Ep #64: Unhelpful Coaching Thoughts – Part 1: I’m a Bad Coach

Hi, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills,  episode 64.

To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hello, hello, I’m so happy you’re here today. First, I want to address something, which I think is kind of funny. And I’m feeling a little feisty today, so if you’re like, whoa, this is out of character, don’t worry. I’ll be back to just regular Lindsey probably next week.

But someone sent me a message that said I love your podcast so much. And I wish you wouldn’t start with hello friends or hello coach or something along those lines because somebody else says that, and somebody else says the other thing and whatever. And all I know is now that’s all I can think.

Literally, I hit record and I’m like, “Well, okay, here’s what not to say.” And my brain is like, “Don’t say hello friends,” and then it’s all I want to say and I can’t think of anything else. And why? Why? Who cares? Who cares what I call you? I can’t say all your names. They are like 10,000 of you a month, I don’t know you all.

So I don’t know, what do want me to call you? Hello loves? I don’t know, I will think on this. So maybe for now I’m just going to say hello and then just start talking, but we’ll see. I’ll keep you posted on how this evolves. Okay? But I feel like you could probably just get past that part and not think that I’m trying to sound like anyone. I’m just me.

I listen to so many other podcasts that now I’m like, “Who says that? Who says what? How do other people start their podcasts?” And I had an urge to go listen to a bunch of other podcasts and see how people start. Which maybe I will but I decided for now that’s probably not the best use of my time.

So here we are at the beginning of the podcast and we’re just going to dive right in. You ready? So over the next few weeks I’m going to be talking about thoughts that coaches have that are not useful for them, for their coaching, for being an amazing coach. And the one I’m going to talk about today also ties in with what I talked about last week, and I talked about setting goals.

And I’m not going to talk about goals today. But at the end of last week’s podcast I mentioned the difference between setting goals and using them to guide you, versus setting goals and using not hitting the goal to be mean to yourself and to beat yourself up. And to just generally spiral down a negative hole. Which is never useful, right? There’s no reason you ever have to do that, no matter if you hit your goal or if you don’t.

And so today what I want to talk about is a thought that some coaches come to me with. Maybe this is in my mastermind, or just as my clients, as my students, just in my spaces. Sometimes I have coaches that come believing that they are really bad at coaching.

Which, okay, on the surface, that makes sense, right? Because what I teach is to be a better coach, and I help coaches improve their skills and to really help them deeply understand what they’re doing and be able to help their clients get better results.

But there is a difference between coming into the learning, like choosing to sign up for the learning and then immediately just using everything I teach, everything I say to judge yourself and to be hard on yourself. Versus coming in with the thought I’m a good coach and I can’t wait to be better. I am a good coach and here are a few things I really want to work on. I am already a great coach and I always love to improve my skills.

All of those are amazing options. Or even if you can’t get there, if you can’t get to I’m a good coach or I’m a great coach, you could even just start with I am coach who is working on their skills. Instead of I’m a bad coach. I’m a terrible coach. I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t possibly coach more clients where I am right now. I need to learn learn, learn, learn, learn before I can just go out into the world and be a good coach.

And there’s so many reasons that thinking about it like that isn’t useful. But one of them is that in so many cases when my clients come to me with these thoughts– I actually just had this happen recently, like this week or last week in my mastermind where one of my clients came with these thoughts of I just don’t know what I’m doing, I’m not doing it right.

And if you’re listening, you know who you are. And I love you and you are just such a good coach. Okay? I’m just going to put that there. But she came and it was like an evaluation of a coaching call. And she had all these thoughts about it. And she was like, I don’t think I’m improving.

And at the very end she said, “My client told me the session was great, but…” And I couldn’t help but laugh, right? Because my client told me the session is great, but I’m choosing to believe all of this about myself. When is that ever, ever useful?

Now, for some of us, including myself, I know that maybe your tendency, similarly to mine especially before I had my own coach years ago, is if I’m hard on myself, if I judge myself, if I tell myself I’m doing it wrong or doing it bad, then I will improve. It’s like using that negative self-talk to motivate ourselves. And it may have worked. So if you’re listening and you’re like, yeah, I do that and it really works for me, it might. It might work sometimes.

But what I would love to offer, especially since you’re a coach, especially since as a coach you probably know that your thoughts and the way you feel contributes to the results you create in the world and in your life. When you’re thinking I’m a terrible coach and you’re beating yourself up about it, it might improve your coaching.

But what will happen, your coaching might get better because when you’re driven by that thought you might hire me. You might go find other programs. You might do more learning. You might learn more tools. Maybe your coaching will get better, but that thought won’t go away.

It’s like thinking if I just move to this other place, my life will be better, right? Or if I have this other job, my life will be better, right? It’s really like putting the result of you being a better coach in the hands of just an outside circumstance that you’re thinking you don’t have control over your mind in the situation.

Now, I am not saying don’t improve your coaching skills. Obviously, this is what I teach. And I want all of you, every one of you, I don’t care if you are a brand new coach, if you’ve been coaching for 20 years. If you have two clients, if you have 500 clients, if you have 5,000 clients. I want you to be a better coach for your clients.

