When enthusing a client to change their current perspective to a more powerful one, we call this “re-framing”. If one were a master at re-framing their own perspective they could ensure they were always performing at their peak and prevent themselves from finding excuses to stop taking action.

Other things one might need to obtain complete happiness and fulfillment are clear goals and a reason for wanting to achieve them. Getting a client to imagine what their life would be like when they achieve their goals could be used to motivate them into taking action.

Five questions you could ask to help someone re-frame or shift their perspective are:

1. What’s the worst that can happen if you take action?

2. What’s the worst that can happen if you do not take action?

3. Who do you know that has overcome a situation similar to this?

4. If you had a friend/loved one who was in a similar situation to this, what would you advise them to do?

5. What are the good things about your current situation?

Helping clients to change their perspective can make a big difference in their lives as sometimes people only focus on the negative aspect of a situation. By changing their perspective, a client can be helped to see a positive outcome and remove the limits they have placed upon themselves.

I can remember experiencing a change in perspective the first time I had to give a 50 minute presentation in front of my class at University. On the morning of the presentation I kept worrying about what would happen if I messed up, forgot what I was saying or sounded like I didn’t know what I was talking about! As it goes, the presentation went very well and I was told by several classmates that they really enjoyed it and some even asked for copies of my slides and notes to help them revise the subject. After that, my perspective changed. No longer did I give time to the “what if” scenarios, I had a positive reference of when I did a great presentation and the feeling of that day is what I anchor myself to every time I am required to do any public speaking. My perspective of public speaking is now excitement as opposed to fear.

The principals that I believe are fundamental to helping a human being move forward in life are:

• Finding out where they want to be in life
• Planning a way to get to where they want to be
• Motivating them to taking action on getting there

I consider an “ideal coach” to be someone that has belief in one’s potential to achieve, someone that is passionate about seeing people achieve, someone that is able to motivate people to take action, someone that can be relied upon and lives life aligned with their own values (at the risk of sounding cliche, someone who “walks the talk”).

I believe I display the qualities above on a daily basis when I am conversing with friends, family and work colleagues, however I sometimes let myself slip out of sync with my values and get myself in little ruts where I know I can easily get out of them (I have numerous positive references of doing it before) but I do not motivate myself to do so. I will take this as an action point to focus on coach myself on so I can become a more effective coach.

If I were an “ideal coach” I imagine I would be extremely fulfilled from helping people achieve their goals and seeing/hearing the differences I have helped make in their life. I have always enjoyed helping people and if I could make that my profession that would be great!

Further to my previous blog, I told my mum and my housemate that my beliefs are that:

“Coaching is working together with a client to identify goals they wish to achieve, motivating the client to take action in achieving these goals and measuring results so they know when the goals have been achieved. Coaching is not therapy, counselling, consulting or mentoring. Coaches do not act as advisers or focus on past events”. (Lee Benning)

My mother’s understanding from this was that coaching is about asking questions to see where the client wants to be and how they can get to where they want to be. She concluded that coaches don’t work for you, they work with you and that the client is responsible for achieving their goals.

My housemate understood quite differently and from my explanation to her she thought coaching was only for individuals who had something in their life they wanted to fix, such as a relationship. My goal setting explanation did not come across well enough it would seem and perhaps I should expand on this as well as explaining who a potential client could be (individual, business, groups). After a discussion with my housemate I also realised I need to explain who would want coaching and what they would get out of it.

As you can see, my housemate and my mother’s understandings were both very different. My housemate agreed that she may have had some preconceived understanding of what a coach does whereas I may have explained in more detail to my mother the role of a coach. This also highlights the importance of geting past people’s preconceived images of a coach and making them eager to find out more about how a coach could be useful to them.

I believe coaching is forming a relationship with a client to set goals and identify a plan of action for moving forward to achieve those goals. The client already has the tools needed for this, it is the job of the coach to unlock the toolbox and facilitate an environment where the client is in a peak state to use the tools in the most effective way.

