Wendy McCallum (00:38)
Hello there, welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum. We are tackling a big challenge for most coaches today, which is responsiveness in coaching sessions. This is something that I hear, especially from newer coaches, but often from coaches with a little more experience too, where they feel really uncomfortable being responsive in a coaching session when it turns out that the thing that their client thought they needed coaching on is actually not really the thing they need coaching on. So in other words,
you're coaching somebody and suddenly it becomes really clear to you that there's another elephant in the room and that if we don't tackle that particular elephant, then this client is going to stay stuck for a long time. Coaches very often feel uncomfortable coaching around that. They get stuck. And that is for a variety of reasons, but largely it's because they have narrowed their niche so much.
that they feel uncomfortable going anywhere outside of that. So they have marketed themselves as a coach in a very specific area. They have practiced coaching using a very specific coaching approach that they have been trained in in their training or certification, and they just don't feel comfortable coaching outside of that. We're gonna talk today about why it's so important to build your confidence as a coach and thereby
become more responsive in your coaching sessions. And I'm gonna give you some practical ways to start building that confidence now without feeling like you need to go out and get another certification. So please keep listening to this episode if that's you. If you find yourself struggling sometimes with the confidence to just go with the flow in a coaching session, you find yourself over preparing for coaching sessions, having an outline or notes.
questions written down in advance of sessions that you know you want to ask, but you think are going to be really great questions and unlock things for your client. And then in the course of the session, those things don't feel like the right fit anymore. And you find yourself kind of paralyzed for so many reasons. You need to get better at being flexible and responsive in your sessions. And it's actually not that hard to do, guys. So really, I encourage you keep listening. Remember, I've been at this for 15 years. I have done a number of different trainings and certifications.
I've got training around general life coaching from the Coaches Training Institute. I've got training around alcohol as a particular coping mechanism from TNM. I've got a diploma from the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition in nutritional consulting. And I have coached people in almost every area of life that you can imagine. And some of that has come from what I've learned in those trainings and certifications, but most of it has come from practice and learning and from using
some of the tools that I'm gonna talk about today. So keep on listening. This is gonna be a really good one. It's gonna be packed with really great stuff. So let's talk first about this myth that I think a lot of coaches operate with or from, which is that we know exactly what our clients need. This is a trap when it comes to coaching. You know, I always start my coaching sessions off by reminding clients of the fact that I actually don't have an agenda or a desired outcome for this coaching engagement.
I pride myself on being a responsive and flexible coach. And that's actually part of my marketing when I meet with clients. I say, look, let's identify, like, what are the key things as you see them right now, or as we see them after this discovery call, that would be really helpful for you to focus on and work on changing or getting unstuck from. And we identify those, but then I also say, look, here's the thing. I don't work with a curriculum. I don't have an agenda. I show up in sessions and I'm as responsive as I can be.
And what that allows for is for things to come up to the surface, for you to have insights, for us to learn new things through experimentation, and for us to pivot and shift in terms of what we focus on so that you can get the maximum value from the coaching sessions with
if you're a coach who regularly shows up at the start of a coaching engagement, feeling like you know what the client needs,
You know what the steps are, you're gonna take the client through. You know what the agenda or the curriculum or the focus is gonna be for each of the six or 12 sessions in your coaching package. I'm really gonna encourage you to start experimenting with setting that aside based on some of the things that I'm gonna be talking about today.
Here's what happens all the time. Clients come to a coaching session with a presenting issue, with a of a primary issue, or sometimes we refer to it as like the one big domino. The thing that it feels like in their life is the thing that's holding them back. And if they were able to just tackle that thing, shift that thing, change that thing, rid themselves of that thing, that that might actually allow them to move forward and for everything else in their life to be easier.
And that presenting issue might be something like, you I need help with time management or I'm drinking too much and I just need to figure out how to drink less or, you know, I'm really burnt out, exhausted and overwhelmed and I need to figure out how to feel better and increase my energy. I need strategies for that. And then what happens is in the course of the session, it becomes super clear that that's actually not the real thing. So the presenting issue that they come to you for help with and that you talk about in the discovery call,
is not actually the real thing they need coaching around. The real thing, for example, if they come to you around time management, might be that they actually need help setting boundaries or they're like just, know, tried, tested and true diehard people pleasers, or they have a real fear of success or they're struggling with imposter syndrome.
