Ep #227: Why Humans Thrive with Coaching and Support

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 227.

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.

Hey coach, I’m so happy you’re here today. Today I want to talk to you about a very specific thought that I hear often from my clients, and I’m guessing that you probably hear it from your clients as well, some form of it anyway. And that’s the thought, I should be able to do this by myself.

And I think, first of all, this is just a normal human thought to have. I know I’ve had this thought before. I’m sure you have too. But today specifically, I want to talk about what happens as a coach when you have this thought and how to and or what happens when your client has this thought and how to really speak to it.

So one thing that I did when I, I knew I wanted to record a podcast about this and one thing that I did is I went into search and I did use AI a little bit, but then I also looked up very specific studies, which there are many, many, many of them. So I’m not going to reference them all here, but I actually have background in doing some research in this field, in something I’m about to talk about. So I will use a study that I actually worked on as an example, because I think it’s really interesting.

But here’s what I wanna say to begin with, is that having this thought, I should be able to do this on my own, which usually I hear it in the context of as an argument for maybe why someone is saying, I don’t want to hire a coach for this or I should be better at this by now, like that’s a similar kind of thought. Or I shouldn’t have to keep asking for help.

That might be a thought that someone, you know, like inside of one of my programs would have. Or, you know, I remember when I was a one-on-one coach, I would sometimes do consults and we would talk through all the things and one of the things that would come up, especially when someone heard like, oh, here’s how much it’s gonna cost to work with me and do this work. One thought that would come to their mind is, ugh, I should be able to do this on my own. And I just think it’s really interesting to consider this.

And I also think that this isn’t black and white, right? That there’s no like, yes, you should be able to do this on your own or no, you’ll never be able to do this on your own. So you have to hire someone to help you. There are many options of ways to do things that are different than just doing them on your own. And kind of shaming yourself or making yourself feel bad for thinking that you shouldn’t need help.

Right, so the very big first thing I want you to hear just overall, is literally this thought goes against every piece that we know of human nature, right? Like this is just not how humans learn, it’s not how we’re meant to learn, we are not meant to figure everything out on our own.

Think about your life just in general from the time you’re a baby to a little kid to a teenager to a young adult to an adult, right? All the things that you learn over your lifetime, some things you do learn them by failing, maybe even failing on accident and just having to adjust your behavior or the way you know that you are showing up to certain activities. But even then, there’s usually a reference of, oh, I’ve seen this done in another way. Let me see if that way works, right? Or a reference of, like, there’s just more context than just doing something and then just doing it over and over and over and over and over with no input on how could I be better at this in order to get better.

Right, that’s rarely a thing that is happening. It’s why we go to school, it’s why we read books, it’s why you’re listening to this podcast. Right, like think about that. And there are some very specific things about humans that make us unique when it comes to why social learning and why deliberate practice and learning from others is super important for us and why it’s so effective.

So the first thing to consider, I’m gonna give you, this is gonna be like, I’m gonna give you some actual science behind some of it. And then some of it is going to be just stories and thinking about specific examples of maybe learning to do something, right? So the first one is the social learning theory. You may have heard of this. This is, I think, quite popular.

I think it really influences a lot of things that we see going on in education and in spaces where people are learning things, right? Like schools, colleges, and this is a theory that came about by Albert Bandura, I believe is how you say his name, but he really studied so much around humans learning in a much more effective way when they have a chance to observe their peers or model their peers, right? So when they’re like watching and looking for, oh, that’s how it’s done. Okay, now let me try. Or, you know, having a specific partner and watching them do it and then doing a part on their own and then watching them do the next step and then doing the next step on their own.

And, you know, he really showed so much learning about how much more effective that was than just being in an isolated space and, you know, just trial and error, trial and error, trial and error with nothing in between the trials to compare to or to say, oh, I see, this is how it’s done. Let me try again and improve this specific thing.

I also think this goes hand in hand with something called deliberate practice, which Anders Ericsson, who is, he’s an author, he is a research psychologist, I believe. I’ll double check that. I’ll come back and correct myself if that’s wrong. But he has a book called Peak that he wrote with a colleague that really studies how top performers, kind of like how did they get that way, right? How did they, like what were the most effective things that they used in their, the like development of their talents?