I would tell someone who asked me what coaching is that:

“Coaching is working together with a client to identify goals they wish to achieve, motivating the client to take action in achieving these goals and measuring results so they know when the goals have been achieved.” (Lee Benning)

I would also tell them that:

“Coaching is not therapy, counselling, consulting or mentoring. Coaches do not act as advisers or focus on past events”. (Lee Benning)

My belief is that coaching differs from other disciplines in a variety of ways. Some of the main differences between coaching and therapy, counselling, consulting and mentoring are:

• Coaches do not need to be experts in their field - the client is the expert on what will work well for them

• Coaches do not offer advice - coaches listen and ask the questions that help the client come up with the answers. Clients are more likely to achieve goals when they suggest them and “own them”.

• Coaches do not focus on past experiences, a coach focuses on the future - because the client has not succeeded in achieving their goals in the past it does not mean they can never achieve them.

Some coaches choose a niche to focus on and below are some examples of coach niches:

• Confidence Coach - Helping clients to change their limiting beliefs to live a more fulfilling life

• Motivation Coach - Helping clients to realise what is stopping them from taking action to achieve their goals

• Success Coach - Helping clients realise the tools available to them to assist in achieving their goals and how to make best use of them

• Peak Performance Coach - Helping clients identify ways they can get themselves into a peak state to be at their most efective in achieving goals in their lives.

I would love to hear any comments from people on this blog. It doesn’t matter if you are a coach or not as all feedback can be helpful to me

The main reason I need a website for my coaching practice is for generating leads. It is also an inexpensive marketing tool which offers good return on investment as it will be available 24 hours a day *globally*. I say it is inexpensive as I work for an e-commerce company (and have been there since startup) so have much knowledge in this area as well as the ability to build a website myself to a professional standard. Other benefits of having a website for my coaching practice include:

• providing a client with information to decide if my practice is likely to met their needs
• freeing up time to spend with more clients by answering most questions on the site; some important questions to answer are who the practice serves and exactly what it does
• describe the niche of the practice; although a coach does not necessarily need to have any background knowledge on the area they are coaching in (after all, the coach is the facilitator - the client has the answers!) it can make a client more at ease if they recognise my practice as an expert in a certain field.

Interaction is an important part of a website. In a coaching class it was quoted that a potential client has some sort of contact with a company 7-12 times before they decide to use the product/service being offered. A few ideas for creating more interaction on a website are:

• Offer free online assessments or quizzes which should have the effect of engaging the visitor to the site (a potential client). A name and email address for sending the results can be asked for which will subscribe them to the practice’s mailing list (creating more chances for contact). It is important to make it easy to unsubscribe from the mailing list at any time and not bombard subscribers with emails as this is likely to annoy rather than engage. in the UK it is important to make sure that practices compy with the Data Protection Act 1998.
• Using an auto sequential mailer can send certain parts of a serious of emails each week to create regular contact and a call to action. A serious of articles on goal setting can be written then split into sections, sending out one a week to people who have signed up for the free series (or even offer as a free “e-course”) where the final email explains how our practice can help with the achievement of their goals and include a link to our site to apply to be a client. This can also improve the quality of a lead as someone who reads all the articles and responds to the call to take action is a good potential candidate for coaching as they have already taken the first steps to achieving their goals (requesting information and making an inquiry).

The site should contain information such as: What we do, Why make changes , What the change would look like (the benefits), What packages we offer and - very important - *client testimonials*.

Payment can be taken online and this page should contain no other links, banners etc. and give all our guarantees. This should be a secure page taking payment by credit card (international) and look at the costs of Paypal as this faciltates the ability for bank transfers for customer who do not have credit cards.

Okay I’ve finally setup my personal website and as I need to maintain a blog for my coaching I thought I would set leebenning.com up as my personal blogging site. That is all for now.