If they're coming to you they're looking to change an unhealthy coping mechanism like drinking, it might be that actually it turns out that the real thing is that they're unhappy in their marriage and they always have been. If they come to you and they're exhibiting signs of burnout and they say they want assistance around managing their stress and they're overwhelmed, it might turn out that actually they are feeling completely aimless and like they have no idea who they are and they don't know what their life's purpose is. And when those issues arise, you want to be able
to be responsive with those and deal with those in a really confident way so that you can actually help your client move forward. The truth is, is that these moments where things shift and you're not prepared for it and you learn something new, this is where the magic of coaching happens. This is where all the good stuff happens. I'm looking for these moments. I am now as a seasoned coach, you know, excited when I realize, my gosh, it's not actually that, it's this.
or I see the client have that epiphany in a coaching session. The problem is that many new coaches start to panic at this point and they feel like they're failing because they either feel like they misidentified the main issue or they just don't know how to deal with this new issue that's come up because they feel like it's outside of their training or their scope. But as I said, the truth is that building your confidence to deal with those moments is what actually creates the real transformation for clients.
Now this is really, really important for many reasons. First of all, your confidence is what creates value. So if you're not showing up confidently in your one-on-one sessions, then you are not creating the same value as you could be creating for those clients if you were showing up dealing with these issues as they arise with great confidence and skill, That's what creates the value in those sessions. the reason the value matters is, first of all, most of us.
are here to create great value and transformation. I that's the reason why we coach. We'd love to help people make change in their lives, But from a business perspective, which is what this podcast is largely about, if you're not creating that value in your coaching sessions, then you are reducing the likelihood that you are going to get really fantastic word of mouth and referrals from your existing clients. And this is basically like leaving an entire stream of revenue on the table.
when I am working with my new coaches in the BBB, I'm always encouraging them to be behaving and showing up in a way in their one-on-one sessions that is going to put them in the best position at the end of the coaching engagement to get a really fantastic testimonial and also really great referrals through word of mouth. Confident coaches guide the sessions, ask deeper questions and pivot with purpose.
Let me read that again. Confident coaches are guiding the sessions. They're asking the deeper questions, not just the questions that they had planned, and they are pivoting with some real purpose and intention when it becomes clear that there is something else there that bears some examination and conversation. When clients feel seen and supported beyond those surface goals, that's when they get more value. This is where, the magic happens, the transformation happens. So more value equates to better results
which means higher satisfaction rates from your clients, which means more referrals and it means more repeat
A really great model for a one-on-one coaching business involves that referral network. It is a piece of almost every successful coaching business. And not just referrals out to friends and family from existing clients, but also those clients coming back again as repeat clients. I just finished up an engagement this morning. I worked with a client.
initially for six sessions that he renewed for another six and then he renewed for another six. And at the end of today, which was our 18th session, we were at a place where it felt like he was in a really good position to go away and continue working with the momentum and the learning that he had built through those 18 coaching sessions. He was in tears this morning because of the impact that coaching has had for him. Now this client started out with the presenting issues being, I'm drinking too much.
Today in the 18th session, we were talking about how he can change the way that he relates to his staff and his partner in his business. And we were talking about how he can increase the amount of joy in his day, in his daily days and how he can lead with more vulnerability. So the issue that was presenting in the first session was really not the issue.
And that became really, really clear, frankly, after the first few sessions when he took a break from alcohol and started to realize how much better he felt. And then all of these other things came up for him. And that is so often the way that it goes. And the reason I'm raising this client is because he was one of those repeat clients. He initially signed on for six sessions, immediately renewed for another six because we were not where we wanted to be. We knew there were all these issues that had come up in those first six sessions that we really wanted to tackle.