And one thing that he found is that, you know, more than the importance of natural ability, as in like someone was just born with a natural ability or just good at doing something, the thing that was much more important than that was deliberate practice and feedback and implementation. So for example, learning something or deciding you want to learn something and then being very deliberate about here’s how I want to improve and then going and finding a way to, and that could be in many different ways, right? It could be with a coach, with reading a book, like whatever, but just making sure that you’re like trying the thing, being very deliberate about what do I wanna be better at, finding a way to learn that thing from somewhere else, right, from another person or a resource, trying the thing again, deliberately focusing on the one skill that you want to improve.

Interestingly, this is exactly what I do inside The Coach Lab, right? This is what I encourage my clients to do, is find the very specific things they’re working on in their coaching and deliberately decide, I want to improve this and use The Coach Lab resources to figure out how to do that whether that’s watching the modules or coming to the coaching sessions for, you know, asking me, asking their peers, whatever it is.

There’s so much research around this, right, that shows when you’re deliberate about it and when you’re seeking out that external help in whatever fashion, that that is the number one determiner for peak performance, right? For that mastery expertise development of literally any skill, even when it comes to sports, right?

So I think a lot of times, even myself, I think sometimes when I think of someone who’s really excellent at a specific sport, I think, oh, well, okay, but they were probably born with, you know, some specific gift that really helps them in that area. And sometimes there are things of course that can be true, like your size, right? A person who is 5 feet tall is probably not going to be a world-renowned basketball player. Maybe, I don’t know, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it definitely doesn’t help, right? Or a person who is, you know, almost 7 feet tall probably isn’t gonna be like the best gymnast in the world. Just because there are certain things, there’s a certain science that goes into that, right? Of like aerodynamics and the way you can move your body and the flexibility and all those things. But even with those, whether it’s a natural ability or something you’re born with, even with, you know, when certain people have specific things that do give them kind of a leg up in certain areas, there still is tons of research to prove that the actual more important thing is the deliberate practice, the learning from others, the implementing over and over and over and over and over until you’re better at it. That hands and above shows way more improvement than just natural ability or just repeating a task over and over and over and doing it on your own.

Another thing to consider, which most coaches do know about this, although for a lot of us, I mean, I know a lot about this, but I don’t get usually deep into the science of it on this podcast because I don’t think that it’s important for every coach to be able to deeply explain what’s happening in our brains but having a little bit of overview, right?

So if you think about neuroplasticity, which I’m sure you’ve heard of before, which is, you know, the way your brain changes when it’s developing new neural pathways or more neural pathways when it’s learning something new, like when you’re learning something new, right? It actually changes your brain.

So even when you are learning a new thought, learning a new, practicing a new belief. I always think of it as it is like the animal running through the forest, right? And if you are familiar with forests, if you hike in them or if you’re in them often, you can usually see like spots where the grass and the brush are kind of packed down a little bit. And those are the trails where the animals run, right? And they usually run along the same trail because it gets easier and easier as that the grass and the brush and whatever is kind of packed down, especially in denser areas.

So I think of the brain like that, right? And like when you’re working on something new, learning a new skill, practicing new beliefs, it’s hard at first. And it feels hard because if you imagine being the first animal making your way through the forest, you’re the one knocking down all the things, right? You’re the one that’s like deciding which direction do I go from here? What’s the best way, whatever. But then if you’re the second one, it’s like a little bit easier.

And if you’re the 20th animal, you know, running along that same path, it gets easier and easier and easier. Or if you’re the same animal doing that same thing over and over again, right? It just gets easier and easier. But then if you’re gonna take whatever that skill is or that belief is that you’ve learned and then you’re gonna switch it and now you’re gonna learn something new, now you are just making a new path again, right? So it of course feels a little more difficult at first.

To me, picturing that is super useful. This is kind of the way I explain it. Of course, it’s oversimplified, but this is the way I explain it too often to some of my clients, or it’s the example that I use. And so when you think about that, right, like the neuroplasticity and the effort that it takes to learn something new or believe something new, that effort is, you know, it’s been shown that that effort is easier when you’re doing it, when you’re not doing it alone, when you’re doing it with peers, when you’re doing it with a mentor, when you’re doing it with a teacher, right, or someone, or a coach, or someone who’s going to kind of show you, oh, hey, here’s this path over here, like, try this. I’ve already worn it down a little. Right, that’s not exactly how it happens in your brain, but if you think about it like in the wild in the actual forest, that would be a similar thing.