Not because you’re a bad one, because you’re already an amazing one and isn’t it fun to blow your client’s minds? My answer to that is yes. I teach coaching skills, I help my clients be better coaches, and I still work on my coaching. It’s so fun, I love it. I love to always improve my coaching,

So let’s go back to just why, truly why this thought is just not useful. I already said one reason. Which is the more you focus on that, the more you focus on I’m not a good coach, the more you’re going to just be looking for all the reasons that you’re not a good coach.

Instead of looking for here’s where I really do know what I’m doing. I love doing these specific things with my clients. I’m really good at creating awareness. I’m really good at asking great questions. And also, I know what I could work on is, fill in the blank. That is so different.

It’s actually one of the very first things we do in my mastermind, is we get very specific about what does be a better coach mean for each person. Because I don’t let them just come in and say I just want to be a better coach, because it’s so broad, right?

I want them to put their mind to work looking at specifically how. Here are the things I’m already doing well, and then here are the ways I could see improvement, improving my coaching. We all have them. So I don’t care who you are, listening, there is a way your coaching can improve. That is always true.

Does it mean you always have to obsessively be working on it? Absolutely not. But when you choose to do this work, when you choose to come to me and say, “Lindsey, please help me. I want your help. I want to be an amazing coach. I want my clients to get better results.” I want to say, “Great, let’s do it. But you’re already a good coach, we’re going to start there.”

I’m actually creating welcome videos, and I have been for my new mastermind that’s about to start. And this is one of the things I’m covering in the videos, because I just think it’s so important, right? And I even see coaches come in who think they’re good at coaching, and then for some reason they get this thought that’s like, oh no, I’m doing it wrong.

And then one thing that I do in the mastermind is I teach them how to really evaluate their coaching and to really dig into what they’re doing well, what could use some work. And sometimes some of my clients love to list like one thing they’re doing well, and then like 20 things that they are not doing well. And I send them back and say, “No, let’s find some more.”

Sometimes I even challenge them to only find the things that they’re doing well. When I know that they are clients that are particularly hard on themselves or love to really pressure themselves I will actually just tell them like, “Listen, I don’t want to hear anything about what you’re doing wrong. I only want you to focus on what is going really well in your coaching right now.” There’s so much learning to be had, just from looking at that.

Another thing that happens when you’re just really believing I’m not a good coach, I have no idea what I’m doing, a lot of times what shows up in the way you react to that as the coach is you start taking lots of different– You kind of like binge try to learn things quickly. And try to learn all different styles, all different techniques, have so many tools, and kind of overcompensate for what you think is your lack of coaching skill by just having more tools, more worksheets, more things to give your clients.

The result of that usually is your coaching doesn’t get better. And it could actually slow your client’s results down because there’s just too much going on. You’re kind of all over the place, you’re kind of trying to teach them everything that you know. It’s like, what’s the saying? Like throwing spaghetti at the wall, right? Like, let’s see if this works. Let’s see if this works. Let’s see if this works.

Instead of, if you are a newer coach and you’re listening right now, I invite you to choose one thing you’re really good at as a coach and focus on that. Use that with your clients. Teach your clients how to use that skill themselves, if that’s what you want to do.

Teach them how to go deeper in that skill, instead of trying something else, trying something new. Going to find one more thing and adding that on, one more thing and adding that on, I really, really suggest not doing that and focusing on what do I know right now? How can I just help my clients right now?

I think I said this a little bit last week but I really believe that so many of you underestimate the power of just being there and listening to your clients, really. Like if you’re in this place where you’re like I get on calls and I don’t know what I’m doing and in a session I get very confused. Sometimes if you just slow down and listen, that in itself is a superpower.

I want you to think about the last time a client said something to you, and I know this happens with so many coaches. Even some of my colleagues who are making so much money, they’ll tell me stuff like this happens. And it happens to me, right?

But maybe you have one client who says one thing to you that you interpret as bad or negative or them telling you that you don’t know what you’re doing or you’re not doing a good job. And you get in your head about it. And then it affects your coaching for possibly weeks.

You try to figure out what the problem is, try to overcompensate for the mistakes that now you believe you’re making. It really dents your self-concept of who you are as a person, who you are as a coach. Instead of like, oh, that’s really interesting. Let me think about this. Is this something I want to work on? One person said this to me, I don’t have to believe it. I can and I can examine it.

My policy is if somebody complains to me about something I don’t make it mean anything about myself. And then I examine it and I say do I think this is true? Where could this be true? Do I think other people are having this experience? Like I really do question it. I question myself, is there learning here for me.

But I don’t do it if I am immediately just activated and highly emotional about the thing they have said. I don’t do it then. I wait until I have come back down. And I’m like, okay, this is one client said one thing, let me examine it. Instead of. oh my gosh, I’m going to make this mean everything about myself. And here we go, just a negative spiral.

I’ll give you an example that is outside of coaching. Today is a Thursday and on Thursdays I don’t have client calls. And usually, I calendar kind of my day. And it’s a lot of content creation on Thursdays. And today, I don’t know why, but my brain is just all over the place. I have not gotten much done. I have recorded this podcast, or at least 15 minutes of it up until this point. I just am very distracted.