And then he renewed for another six after that. when we left today at the end of our session, he said that his plan was to go away and do this work and reach out to me down the road. And I was very comfortable and confident saying to him, look, when you figure out what the next thing is that you wanna work on and you want some support and some coaching around that, I am here for you. I can coach you around anything. I have no idea what that issue is gonna be for him, but I do know that I can coach him.
with confidence around that issue. And that is going to allow for another engagement with this client. I feel fairly confident down the road at some point, right? So more value in a coaching session by being responsive and flexible creates better results, higher satisfaction rates in your clients, more referrals and more repeat clients. The coaching that you do becomes less about delivering what your client initially asked for and more about delivering what they need
to move forward. So this is less about what they asked for and more about what they actually need. That's what happens when you get out of the rigid framework that you have for coaching sessions. When you get more confident in your ability to listen really carefully, to hear what the actual issue is, to identify it, and then to coach somebody through that. Okay, the other trap of narrow niching too soon, so really like starting off.
you're practicing, I'm only gonna coach in this very particular area, I'm gonna coach around a single issue or a single sort of surface level symptom, is that it can really limit your ability to help your clients longterm as they evolve, right? So it makes it really difficult for you to offer something after the first offer, because very often if you're coaching effectively in that first offer, you're going to tackle that.
first problem, that presenting problem, that niche problem, but you are not going to feel comfortable and confident to coach whatever the next thing is that pops up for that person. We just talked about that a little bit. This is like problematic from a business model perspective. know, we want to be able to always offer something else to our existing clients. These are the people who already like, trust us. In fact, these often are the people who love, know and trust us because they have worked with us. They are often
ready and eager to sign up for whatever the next great thing is that we create for them. But if we don't feel confident creating anything else because we feel like we can only coach and support in a very, very specific area, then we will never have an offer for those people. this is critically important when it comes to creating a growing model of business for yourself. The other thing that happens here is that, you know, if we stick with that narrow niche,
In my experience as a coach, supporting now hundreds of coaches in the building of their businesses and the evolution of their businesses is that that is what leads to burnout for coaches. It's boring. And it feels terrible to say that, but it's the truth. I, over the last 15 years, have shifted my niche on many different times in many different ways. And I have really sort of reinvented myself as a coach.
that has been for me the antidote to boredom and the antidote to burnout in my business. And so I really want to encourage you to think about that piece of it. That's like the long-term impact of staying really narrow in the niche that you coach in and not really pushing yourself to get confident in coaching outside of that niche.
The truth is, is that your real niche is not the problem that you solve. It's how you show up as a coach. It's your, as I say in the BBB all the time, it's your special sauce as a coach, right? It's that thing that you do that sets you apart from other coaches. So it's your approach, it's your personality, and it's your responsiveness, and it's your results. That is truly your real niche. And I want you to think about that. Like, what is your real niche?
outside of the problem that you solve and the avatar client that you help. What is it that creates your special sauce? What is it about you that sets you apart? You know, if you were to ask people about me, and I know this because this is part of my feedback gathering process that I use in all the clients that I work with, whether they're business clients on the coaching side of things or whether they're one-on-one clients on the personal and life coaching side of things, they would say something like, Wendy is very
professional and direct and honest, but also incredibly kind in the way that she supports people. It's always some combination of those words. People will say like, look, she's a no bullshit kind of person. She tells it like it is, but she does it in a really kind and supportive and encouraging way. And that's a big piece of my special sauce. I'm also incredibly responsive. I can coach somebody around any area of their life with confidence.
that I would say is my niche and I'm curious to know what your niche is.
The confidence is what really allows you to work within a niche but not feel like you're boxed in or stuck in it.
Wendy McCallum (15:24)
The truth is your clients, just like mine, are real, complicated humans. They don't show up with neatly packaged problems that stick to a single niche. Instead, they bring the full messy enchilada that is their lives. That includes their habits, their relationships, burnout and stress that they're under, the big transitions that they're going through or that they know need to happen, and the deep mindset patterns and beliefs that are keeping them stuck. And the more confident and responsive you are as a coach,
the more powerful your work becomes and the more value you create as a result. That's exactly why I created the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive, a 10-week practical coaching skills program designed to help you lead transformational sessions, even when your clients bring something completely unexpected to the table. Through live training, hands-on coaching practice and personalized feedback from me, you'll learn how to hold space for real change, and you'll walk away with the confidence to sell it, serve, and lead more powerfully.
This is not another certification. This is the space where you finally get the practice and feedback you've been missing and start showing up like the coach you want to be. We kick off on April 23rd and founding members get in at the lowest price this program will ever be offered. Head to the show notes or go to wendymichellum.com to grab your spot now. Let's build the kind of coaching business that actually works for you and for your clients.