So one example that I have of this is I actually used to work in a psychology lab at Indiana University, which is where I went to college, and then where I eventually worked in the labs and I was the assistant to the head of the department. I just got to do so many amazing, fun things, and it really – it for sure set me up for my love of coaching and my love of just the human experience and how our brains work and all the things.

But one of the studies that I worked on, I wasn’t in charge of it, right? I was just there mostly observing and taking notes and dealing with the data. But every once in a while I got to help in the actual lab, which was really fun. It was a lab where there were mazes set up for rats.

The rats were so cute and very nice, in case you’re wondering, and were very well taken care of, which surprised me. And especially in the study, because they weren’t being, you know, there’s nothing being done to them. They were literally just kind of having fun and getting rewards and treats for it. But the one that I worked on was there were mazes set up. They were not simple mazes. They were kind of multi-phase. Like you had – they had to learn, right, to do this thing and then they would do the next thing and the next thing. And it would be like, they have to push this little ball to this place that then unlock the thing.

And then the next task would be completely different and they had to go like under a little door and then over the next one, right? And it was just kind of like random things like that where they would all be very different tasks and they would be one after another for them to make themselves through the maze, to get through the maze and then they would get a reward, which was usually like a snack or a treat or a, I don’t really remember exactly what it was, but there were these little games that they loved to do, and that would also sometimes be a reward.

So in one of the mazes, right, like one of the stages of it was just the wrap, and you would just put them in there and they would have to just figure it out on their own. They would just try over and over and over. And we were measuring, I remember two things specifically, this was quite a long time ago, so maybe it was more, but I remember two things. I know for sure we were measuring how long did it take for them to figure it out and how many tries, right? So like how many attempts, separate attempts, and then once they did figure out how long did it take, And then we would give them a chance to like get faster. And I don’t remember the exact number, but you get the point, right?

And so we would do that. And then the next one was you would put them in two at a time. So it was kind of be like peers working together, figuring it out together. The exact same thing, right? The same maze, the same treats, except treats for both of them.

And, but it was demonstrating the difference between figuring it out on your own with just trial and error versus figuring it out with someone else, again, with just trial and error, right? But the two of you are figuring it out on your own. Then the third one was once the rats became kind of masters of the mazes, then, right, like once they were experts, then they would go in, we would put the two rats in, but one would be a rat who’d never done it before, and one would be the expert.

And thinking about this, it was just so clear. I think maybe this is one reason this has stuck with me, like one reason why I know coaching is so powerful because and why sometimes working in groups can be really powerful because watching that rat just trial and error, trial and error, trial and error, some of you almost started, or at least I almost started, to feel bad for it, right? It was like, oh, this is like painful when we know how quickly these other rats are learning.

So obviously the one by itself took so long, so many tries, and even once they did, they would mess up a lot. Like even after they figured it out there were still a lot of attempts after that to like get it right every time and it just took them a very long time to kind of be an expert and even when that happened, they were still the slowest. Even once they mastered it, they were still the slowest. Like they never improved at the speed of the other two.

So then the middle one, of course, was like a little better. It was still two rats who had no idea what they were doing but just watching each other, right? Oh, I mean, we don’t actually know what they were thinking but let’s just say it was humans, right? We can anthropomorphize or whatever the word is where you project like human thoughts onto animals, but let’s just say that it was humans, right?

You would, even if you couldn’t communicate, you couldn’t speak, but you could watch each other and like, oh, this person’s doing that. Okay, let me try that. This makes me think of Survivor. I’ve recently watched a season of this with my kids, one of the most recent seasons.

And we always laugh at how when they’re in – I’m not usually a Survivor fan, by the way. This is like a new thing. My daughter found it. We watched a season. She loved it. But when they’re in like the obstacle courses, and one thing that happens when they get to the end and they’re solving puzzles is that they’ll actually like run over and look at the other person’s puzzle and then see something that helps them and then go back and like do theirs. Right? And my daughter would get so upset like, what? They’re cheating. That’s not fair.

But this is kind of what the rats would do, right? They would like, oh, look, you’re doing that. Okay, let me try this. Let me, you know, whatever. And they would help each other. So that obviously created quicker results, faster results. And then even when they mastered it and they knew together, this is how we get through the maze every time, they could easily then do it on their own.