I sit down to do something, what I’m supposed to be doing, and my brain just wanders, right? And next thing you know it’s an hour later and I’m like what have I accomplished? Now, this isn’t normal. This isn’t what happens every day, but for some reason it happened today. This morning I thought, well, maybe I just had too much caffeine. I don’t know. Why am I distracted? I don’t know.

But I have two choices, right? I’m recording this podcast, it’s almost the end of my workday. At the end of the day, I could choose to beat myself up. And I could say this is terrible, this can never happen again. I can’t even believe it. You know, whatever. Whatever the thoughts might be that I could have.

Or I can say, okay, I didn’t get done what I was supposed to get done today. I need to obviously move some of the things to other days. No need to beat myself up about it because it’s already done, I can’t go back and change it. What did I learn? What can I learn from this? Period, or question mark, or whatever, right?

But it doesn’t have to be any bigger than that. And I just invite you, for those of you that are listening that are really hard on yourselves, listen, I feel you. I do, I get it. That is me. I have learned to not be that way most of the time. But every once in a while my brain is like, hey, you know what? You know what would be fun today? To just really be mean to yourself, let’s do it. And it just takes off down that path before I can catch it.

So for those of you that relate to that, I just want to offer you what if sometimes you have sessions with your clients, or with your group, or with your program, or wherever it is that you’re coaching, that aren’t perfect? That you get off and you think, wow, I could have done a little better job today. That coaching could have been a little better.

First of all, if you’re having those thoughts, for sure come join my mastermind, we have so much fun. I will help you work through all of them. But also, you can tell yourself, you’re allowed, I am giving you permission, you are allowed to tell yourself that is not my best coaching and I’ll do better next time. That’s okay.

You can’t be at an A+, 100% level 100% of the time. I mean, I think, my opinion is that that is impossible. Some days are going to be not great coaching days, for whatever reason. Maybe your brain is distracted like mine was today. Maybe you’re a new coach and it takes a lot more effort to focus.

You can ask yourself, what can I learn from this? Oh, maybe I need to space my calls out more. Maybe I need to take breaks in between my calls, my sessions. Maybe I need to not put so many sessions in a day. Maybe there is learning and definitely look for it.

Or definitely find the spots that you’re like, you know what? I really want to work on this thing. I really want to work on when my clients seem to be in this loop and they keep just coming back to the same thing and I have no idea what to do. Yeah, work on that, that is a skill you can learn.

But what you don’t have to do ever, ever, ever is beat yourself up about it, be mean to yourself, tell yourself you’re a terrible coach. It just isn’t useful. If you think about the example I gave about myself, about my day and my schedule, if I spent the night beating myself up, going to bed thinking about how I got nothing done, how terrible this day was, blah, blah, blah, whatever else I would tell myself. How do you think I wake up tomorrow?

I’d wake up feeling crappy, right? I’d wake up feeling like, okay, I have so much to make up for that I didn’t get done. It just starts the day off not great. Then how do you think tomorrow goes? Probably not great.

But if I wake up tomorrow just like, okay, today’s Friday. What’s on the calendar? Let’s look, let’s do it. What do I need to get done today? I might add a few things that I didn’t get done the day before. But I don’t have to ever beat myself up about it.

The same is true for your coaching. If you beat yourself up about every session, what do you think happens the next session? When you get off, maybe it’s one particular client or a couple of particular clients, you get out of sessions and you just beat yourself up. And this is terrible, I don’t know how to coach them. And I’m never going to be better at this. And whatever you tell yourself, what do you think happens the next time you have a call with that client?

Spoiler alert, you probably are mean to yourself before you even get on the phone with them, or the computer or whatever it is. And that will affect your coaching. Not because you’re a bad coach, not because you don’t know what you’re doing. But because you just spent the last however many minutes beating yourself up about your coaching.

That is all I have for you today. This is a thought that you can choose not to have. I’m a bad coach, I’m a terrible coach, I don’t know what I’m doing. Even if your clients aren’t getting results, you don’t have to beat yourself up. You don’t have to tell yourself those things. You could say, okay, I need to learn some things. Where will I learn them? Guess what, listen to all the episodes of my podcast, start there. That is one great place to start.

I teach you all of the basics. And I really teach them, I don’t just like talk about them. I tell you how to do some of the things, especially if you go back to some of my original podcasts. That is what some of the episodes are specifically about, is really teaching some of the basics that I think every coach should know.

And if you notice this is something that comes up for you often, go to my website, look into my mastermind. I have a program launching very soon that is going to be for all of what I’m talking about today. All of coaching basics, all of what to do when you don’t know what to do. What to do when you don’t know what to do in your coaching sessions, that’s what it’s all about.

So instead of beating yourself up, find a way to be better. That is all. Have an amazing week. I’ll be back next week with more thoughts that are not useful for you as a coach. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mastering Coaching Skills. If you want to learn more about my work, come visit me at lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com. That’s Lindsay with an A, D-O-T-Z-L-A-F.com. see you next week.