLP coach program. Like I said, my personal life was in complete transition at the time. I wasn’t even thinking about the next step in my career path.

So my first reaction was, “You want me to do what right now?” I was excited and felt honored and not really even sure if I could take it on at that point.

And yet, as I listened to Kris and Tim and thought about it, I saw how this was a wonderful opening and opportunity to grow and stretch myself to the next level. The thought of teaching people what I had learned myself in the last 10 years, as I had built my own practice excited and inspired me. I saw it as an opportunity to now open another pathway to share what I had learned in a different way.

The Key to Stretching into Your New Life

I kept thinking about the potential, about stretching myself and growing myself in a new way. I was curious about it. And I still remember when they invited me to go teach in Mexico and China, more doorways opening. When I began training, the NLP coach program in the U.S., China or Mexico weren’t even in my picture. Now I’ve been to China and Mexico several times to train coaches, and those countries are a big part of our international program at ACN. It has been such a wonderful experience to share coaching across cultures and see it and hear about it impacting people’s personal and professional lives across the globe.

When Kris and Tim approached me with this great opportunity, I wasn’t sure at first, but I took the leap—my curiosity won out over the fear. And that’s how it is when you’re at that point of being offered a new opportunity or transition—you can put it on hold, even turn it down, or you can go with your curiosity and just say, YES!

In the social welfare environment, you spend a lot of time looking at the past–what caused the problems or situations that people are currently in. I knew from my own personal growth journey, I was much more interested in looking at the future: what am I going to create for myself tomorrow, the next day, the next week, the next year?

I transitioned from social welfare into a graduate director position with the Hoffman Institute after attending a seven-day retreat called the Hoffman Process, which had a profound impact on my life. Part of this unique experience was that although the process spent the first few days looking at your past and doing some healing work, the rest of the time was spent looking at the future—and creating a new life for yourself. I loved working at the institute with grads and supporting them in moving forward from the process into their new life

The Day I Found Out About What Life Coaching Is

While I was facilitating a group for the Institute, a woman asked me, “Are you a life coach?” I didn’t even know what a life coach was, so I said, “Tell me more about life coaching. It sounds interesting.” She said, “Life coaches work with people to create the life they want to create.”

At that moment, it clicked for me. I remember saying, “That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I love supporting people in creating what they want. That’s my passion!” That night I came home and looked up life coaching online. On Monday morning, I called the program training director at the coaching institute closest to where I lived and signed up. I just felt intuitively it was a perfect fit for me.

My Life Coach Training

I loved going through the life coach training where the focus was on using your own life as a model for how to coach others. It was a process of really looking at your own life and saying: what is the change I need to make in my life? Starting with you and the life you want to create really empowers you before you start coaching other people.

A year later, I was fully transitioned into working as a life coach, moving to the beautiful Sierra foothills, working with clients about 15-20 hours a week, and doing all sorts of cool stuff to make that a reality such as working with Womensquest as a facilitator and life coach. At Womensquest I got to combine my love of the outdoors with empowering women to make changes in their personal and professional lives. I totally felt I was in the right career–and it was and is completely congruent with who I am and gives me an amazing opportunity to use my unique gifts and talents to contribute to the lives of others.

First Steps

Listening and paying attention to that excitement is the first step in a new life transition. Often when I’m talking to people about their interest in life coach training, they say, “I have always had an interest in empowering others.” Or they say: “My friends tell me how supportive, helpful or useful my support and feedback is and that I would make a great life coach” So when they learn about life coaching, they have the same feeling I had: “Yeah, this is it! It feels great and it’s a feeling that’s totally congruent in my whole body.” As you consider a career in life coaching, pay attention to these feelings and listen to your own excitement!

Then last April, my dear friends Kris and Tim Hallbom from the NLP Institute again took me out to dinner. They shared with me their strong desire to follow their true passion and focus their energy on NLP hypnosis and their new program Dynamic spin release. They had decided they weren’t going to do the coach training part of their business anymore.

I will always remember their next sentence, “We’ve decided to give the coach training part of the program to you—because if anyone could make it successful, it would be you, you are so passionate about coaching and it is your area of expertise.”

I remember at the time being quite shocked and saying, “Whoa. Okay! This is big. I need to think about this. . .”

Saying Yes

I came away needing to really think about it, and realizing that though they wanted me to say yes, I needed to take the time and reflect on what this choice really meant to me. It was a process of asking myself, “If I say yes to this, what am I really saying yes to? And what will saying this yes give me? And what do I need to say no to, to enable me to fully say yes?” (I’m still in this process, more on that later ☺)

Using my coaching skills on myself and also having many friends now who are coaches coach me, I started coming to the realization that being the CEO of the coach training program was a whole other level of opportunity to grow and stretch into. Tim and Kris’s offer was yet another opportunity, inviting me to the next level of growth and learning.