And not only that, but they were much faster. Like once they mastered it, it really stuck a lot faster and their speed going through the maze in general would be faster and faster, way faster than the one learning it on its own. And they seemed way less worn out. I remember thinking that. I don’t know that we were measuring that. It was just the noticing that I had.

And then the third group, of course, was by far, hands down, the fastest of all the groups, which was, you know, the rat who’d never been in the maze before going through it with an expert. Not only did the, like, rookie rat make it through the maze sometimes on the first try, right? Because the expert knew what it was doing and so the other rat would just kind of follow, but it would usually kind of help. It wasn’t just like following right behind. It was, cause some of the tasks kind of took a minute. You couldn’t just, you know, it wasn’t just like run forward, right? It was like run forward and then you kind of get stuck by this thing and you had to figure out how to get out of it.

So even the new rat would kind of help the expert rat do the thing, like do whatever the task was, but they would get through it a lot of times on the very first try. And what I find really fun about that as well is that not only would that rat improve exponentially faster than the other two groups, but the expert rat would also get faster and faster. Like it would also be so much better at navigating the maze because it was teaching the rookie rat, right? The novice.

So I want you to just think about that. Now I know that’s rats, but we use rats a lot in many psychology studies because they do tend to, you know, they show us like a simple demonstration of what this looks like in humans.

Now, when you’re using rats in psychology studies, one thing that is very clear that scientists are well aware of is there are things you can’t take into consideration because rats just don’t experience it, right? It’s hard. Now, it’s not that they don’t experience it at all. It’s just a little trickier when it comes to measuring things like what if you introduce some form of – you create self-doubt in the rat or can you create – like turn up somehow the competition between two rats or, you know, things like that where it’s like very human behavior. You can replicate with animals and studies like this, but It’s a little trickier, right?

But anyway, if you just think about that and just consider what that means for us as humans and just how we learn and what those examples mean, if you think about yourself and your coaching journey or your clients and their coaching journeys with you, what does that mean?

Right? For me, it means like I have a deep understanding of why I love to be in spaces doing the work that I do with other people. I know it helps me go faster. I know it points out ways that I’m doing things that don’t make as much sense. Maybe sometimes they’re ways that I’ve just kind of figured out on my own or like cobbled together by other things that I have learned and then I see someone else who, you know, is really an expert at it and it makes me see like, oh, here are all the things missing from my method.

There’s also lots of research around the cognitive biases that we have as humans that show that it’s nearly sometimes impossible to predict our own blind spots when it comes to self-assessment and decision-making, right, that are really hard to overcome without some sort of external perspective. Some person saying, oh, here’s what I see, right? Or like, have you thought about this? Or what I notice about the way you’re describing this is, and just that perspective that’s just completely outside of us, right? Someone with a completely different perspective about life, about whatever the specific thing is that we’re working on and, or you know, that you’re working on.

And just think about that, right? Like how helpful it is when you have someone, especially someone you trust to say like, oh, hey, have you considered this? Or I noticed that you’re approaching it like this, that doesn’t seem to be, you know, really helping you. And this specifically is the part I think that where coaches kind of get stuck in, why didn’t I see this? I should be able to do this on my own. I shouldn’t need constant coaching or constant guidance or help. And I just think that’s fascinating. It’s literally not true.

I also think there’s a difference between need and want that we can explore in a second, right? Like telling yourself that you shouldn’t need something or that you shouldn’t want something. Like what’s the difference between those two things?

And finally, there are also many studies that show the effectiveness of group problem solving versus individual problem solving. And this is something that is, you know, where it kind of shows like it’s not always better to have a group or to have a lot of people helping in a certain situation because there is a lot of evidence where, you know, overall the evidence is overwhelming that when you have someone helping you or when you’re working in a group, overwhelmingly the evidence says for the most part you move faster, you get the thing done faster. Except there is one exception to this. It’s when it comes to very simple tasks, right? So when given a very simple task to perform, sometimes a group, oftentimes actually, a group can make that task more difficult because there’s too many perspectives for a very simple task. Everybody might have a different idea of how to do it.

Think about, you know, most of you listening are coaches, you’ve probably been in some kind of group coaching container maybe, or like a course that had a group that went along with it or whatever, right? And I see this all the time in The Coach Lab. Someone will post, hey, what is your, you know, something like, what’s your favorite email platform? And it’s just like a really generic question. There’s no context to it.