Wendy McCallum (16:47)
Another cost to not building your confidence and your responsiveness as a coach is the cost of over certifying or the over certifying trap as I call it. And I see new coaches fall into this all the time. They get training in one area and they go out and they kind of, you know, they build a website and they get ready to coach and they're coaching in this area and, you know, new topics pop up, you know, the issue that presents is not the real issue. And they find themselves feeling really underconfident in their ability to coach around that.
And the answer, the solution is to go and get another very expensive certification. Most coaching certifications now are costing like 10,000, $15,000. It's an absolutely enormous investment. And the trap of over-certification is this. First of all, that's actually not what builds your confidence. Getting more learning and education is not what builds your confidence. Doing is what builds confidence. Practicing is what builds confidence. Real live,
Coaching skills and learning those is what builds confidence, not the education or the training, learning some new modality or approach. That does not build confidence, that builds knowledge, but not confidence and actual practical coaching skills. The other part of it is that it's what I think is most responsible for the statistic that 82 % of coaching businesses fail in the first two years. I think it's a...
It's one of the main reasons why coaches don't make a go of it is because they continue to over certify and get more and more trainings. And they're so far in the red when they actually start working with paying clients that it takes them forever to dig themselves out of that. They can't make a profit and they therefore can't make a go of their business. And they decide to hang up their coaching shingle and go back to working for the man or whatever the thing was that they were doing before. So.
I really want to encourage you if you're feeling that way, if you're thinking about doing another expensive certification right now, wait, that's probably not what you need. What you need is the opportunity to practice. You need the opportunity to actually learn in an interactive learning environment how to coach better in a more responsive way. Now can do that yourself in your own sessions with clients, but you could also do that in a more structured way with peers so you can work with other coaches and do coaching.
triads and then there are also our programs like the program that I offer, which is called the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive, which I'll talk about more later, that actually is specifically designed to create that environment of learning and hands-on confidence building for you. So the cost of over certification is that it costs you a ton of money that you probably cannot afford right now. It also is, in my opinion, not the actual
practical way to build confidence. So it often doesn't even deliver the result that you're hoping that it will. And it delays your business growth. You it causes you to just put a pause on actually getting out there and marketing yourself and bringing in paying clients and actually starting to make some money. When we're talking about premium pricing, know, like pricing what you're at what you're actually worth and at a rate that is actually going to allow you to create a sustainable model. A lot of coaches make the mistake of thinking they need more certification and training in order to
at that level, but the truth is premium value-based pricing requires you to own your value, not your qualifications. This is about you feeling confident in the value of the transformation that you deliver, right? And that comes from doing, that comes from experience and what I experienced this morning with that client. And I have experienced so many times where a client is so clear on what has shifted for them in...
the course of working with me. And I'll ask for tangible examples of how it's impacted them. And with this particular client this morning, he said, know, the most amazing thing of all are the compliments that I'm getting from my wife and from my children about the way I'm showing up, which is like, you know, just such a lovely, beautiful example of how coaching can change the way people feel and the way people live their lives and the amount of joy and pride and confidence that your clients feel in their lives, right?
That type of feedback is what helps me to really sell at the pricing that I sell at with a tremendous confidence in the value of what I deliver. Okay, so for all of those reasons, guys, it's worth looking at how much confidence you have in being responsive in coaching sessions and whether that's something that's holding you back right now because you're feeling limited in terms of what you can actually coach on.
I wanna now give you five ways to start building real coaching confidence. Okay, so some practical ways that you can start building this confidence now. I want you to take these away and try them in your coaching this week, whether you're still practice coaching, because you're currently in training or certification, or whether you're out there working with real paying clients right now, I want you to practice these things. The first thing is practice pivoting mid-session.
So when a client brings a new angle or a feeling or has an insight in the coaching session, I want you to really practice following that instead of sticking with whatever the topic was that you started with. So I want you to notice that things have shifted and I want you to follow that. How do you do that? You pay attention to the client. This is where really active listening comes in. You are watching your client. If you have a habit of
working from notes when you're coaching, I want you to experiment with putting those notes away and experiment with just watching your client and really listening. You're gonna notice body language, you're gonna notice emotion, you're going to notice when the client has shifted to talking about something different than what you started with. Practice that deep listening and responding to what is happening right now in your sessions and really like challenge yourself to pivot.
and pay attention to how often you are doing that pivoting and consider that a success. Make notes after your sessions. We started with this and this is where we ended up and this is the value that my client got from that pivoting. That's gonna build your confidence in it. Ask for feedback regularly. This is point number two. And this is something I've talked about before in the Coaching Edge. I talk about it all the time in the BBB, my business building community for coaches.