I felt somewhat intimidated by taking on this company and the responsibility of it, as well as knowing my lifestyle would change dramatically for a certain period of time. And on the other hand, I could also see the opportunity at a spiritual level and a chance to really make a difference in the world through coaching. I saw I could get to unleash my creative self and create and design a whole new brand for the company. I envisioned it as a new way of supporting new coaches to really take their gifts forth into the world and be successful. All of these opportunities really felt energizing and exciting to me.

So once I got through the fear to the excitement, I was able to say, “Yes!” And when I got into the excitement level, I realized the potential to make a difference in so many ways. I began to attract many opportunities on all levels from coaching doctors in China and training executives from around the world. I also see the chance of developing and sponsoring all kinds of programs that support ongoing growth of coaches internationally and many ways to make a huge difference in the coaching community globally.

Living My Dream and Inspiring Yours

In going from fear to excitement and at this point, the fear isn’t gone completely. I do recognize through my strong belief in myself that I can make this work. The transition really happened when I stopped thinking about what this opportunity would take away from me to what it would add to my life. I really see it as the ability to make a difference in the world, to inspire people, to come into contact with a lot of new cool people, to support them and be supported by them, and to create a structure that provides new coaches with what they need to be successful in the world.

Sometimes the fear still comes up, and when it’s here, I affirm to myself, “I can totally make this work.” When I think or friends say, “What have you taken on?” and “This is big,” I find myself answering, “I know it’s big and I know it’s going to work. It might not always unfold the way I thought it would, but I know deep within me that I’m going to be able to make it work in a way that supports me and others.”

Ever since I’ve been through coach training, this is a major part of my internal language or dialogue and my perspective, the lens in which I view my life. Even when I was going through my divorce, I would envision myself in five years: my future self on the beach somewhere, celebrating with friends and a good bottle of champagne. As I saw my future self, I saw how grateful she was that all of this happened exactly how it did. How much she grew and learned through the experience. How much she created even more of what she wanted in her life.

Creating Your New Life

Whenever you have challenges, remember your vision and what it will give you to really step into this. Flood yourself with memories of all the things in life you have already created and see yourself stepping into the future with that strong belief in your self.

For me, I envision the classroom being filled with students who are excited, open, willing and ready to learn. I see how they will create personal and professional lives they love so they may make their own unique ripples of change in the world.
I encourage you to play, as I do, in the potential of wildest dreams, your highest vision for your life, and best possible outcomes for you and those you love. And affirm to yourself, “I can totally make this work!”

Although I had always been the kind of person who thought, “If I have a dream, I’m going to make it come true,” the life coach training took this to a whole other level: “Wow, if you’re going to dream, dream big, girl! The bigger the better! Don’t limit yourself, go for it—bring it on!”

Turning Goals Into Action

At the time, my husband and I were living in a rental apartment in the Bay Area and were wondering how we were going to get into the market for a house. As I brought home the new life coach skills I was learning in my training, we sat down and began to dream. We realized we wanted to create financial freedom and also travel a few months out of the year. Together, we kept exploring: what would our life look like, what would our community look like?

From this process, I realized I wanted to live in the country, and he realized he wanted to shift from being a contractor to building spec homes in an up and coming area. We put our dream plan into action steps and started to move forward on the plan—all of it took shape much faster because we had become really clear about what we wanted.

The First Ripples of Change

My friends really took notice of our changes both personally and professionally and told us how inspiring we were— so as I went through life coach training, I began modeling the process of living my dreams to the people around me. Then I noticed how my relationship with my friends’ children, my nephews, and the younger people in my life began to shift, too. When I talked to them, it was all about the potential and opportunities that lay ahead for them and about creating a vision for their life.
Becoming a life coach will change your own life and the lives of the friends and family around you. What’s your big dream? Whose life will you impact? And if you’re already on the path to becoming a life coach, what are the changes you are already seeing?

It’s always great to get emails back from some of our managers or business executives who started off business coach training thinking that perhaps their employees were difficult or challenging. Then, after these executives and business managers go through the coach training, they start to create a different relationship with their employees. And they are able to do this because they have changed themselves. They realize “I haven’t been the best me, so I’m completing this training and going forward with a commitment to change my behaviors and create a different work environment for myself and others.”

Changing Others Starts with Yourself

When you start your coach training, you’re usually going to be focused on: how am I going to work with my clients? You want to be a great coach who’s going to be working with people, supporting them to be happier, more prosperous, and have more freedom or flexibility in their lives.

Then, when you start the process of the coach training, you realize the first question is: how am I going to work with myself? How are you going to give that coaching experience to yourself?
In other words, you start the coach training by experiencing what it’s like to be coached yourself. Using this experience, you learn what it’s like to change through the coaching experience, and that’s the powerful secret to becoming a great coach yourself.