The coach is not the resource in the room. The client is.
Our job is to treat the client like they are the million-dollar resource. That’s the whole game.
One-on-one business coaching that starts with you
They have untapped potential inside them that they cannot access on their own. So the value brought into a room of executives is not that the coach has already achieved what they want to achieve. It is not that the coach has scaled the exact type of company they are scaling.
The value is in the skills honed to help them see how they are getting in their own way — and to discover how resourceful they already are.
What the room does not need
- Another brilliant person handing over answers.
- A coach who has lived the same industry playbook.
- Shared war stories that confirm the current story.
What the room actually needs
- Questions no one else in their life is asking.
- A clean read of how events are occurring to them.
- A disruption of the thinking that is in the way.
You do not need shared experience. You need to sharpen universal skills — skills you can use to serve anyone, anywhere, at any time. Notice: you do not need to be familiar with a client’s industry or circumstance to use them.
Three skills to serve clients with zero prior knowledge of their industry or circumstance
These skills travel. They do not require the coach to be the smartest person in the room, or to have already built the company the client is building. They require attention — to the questions being avoided, to the story being told, and to the default thinking that is no longer serving the vision.
Familiarity comes with its own limitations.Shared industry belief is often the same belief holding the client back.
If you are familiar with a client’s industry, you may hold the same limiting beliefs about that industry that are holding them back — and therefore cannot notice or disrupt those beliefs. A coach with no prior knowledge often serves more powerfully because they see with fresh eyes.
Asking powerful questions no one else is asking.
“I am rarely the smartest person in the room, and I have stopped trying to be.” Clients are brilliant, and they are surrounded by other brilliant people who will hand them answers. What almost no one in their life will do is ask them the powerful questions they have been avoiding — or have never considered.
Listening for how situations and events are occurring to them.
When a client tells a story about a problem they are trying to solve, there is what actually happened — the events — and then there is what they made it mean: their occurrence. The work is to separate the two, show them the interpretation they are running, and invite them to upgrade it.
Disrupting the default occurrences that are no longer serving them.
Disruption is the skill of noticing, interrupting, and redirecting a client’s default thinking patterns. We all get stuck in specific patterns of thinking that are not helping us get where we want to go. A great coach spots those patterns, names them without theater, and helps the client upgrade the thinking that will actually serve the vision.
Want this as a handout? Get the two-page PDF on the Client Resources page.