It's really helpful to get into the practice of asking for feedback. In fact, I have built this into the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive. This is part of the first module I teach you how to every single time you're working with a client, get the feedback that helps you to build your confidence. So session after session, you are giving yourself a boost in confidence by asking the right questions. So here are some examples of some of the questions that you can start asking.
What are your biggest takeaways from this session? What are you taking away from this session that you can incorporate into how you go through next week before we meet again that's been valuable for you? What has shifted for you in this session? Another great question. I always ask this, I always ask, how are you feeling now versus when we started this session an hour ago? Those questions are going to give you, in your client's words, an articulation of the value of the session.
When someone tells you the value of the session that you just led them through, that builds your confidence as a coach, obviously. And if you've been practicing the pivoting thing and being responsive, it's gonna give you confidence in your ability to actually coach outside of your niche as well. This is all fairly obvious. Another thing to do is to join a peer coaching or peer pod group. Now,
If you're part of an alumni group from your coaching, training or certification, you may have like a, there may be a chat group or membership group where you can go in and try to organize this yourself. If you're not, this is the type of thing that a program like the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive is designed to give you. So I will set up pods for you. We are doing a really intimate version of this program right now. So if you're listening to this episode when it airs, there's a beta running that will start in a couple of weeks on April 23rd, 2025.
and it's going to be a 12 person maximum in that group. So I'm just gonna automatically provide that really intimate community of peers that you can practice your coaching with with my supervision. If you're listening to this podcast down the line, the coaching skills intensive has probably changed a little bit. That's the point of the beta, but it will be being offered. So you can always reach out to me and ask me when the next version of that is available. I'll put the link in the show notes to the beta.
in the event you're interested in that. There are a few spots left at the time of taping this episode. But joining those peer coaching or setting up those practice pods is a really great way to experiment with all of this, to practice this. And that is how you build confidence. So I'll be doing things in my coaching intensive, like throwing you into a coaching session with someone where you have absolutely no idea what the topic is gonna be. So it's a surprise topic for you. That's gonna force you to be responsive, force you to coach outside of your niche.
I'm also gonna be asking coaches to practice pivoting. So I'm going to tell them that the goal of the session is for them to actually identify the real elephant in the room and then pivot to coaching around that. And you can do that yourself, like I said, by setting up your own peer coaching small groups and just do this practicing. And it feels like the stakes are a little lower, obviously, because it's a...
as coaching session as opposed to a paid coaching session. So this can be really helpful, especially for brand new coaches who don't have a lot of paying clients yet. And then the last piece of this that is actually critically important is to reflect after your coaching sessions, to take some time to process how the session went, what you did really well, what you did that was new, how you may be pivoted or were more responsive than you usually are in coaching sessions, what that led to, where the value was for your client.
what your client said about the session, right? And maybe even just keep a journal on your desk where you actually record that, where you're actually doing some live reflection and journaling on a daily basis of the sessions that you're doing and the value that you're getting out of them. That's a really great way to cement for your brain and to just remind your brain, first of all, that you are capable of being responsive. And second of all,
that that is actually really valuable when you do it because it's leading to real results. And then finally, it's a way to help you build that confidence because you are now noting one more time the value of your coaching to your client, whether it's a practice client or it's a peer coach, but the value or a paying client, the value of that to them. And that's gonna help you to build confidence in this. If you're looking for a way,
to get better at being curious and responsive and pivoting and getting to the real issue. Here's a really simple tip. And this, mean, I could talk about this for an entire episode and maybe someday I will. Start working on starting your questions with what or how as much as possible. So instead of saying, did that feel good or did that feel hard for you? Ask, how did that feel?