I try to teach people in there, I try to teach my clients, right? Like give it context, like say, here’s what I’m looking for, here’s what I’m not looking for, here’s specifically what I’m trying to solve so that you get better answers because when you don’t and you’re just like here’s a simple question what happens is you get 500 answers not really maybe 25 right and they might all be different and people sometimes, because we have bias, right? That’s like the thing we use is the best and here’s why. And so people will really like argue for, here’s why you should use the same thing I’m using, the same email platform I use, and it’ll be a whole thing, right?

That is a good example of how a simple task can be more difficult in a group, because now you have a bunch of different perspectives, a bunch of answers that probably make sense and also conflict with each other and make and now you’re like even more confused, right? You’ve probably experienced that I would guess in some form and I think that speaks to kind of that you know simple task versus complex task.

Now I want to give you two more examples that might really help paint a picture why, no, you shouldn’t be able to do it on your own. You were never supposed to be able to do it on your own. I want you to imagine that you decided you were going to learn to play a new, an instrument, right? You’ve never played it before, no experience doing it, but you just decide I want to play the flute, right? I want to learn to play the flute. And think about the phases that you could go through, right? From like most complicated to best case scenario. The hardest way to learn to play the flute would just be to get a flute and just have no instruction, no guidance, and just play it, right? Just start blowing into it.

I have no idea how to play the flute, by the way, so I don’t know, but I’m assuming I’ve seen it done, right? You like blow into the hole, you move your fingers to make different notes, and I’m sure there’s so much that goes into it, the way you hold your mouth, the pressure that you blow with, all of it, right? But let’s just say you have no guidance, no music, nothing. You just pick it up every day and try to play it. You’re gonna get a little better, right? You’re gonna figure out some things. You’re going to figure out probably how to make certain sounds. You might learn how to make specific notes. You might not know what the notes are, but you’ll be able to make them.

Maybe you even get to the point where if you’re doing it long enough, you might even get to the point where you can make up a song that actually sounds like a song, right? Like put actual notes together that don’t sound terrible. Let’s say you do it for a really long time. Maybe you get to the point where you can like listen to music of someone playing the flute, and then you could, if you practiced over and over and over, figure out how to mimic those sounds. I believe that’s probably possible, but it’s going to take a while.

Now let’s assume like the next kind of like, okay, what would make it a little easier is that now someone gives you notes, right? Like they you have now sheet music. Let’s just assume for the sake of this, that you know how to read sheet music and that you can somehow figure out by trying over and over and over again, it’s still gonna be really hard. Maybe almost as hard as the first option, but you might be able to figure something out over time.

And then just imagine what that would look like to increasingly make it easier for yourself. Eventually, one step would be, okay, you’re gonna hire, you’re gonna go to lessons, you’re gonna go to someone who’s gonna actually show you how to play the flute, right? They’re gonna say, put your hands like this, put your mouth like this, hold it like this. Here’s what these notes mean. Practice this, go practice this for the week, come back, we’ll talk about it next week, right? And they’re gonna show you, they’re gonna coach you like an athletic coach, like how to play this instrument. And then I always think the last way that would be like optimal if you’re really trying to be an amazing flute player is you’re gonna do that, you’re gonna have someone teaching you, and you’re also gonna have someone, maybe the same person, really watching you, giving you very, very direct feedback.

Oh, you know, someone who’s like really an expert saying, oh, you know, see the pressure on this one finger when you’re playing this one note, it’s why it’s making it sound just a teensiest bit off, try it like this, you know, whatever. Like they’re just gonna have tips that are far and above what you would ever probably figure out on your own.

And that makes sense, right? When you think about that, I’m sure that logically you can see, oh, right, that would be much easier. Maybe we could even add one more thing onto there, which could be you’re learning to play the flute. You have all those things in that last group I just offered, right? Where someone’s teaching you, they’re teaching you all the nuance, all the little tips and tricks.

What if then you also had someone, either the same person or someone different, talking you through what’s going through your head while you’re doing it, right? Like coaching, kind of like the mindset piece, having you think through like, what are you believing when you’re playing this? What do you believe about yourself playing the flute, right? That could be a thing. I’m sure there are people in the world that that’s a thing that they do.

