Challenge your Clients_Final

>> When we talk about confronting and challenging your clients their beliefs and behaviors, how does that make you feel? Many coaches shy away from confronting their clients because it feels, well, confrontational and uncomfortable. But refusing to confront your clients when they're sabotaging themselves sure changes the coaching experience. Effective coaching involves challenging thoughts and behaviors, not just examining them. So what's the resistance? Why do we do this? Here are a few reasons. One, we don't really understand how to appropriately challenge our clients. Two, confrontation feels scary. Three, we're afraid of how the client will take it. And four, we think, "What if it doesn't work, then I'd just look like a jerk." Would you rather have a client who felt uncomfortable yet grew by leaps and bounds or would you rather have a client who felt like they weren't challenged enough by you and really didn't get much out of the coaching relationship beyond a listening ear. It's always better to let our clients sweat a little and feel uncomfortable, yet emerge from the process feeling like they were held to the highest of standards in personal growth. In fact, this is what ushers change in our clients' lives. When we tiptoe around opportunities to confront our clients, it's out of our own fears and for our own feelings of safety, not in the service of our clients. This is a function of our own "stuff" that we need to work out, and until we do, we're doing our clients a disservice. If you hold back from confronting and challenging your clients, take the time to really think about why. Chances are it stems from one or more of the reasons I just mentioned. To help you improve your confrontation skills and overcome this run in fears, I'm going to walk you through how to lovingly challenge your clients and overcome these roadblocks as they arise in coaching sessions. If you take these lessons and start putting them into play, you will find that your clients become more engaged and accountable in the change process. Before we dive in, I want you to get real with where you're at right now. Pause this lecture, grab a piece of paper and a pen, and write down what comes to mind when you think about confronting or challenging a client. Give yourselves about 30 seconds to complete this exercise, and then hit play when you're done. I'll hang in tight right here. Awesome. Great work. What does your list look like? If any words appear like educate, inform, redirect, feedback, lecture ultimatum, or criticize, or anything negative, if that appears on your list, your concept of confrontation and challenging in coaching is off. And that's likely why you find it so difficult. Simply put, challenging or confronting what our clients say or do means holding up a mirror to them. It's not about calling out your clients when they screw up, it's not about pointing out their flaws. In general, people are pretty aware of what they need to change about themselves. Their problem is just how to go about making that change. So how do you do it? How do you lovingly challenge clients? How do you hold up that mirror? Well, we do it by reflecting back to our clients what we're hearing or observing in our conversations with them. We give them the opportunity to look at and examine their own thoughts and behaviors. There's no space for judgment here because we're not adding any of our own feedback into the equation, we're simply pointing out the discrepancies. I hear you saying that you want to get your blood sugar under control, but every night you eat candy before going to bed, why is that? Think of it as helping them to connect the dots. You're collecting evidence of a discrepancy between what they say they want and what they're actually doing so they can draw a line and reach their own conclusion. To challenge then is just a call to action and an invitation for them to push forward and stretch a little bit to take a step outside of their comfort zone. If a client gets defensive in response to this, remind them this is why you signed up for coaching in the first place. I'm not here to let you slide back. I'm here to help you move forward and get the results that you said that you wanted for yourself. This is where the "lovingly" part of "lovingly" challenge our clients come in. It's important to remind our clients that we care about them, that we want them to succeed, and that we're pointing things out in their best interest from a place of encouragement. This is so important to do because it blocks that defensiveness, which is often a knee-jerk reaction people have in response to being pushed to leave their comfort zones. Remember what we talked about. What they're doing now is somehow serving them. You confronting them about these behaviors is a threat to the comfort and safety that their current situation finds themselves in. Change can be scary. It's important to acknowledge that as a coach. A great way to make your challenges loving and to make sure your client is ready for you to take the next step is to ask for permission before confronting them about something. You can say something like, "Do I have permission to encourage you to grow by pointing out a blind spot I'm seeing?" "May I lovingly present you with a challenge? You're free to accept or reject as you wish." or "Would it be okay if I held up a mirror for you right now? There's something here I think you're missing out on that I'd like you to see." Chances are they'll say yes. And now you've opened them up to the idea of a challenge. They've accepted your offer, and so it's not being forced on them, which automatically lowers their defenses. And by