Allowing Your Past Experiences to Shape Your Coaching Practice

Click on the title bar to listen, or right click on the title bar to download the recording to your computer.

Hello Magnificent Coaches,

Bringing the total you into your coaching practice, the sum of your experience and inner wisdom, is a most courageous thing to do. And it's very important in building a highly-successful practice. After all, it's the model you wish your clients to see: that they too can value where they've been, and use it all as stepping stones to where they want to go.

This month's K-Cast is a wonderful dialogue around this issue. My guest is Stephanie Griffin, whose Web site http://www.mytransformationguide.com/, where she invites visitors to consider the joys of, "Enlightened Health, Enlightened Body: Guiding you on your personal path to weight loss, health, and happiness."

The key word here is personal. Each of us, both coach and client, must bring into the relationship their uniquely personal perspective. To honor your experiences and find the inner wisdom that you've developed from them: that's such a powerful place from which to build a successful life and a highly-successful coaching practice!

I'm often asked exactly how my past propelled me forward as a coach, and rather than go into the details here, I'm requesting that you listen in to this month's K-Cast to learn of my personal and career-related experiences.

Here are some of the questions we address in our dialogue:

1. What kinds of skills are beneficial in starting your practice?
2. How do you find the value in the experiences we've had?
3. What would you suggest for new coaches in the finding/receiving of help in the areas they don't want to do?

As a start, let me answer the first of those questions right now. I'm confident that many of you who know me will be able to predict my response to the question, "What kinds of skills are beneficial in starting your practice?"

Everyone has their own inner guidance. The first important skill is the ability to connect with that inner guidance and discern what actions are going to be the right ones in building your practice.

As coaches, we are in the business of authenticity and transformation. If we are not authentic, if we're not aligned with our inner guidance, we won't even be able to be seen by our ideal prospective clients.

"If you remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy." ~ James Russell Miller

To hear all the wonderful details found in our conversation, simply click on the title bar above.
And, after listening, please leave a comment if you'd like - let's establish a wider dialogue around these questions! If you'd care to respond via email instead, feel free to do so by writing to email:assistant@karencappello.com

Perhaps you're interested in being involved in creating a K-Cast? We'd love to have you join us! Write to that same address with your proposed topic.

Enjoy!

Love and Great Joy,

Karen

karen@karencappello.com
http://www.karencappello.com/

Understanding, Acceptance, Allowing… Power Tools in Coaching

Click on the title bar to listen, or right click on the title bar to download the recording to your computer.

Hello Magnificent Coaches,

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with Mariana Florea, a Life, Work, Balance Coach who lives in Belgium. Here Web site address is: http://www.yesyoucan.be

(One of the many remarkable things about our community that I cherish is our geographical scope – we have coaches around the world, connecting with one another through the power of the internet and spirit! Just think of the synergy.)

Our conversation revolved around the nature of criticism, and whether or not it has any place in the coach-client relationship. Mariana offered the following quotation from Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Enjoy Your Life and Your Job:

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.” ~Dale Carnegie

Even though I have heard some potential clients say, “Just tell me the whole truth. I want and need constructive criticism to move forward. I need to know what is wrong so I can fix it,” criticism has no place in the coaching process. Coaching is not about fixing, it is about bringing forward the client’s best answers to bear on their questions.

When we criticize, we don’t help…we paralyze the situation, there’s no movement forward. According to one of my magnificent mentors, Peter Reding, constructive criticism is an oxymoron. Criticism is never constructive, never empowering. Energetically, criticism will “shut down” a person. And then, their best answers become difficult to find.

Understanding, acceptance, allowing… all of these are more powerful!

As coaches we know the power in understanding…when a client comes to a coaching session and tells me that they didn’t do what they were going to do, I CELEBRATE! The fact that they came to the session, and were so open to say they didn’t do the work - that’s a real act of courage. They are looking for an invitation to move forward.

As you show your clients that understanding and acceptance are more empowering, you are a powerful force for change, both within them, and on a larger scale, within society. It ripples out, affecting the consciousness of the entire world.

To explore this topic more deeply, I invite you to share in the K-Cast conversation between Mariana and myself, simply click on the title bar above.

And if you have a topic that you would like to interview me on, I want to invite you to join me in a podcast. Just send an email to Kim at assistant@karencappello.com.

Love and Great Joy,

Karen

karen@karencappello.com
www.karencappello.com