Okay, now I want you to think about this one more example, right? If you decided to be a basketball player, we could do the same thing with the flute, right? Like you could practice over and over and over and over and over by yourself, you’re going to get increasingly better, but you’re going to get even better if you have a coach, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Now, I am not a huge basketball fan as in, I mean, I enjoy basketball, whatever, but I’m not like, oh, I have to catch the game. Like I’m not, I don’t have like a team.

I’m not, you know, cheering for, you know, making sure to watch all the games. I did go to IU. They historically have had pretty great basketball teams, so that was really fun when I was there. They won the championship, it was a whole thing. And still, post-college, I’m not the biggest basketball fan, but pretty much, I’m assuming, probably all of you listening know who Michael Jordan is, right?

He has been very vocal about the coaches that he worked with. He has talked about this in documentaries, in books, in interviews, right? Where he talks about having a basketball coach, like an actual basketball coach like you think of, right? Phil Jackson, I believe, was his coach for a long time, but he had other coaches as well. He had very specific coaches for very specific things when it came to, you know, shooting different kind of shots and all the things.

But he was also very vocal about having a performance coach and a mindset coach, right? People that helped him not just know how to shoot, how to whatever. Oh, and let’s not forget his trainers, right? Like helping him with his muscles, develop certain muscles, like be the most fit. He also had mindset support and performance coaching. He’s talked about it many times.

Kobe Bryant, I believe, also has talked about this a lot. I think they, at one point, had the same coach. I forget his name. I feel terrible. I’ve heard him talked about in podcasts. I’ve actually heard interviews with him.

Just consider that, right? Someone who is at the top of his game, peak performance. Think about all that support that he has. He probably practiced every single day. I know that he practiced multiple times a day for most of his career. He also worked out, right? And had someone guiding him in that. He also was meeting with performance mindset coaches.

Think about all of the help, all of that support that he had. And now compare that to your thought. If this is a thought you have or compare it to your client’s thought, I should be able to do this on my own. It’s just 100% not true. Like 100%, never, true. It just goes against every piece of human behavior.

Now, there are sometimes good reasons to say, I want to work on this on my own for a while very deliberately, right? Like I learned a method, I want to really be better at, like now I want to practice on my own over and over, evaluate, figure out specifically what I want to work on. But that’s very different than just thinking overall, this thing I’ve never maybe really done before, or I haven’t done it at this level, I should be able to do it on my own, right?

That would be like, imagine if Michael Jordan was, you know, if his thought was like, “Well, I’ve had a coach for a long time, so now I should be able to just do this on my own. I should be able to just get better on my own.” Like what could that have cost him if that was his thought?

And I want to be very clear. I am not saying this in a way that is like you should always have a coach. I don’t believe that. I think it’s fine to not have coaches. I also don’t think that you need a coach for every single thing to be better at every single thing in your life.

What I am suggesting is just to notice when it’s a thought you’re using against yourself, right? And you’re using it as a judgment, maybe adding some shame onto the top of it or some like frustration with yourself that you’re not as good at something, at coaching, at running a business, at whatever it is, learning all these new skills that maybe you’ve never learned before or that you haven’t been doing for years and years and years and you’re kind of adding this, you know, shame on that’s like, I should be able to do this on my own.

The other thing that happens when you tell yourself this or whether you’re saying it out loud or you’re just telling it to yourself is that you’re robbing yourself the experience of really seeing the real thing that’s under it. Sometimes the real thought is I should be able to do this on my own. But hopefully after listening to this podcast, you can see like that really is just kind of a silly thought in most cases. But usually when I talk to my clients, right? And they’re having that thought about something and I say, well, like why? Right, and I question it or I just poke at the story a little bit.

What we usually find is, okay, it’s not that I really think I should be able to do it on my own. It’s that right now I don’t have maybe the resources to invest in this thing that I really want to do. So I’m just gonna tell myself I should be able to do it on my own or I don’t have the you know room in my schedule to make it make sense to do this thing that I really want to do. So I’m just going to tell myself I should be able to do it on my own.

When you don’t examine kind of what’s under it, you can do this with your clients as well, right? You’re missing out on like, oh, what’s the real thing and can I solve that? Maybe not, sometimes it’s like, no, I really don’t have the resources to hire this coach that I wanna hire right now. But what you can do if that’s the case is say, okay, but I know I want to so I’m going to figure that out over time. But right now, here’s how I can support myself in the meantime, right?