Instead of asking a really specific question around like, I'm trying to think of an example here, but like a really specific sort of leading question as to what the next steps are, ask your client, what could you do this week to help yourself get unstuck? So using the word what or how at the beginning of the question is almost always going to lead to a
fuller, more insightful, more true, more authentic, more genuine, more client-led response. And when you get those responses, you are going to see that that's where that insight comes from. That's where you start to identify, there's something else at play here. And that is how you actually tap into the magic of coaching, which is where all the value is for your clients. So start practicing what and how questions. Just put a little post-it on your desk that says what or how, just to remind you.
And maybe that's the only thing that guides you in a coaching session. So you start ditching the notes and the detailed outlines and the plans for what it is you're gonna talk about, teach and all of that, and just go with what and how for a session. I you can ask why and you can ask, there are places where different types of questions can be really, really valuable. And again, that's for another day, but a good little tip or a way to start.
getting better at being more responsive is to use less leading questions by starting your questions with the words what or how instead of other words that would be much more leading. The goal here is that you never wanna ask your question, ask a question of your client where the answer is obvious, right? So you never wanna lead them into an answer. You don't wanna be answering questions that can be easily answered with a yes or a no either because those are not going to lead to fulsome answers.
The other little tip that I've been talking about in the coaching skills intensive and that we're practicing is really leaning in to the quiet in a coaching session and resisting the urge to speak up because it's in the silence that your client has an opportunity to process and to think and for the things that are actually there for them to kind of bubble up to the surface and for them to then verbalize that.
But if you're always filling in the gaps because you're uncomfortable with quiet or silence in a coaching session, you're going to reduce the likelihood that those moments happen for your client. And again, the magic often comes from silence. anybody in the BBB who's listening to this knows that this is one of the things that I've been working on now really actively for about five or six years is really letting the silence sit. It is amazing what happens when I keep my mouth shut. Somebody always pipes up with something and you'll find that this works as well in your one-on-one.
Okay, just to reaffirm here, confidence always trumps perfection in coaching sessions. Confidence is the key. It's the key to creating value. It's the key to creating transformation. It's the key to having those magical moments in coaching sessions and having those, really great testimonials and feedback and validation from the clients that you work with.
Responsiveness is always going to beat a really narrow niche, always. learning how to be more responsive in your sessions is always going to beat a rigid plan or a really narrow niche. if these are things that you're finding are keeping you playing smaller right now as a coach and affecting your, confidence and the value that you attribute to your sessions and your ability to sell with confidence and to price with confidence,
and to create offers with confidence, then I really want to recommend that you work on this. Your absolute best marketing tool is a coaching session that leaves your clients feeling truly supported and transformed. And the only way to do that is to actually coach them on what they need coaching on, not on what they thought they needed coaching on. in order to do that, you have to have confidence in your ability to be responsive and to pivot in the moment.
I would love for you to work on these things. I would love for you to send me an email. I love hearing from you guys Let me know what you're working on in terms of your confidence as a coach, what you got out of this session, what you've been practicing.
if this is something that you're struggling with and you want more support building a coaching business that grows through trust and through results and through referrals, consider joining me in the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive that is starting on April 23rd.
if you are listening to this podcast in April of 2025. We have a beta version running of this program right now, priced at a price that it will never be offered again. if today's conversation resonated, if you've been feeling that wobble when clients bringing something unexpected to a session, or if you've caught yourself wondering if you need another certification to feel legit.
I want to invite you to join me in the Confident Coaching Skills Intensive. It's a hands-on 10-week skills-based program. We'll wrap it up by the end of June so you can enjoy your summer. It is designed to help you grow your confidence, sharpen your coaching abilities, and get real-time feedback so you can support your clients through a wide range of challenges, not just the ones that fall neatly within your niche.
Again, we start on April 23rd and right now you can join at the lowest price that it will ever be offered at. If you want to make a bigger impact and create higher value coaching programs without over complicating your business, this is your next step. All the details are in the show notes, come check it out. I'd love to work with you. I hope that you got something really helpful out of this episode. And again, I would love to hear from you as to how it has changed the way that you are showing up with your clients, what you're trying.
And if you have ideas for future Coaching Edge episodes that you would love to hear me talk about or guests that you think would be great guests for you to bring in, you could always send me a note at wendymcallum.com or DM me through any of my social media channels, including at Wendy McCallum Coach on Instagram. Thanks for listening.