giving them an out or an option to modify the terms of the challenge, you're taking the pressure off of them so they can explore the idea without feeling put on the spot. Let's put this all together using an example. Let's say your client Jody is going in circles about ending a long-term relationship with her boyfriend Pete. She's been getting fired up about the reason to leave, then starts doubting her decision and going back to counting the reason she should stay. Her thoughts are jumbled, and she says she needs more time to think it through. Now she's back again this weekend, her thought process is still exactly where it was the week before. You can see her spinning her wheels. How do you get her unstuck? Well, you might say, "Jody, may I have permission to ask you what might be a challenging question about your relationship with Pete? You don't have to answer it if you don't want to." Because she trusts you and wants to hear what you have to say, she accepts, so you say, "Look, Jody, I want to help you make the right decision for you. This isn't my relationship, so I can't tell you what to do. You need to make that decision for yourself. But what I'm noticing, as your coach, is that you've been going back and forth with this decision for quite some time. Sometimes you seem so committed to leaving, but when the time comes to leave the relationship, you start focusing all about the things you love about Pete. I can imagine how confusing and overwhelming this back and forth must be, and I want to help you move past that if you're ready. So this is my question for you. Are you ready to let go off this relationship with Pete? And it's okay to say no. This is your life and your relationship, and the decision is ultimately yours. But what do you think? What feels good for you right now? Leaving or staying?" Now this can go one of two ways. Jody can say yes, she's ready, and now you've gotten her off the seesaw of indecision in her head and committing to ending the relationship or she can say no, she's not ready to leave, and that's also perfectly fine. One of the things we must remember as coaches is that we don't get to call the shots for our clients. One of the most important aspects of being a coach with integrity is allowing our clients to make their own decisions. This is the basis of empowerment. You want to empower your clients to trust themselves to make the right decisions when the time comes, otherwise they will always look to you to guide them, and the blame will fall on you if or when things don't work out. Encourage your clients to take responsibility for themselves by making their own decisions. If that brings up some resistance for you, if you really wanted to Jody to leave her boyfriend and she didn't, that's a cue for you to look at your own self because there's an attachment there to either being right, being the person with the answers, the person who knows it all, or getting her client to achieve certain results like Jody deciding to stay with Pete is somehow a negative reflection on you as a coach, when in actuality, it could have just been that she wasn't ready to leave that relationship yet. Now let's say when you addressed Jody's indecisiveness, she got defensive and upset. What then? First, remember, her upset is not about you, it's about her discomfort in being challenged. Think about the last time someone got real with you about an unhealthy pattern you were engaging in, not always easy to hear now, is it? Second, remind Jody that you're her coach. You're in her corner, always will be. The only reason you're pointing this out to her is to help her grow not judge her or make her feel badly. You might say something like, "Jody, ultimately, whatever you do and whatever pace you decide to do is up to you. You're in the driver's seat always. But my role as your coach is to encourage you to stretch yourself just beyond what feels comfortable since this is where change and progress happen. Would you like me to continue to hold you to the commitment you made to being challenged by this process?" Of course, she'll say yes, and now you've reminded her that this is what coaching is about, and that these moments that feel scary come right around the corner from where the good stuff in our lives is waiting for us. So what you need to remember about confrontation is this. It's about holding up a mirror to our client's own thoughts, not feeding them our own. It's loving when we ask our clients for permission and reminding them that we're coming from a place of loving encouragement. It's totally okay if a client rejects our challenges, and defensiveness is just their fear, and it's an opportunity to remind them that they committed to being held accountable and pushed outside of their comfort zone. If nothing else comes out of your confrontation, reminding them of this reaffirms why they're investing in your help and what they need to be doing. Taking these considerations into account, there really is nothing to fear about confronting our clients. Sure, it's scary, but when the fear comes up what we need to remember is that we exist to stretch their limits, which means we must be willing to stretch ours. Healthy confrontation helps us grow while helping our clients grow. Any uncomfortable feelings that arise are simply challenges of our own to work out for ourselves. Are you feeling more ready and equipped to challenge your clients now? I hope so. Let's take it over to the Facebook group and let us know. Does confrontation intimidate you? Are you ready to confront confrontation? If so, post your commitment, and we can all lovingly hold each other accountable. Thank you so much for watching. We'll see you soon.