Is there, there are free resources. You can listen to a podcast, you can read a book, you can search these things online and find, especially if it’s something to do with strategy, find so much strategy online. So just notice, you know, you can, if it’s more mindset or coaching that you’re looking for, you can, can you do it with a peer?

It might not be the same, exactly the same. It might not be their specialty. It might not be the same level of coaching that you might get in like a paid program or whatever, but that’s okay. That’s like, if you think about the rat study, right? It’s like doing it on your own, slowest, hardest. Doing it with a peer, much faster, like much, much faster, way faster than like the difference between that group and the rats doing it on their own, huge gap. The difference between that middle group and then the rat doing it with an expert, still a big gap, but not nearly as big. I wish I could remember. I tried to look up the study. I couldn’t find it because I just worked on phases of it.

I don’t even remember the names of the, I don’t even know the professors or the students or whoever it was that was running the studies. So I couldn’t find it, but I do remember for sure the gap between the first two groups, huge. The gap between the second two groups, still big, but much smaller, right? Showing it’s much more effective, even if it’s a peer, even if you’re just supporting and helping each other, much more effective than just telling yourself, I should be able to do this on my own.

The other place where there’s a lot of research that it’s very effective to have a coach or mentor is in therapeutic settings. All different kinds of therapeutic settings, but specifically within therapy, it’s called supervision, right? And it is where – It’s very similar to what I do in The Coach Lab. You’ve probably heard me talk about this before, but it is where you – it might be a little different than what you think it is, just hearing the word if you aren’t familiar with the field, but it’s where you kind of come to supervisor or a peer or whatever and say, here’s a thing that happened in my therapy session today.

Can you like how do you know how would you have handled this? Or here’s what I did like I don’t know if it was very effective you know what do you think and it’s kind of just like talking it through there are lots of different ways that it’s done but basically it’s talking it through right it’s saying here’s the thing that happened and I don’t know if I did it. I don’t know if that’s the best. Like, what do you think? And just seeing, you know, does your supervisor or your peer have something to offer that’s different than what you did? If you’ve ever seen the show, Couples Therapy, which I highly recommend, I believe it’s on Showtime. It shows a couples therapist and it actually shows their sessions, which I of course find fascinating. And you can actually see her, the therapist, going to her supervisor or her, I don’t know what she would call it, and I don’t know what she actually calls her in the show, but going to a therapist, someone who’s been a therapist longer than she has, and kind of running through some of the sessions with her to just kind of check, like, I feel like they’re not really progressing, you know, do you have anything that can help? Any guidance, any advice, any, you know, do you hear me saying anything that I did wrong?

And she gives her some really powerful advice now, or, you know, guidance, or kind of shows her some things that are happening even in her own mind that are affecting the way she’s showing up for her therapy clients. This is very similar to what we do inside The Coach Lab so of course if this is something you’re looking for in your coaching. You should definitely come join us.

This is what we do every single week in our, in the weekly, you know, coaching sessions is all my clients come and very bravely. They say, here’s this thing that was uncomfortable in my coaching session or this thing I don’t know how to deal with. Can you help me? And it’s so fun. It’s like my favorite thing to do. It might not be their favorite thing when they’re in the middle of it, but they do love it and it is their favorite when they can really see visible improvements in their coaching, right, and they’re like, oh my gosh, that was so helpful. That’s what makes it really fun.

Okay, friend, I hope that this was really useful for you and that it really gives you some context on why we as humans are really just not supposed to do things on our own. And some context of like when this is coming up for you, how to think about it, and how to just question, is this true? Probably not. Do I want to do it on my own? That’s a really great question you can answer. Sometimes there are reasons to want to do something on your own.

But if the answer is no, then the next question is what type of support do I want to give myself? Right? And I’m talking to you as the coach, but everything I’m saying is also true for your clients, right? These are conversations you can have with clients or when someone is coming to you, asking about what coaching is and wanting to know, like, why do people hire coaches or what’s the importance of coaching?

To me, this right here, the importance of social learning, of deliberate feedback, of really collecting data and saying, okay, this is how I wanna move forward is what makes coaching so magic.

So, hope this was helpful. I’ll see you again next week. Goodbye!

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.