Here’s how not to differentiate yourself as a coach

As someone who has been coaching for around fifteen years, I often peer-coach, supervise or mentor other coaches. It’s a role that allows me a small part in shaping good practice in what is an exciting, fast-growing profession. I love supporting people who are hungry to learn about themselves as practitioners and to watch them channel this back into their coaching work.

As you might imagine, our conversations occasionally turn to how they can differentiate themselves from the morass of coaches out there. The fact that there’s currently no requirement for any formal training or accreditation is both a strength and weakness. For, whilst the naturally talented can start working relatively easily, there are no filters for those with dubious credentials. And everyone, everywhere seems to be punting the same stuff.

The key lies in being wholly conscious of the effect you personally have on your coaching relationships; continuously developing your professional skills; taking a hardcore business approach to your practice; and having the courage to stand head and shoulders apart from the others.

Still, if you’d find that too much like hard work, here’s how to stay part of the herd:

• Believe that coaching is one of the “helping professions”. Give of yourself endlessly. It’s thrilling enough to have found your vocation in life. You shouldn’t expect to earn money from it too.
• Don’t charge for sessions. Yes, of course, many coaches give a free half hour chemistry session, but beyond that make sure you give away plenty of your time. Call it abundance thinking if it makes you feel better. You’ll have people flocking to you and you’ll feel wonderful about yourself. Which is what it’s all about.
• If you can’t easily give your time away, take more time over your sessions than you committed to. Call scheduled for one hour? Give them two. They’ll love your generosity and be back for more.
• Coach your close friends and family. Coaching bodies might judge it to be unethical, but what do they know?
• Don’t worry too much about being on time for coaching sessions. After all, you can easily blame public transport, or technology problems. Better, tell your client that you’ve run over so horrendously today because you’ve had some “difficult cases”. That’s bound to impress.
• Gush inauthentically to each of your clients about how amazing it is to be working with them. Keep selling them on coaching, long after they’ve bought you.
• Develop a sausage machine process to put your clients through. Write it up. Give it some funky brand name, so that it sounds good. And insist on following it, even when your client would rather talk about something else. After all, you’re in charge of setting the coaching agenda, right?
• If your client won’t follow your process, turn the coaching session into a therapy session for you, in which you confess that you don’t know what it is about you that means your clients won’t play by your rules.
• If things become a little uncertain or confused for you, get the client to fill in some questionnaires so that you understand them better. It’ll knock their socks off when they know you can interpret LIFO or some other dubious personality test.
• Learn some of the bland and inept, but wise-sounding phrases that circulate these parts and use them at key moments in your coaching work. So, when your client begins to reveal to you some fundamental misgivings he has about his banking career, smile kindly, thank him for sharing and, crucially, tell him to give his question over to the universe for resolution. He’ll never be able to thank you enough.
• Write a blog. Track down all the other coaches online and copy their formula. Especially, if they have big followings. That’s a fair indication of how well they’re doing, isn’t it?
• Don’t write or act in a way that gives any flavour of your own personality or point of view. The coach persona is an important one to wear at all times. And, in any case, people might not like the real you.
• Work with everyone that shows any interest in being coached by you. Believe that you have something to give to anyone who comes along.
• Hug everyone. Often.
• Finally, don’t invest any time or money in your own development. Coaching is for clients, not you. And, if only they would sort themselves out, this dream job would be so much less stressful and you might even make more money from it. But you’ll get there in the end….

Come on, there must be other things you can do to make sure you remain in that fabulously cosy “me too” place. What are they?

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