Ep #97: What is Getting Between You and Your Coaching Brilliance?

Hi, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 97. 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.

Hi coach, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here today. I want to talk about something that I think is really fun today. And I want to direct your attention first, just a couple announcements because I want to direct you to the show notes today where you will find a couple links.

One of them is to sign up for an upcoming training that I’m doing. A weeklong training with a private community, private Facebook group for all of the coaches. It’s a free training, I could not be more excited. And the training is called Coach Week.

A little more on that name in just a minute, but I’m going to cover all the things getting between you and your coaching brilliance. So for me that could really, like when I say that what I mean is literally anything. I don’t care if you’re a new coach, if you’re a more established coach. We are going to be going through all the things getting in the way.

And that’s what this podcast today is going to be about. I’m going to address some of the things, obviously not the way that I will be able to in the training because those will be actual scheduled workshops throughout the days of the week and then coaching by me in all the workshops and a community where you can come and just get extra coaching.

This is just like me giving back, hosting a free training for all the people, and especially for those of you who’ve been on the fence and asking me questions about The Coach Lab, or should I join The Coach Lab? Is now the time? You know, any of that. This is a great place to come.

Come see me coach, come experience what it’s like, and then you’ll know. You can decide, do you love me? Do you not? Doesn’t matter, either way. Take me or leave me, I love you either way. So that is going to be September 19th through 23rd. So you have a few weeks to get signed up. But go click the link, sign up now so that you get all of the schedule and you can start marking it off on your calendar.

I have also tried to kind of spread the trainings and workshops throughout the day because I do get a lot of questions from a lot of you like what about me, I’m in this time zone. What about me, I’m in this time zone. So I really have tried to spread all of the trainings, all of the workshops over different times throughout the day so that hopefully you no matter where you live, you can find at least one or two that work for you. And we will be sending replays of all of the trainings that we do.

So that’s the first thing, and then, as you know, you heard me say this is episode 97, I am about to record episode 100 very soon. So if you have any questions for me at all, there’s also a link in the show notes where you can go and you can fill it out either anonymously or you can leave your name if you want to. And you can just ask me anything that I will answer on episode 100.

I did it on episode 50. It was one of my favorite things to do. Some of the questions, I have lots of questions already coming in. Some of them are so good, they deserve their own podcast, so some of that will be happening. But anything you want to ask me, it can be a personal question, it can be about my business, it can be about The Coach Lab, or Coaching Masters, or really anything.

Obviously, if you ask anything inappropriate I’ll just ignore it and not address it on the podcast. So far that’s never happened, but you never know. Just in case I need to say that, there you go.

So today, I want to dive into just some of the things that I see getting in between coaches and them showing up as the best possible coach for their clients or getting between them and their coaching brilliance. So I want you to just listen and just think, where am I doing this?

And by the way, these are all things that I have had to work through and that I still on occasion work through. So this isn’t like a checklist where you’re just going to work through and just be like, okay, check, done. I don’t have to think about these ever again.

They’re still going to come up every once in awhile and I think it’s just important to talk about them and to know that other coaches are having these same thoughts. And it’s exactly why I’m doing the training. But I am going to dive in here a little bit to each one and talk about them a little bit and tell you some personal stories of how these things have come up for me or how I’ve kind of worked on them.

So things that get in between you and your coaching brilliance. The number one thing, of course, not like the number one thing like this is the thing that most gets in the way but just the number one thing on my list is just skill. Right? Like actual coaching skill.

Some of you are listening to this podcast, I know because you’ve told me, you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, oh, I just wish I knew how to coach. Or I really want to coach on my own or start my own coaching business but I don’t know how. And my suggestion for you would be find a place like The Coach Lab or another place where you can learn coaching skills, right? Just like foundational coaching skills.

To me, the way I teach that within The Coach Lab is I teach on awareness and goal setting and math around your goals, right? Like what’s the actual number? How are we going to measure it? Decision making, asking amazing questions, and strategy. And to me, those are the basics that every single coach needs to know.

And when I talk about each of those things, like for example, under awareness, I think of that as like, yes, your thoughts and there’s mindset. And also adding on to that awareness of just where am I right now? How am I thinking about things? How am I feeling about things? How is all of that interacting together to create the actions that I’m taking that are creating my results?

That’s how I love to think about coaching, is how all of this, all of my humaneness, all of my clients’ humaneness, how is it all combining and playing together and creating the results that they have? And then the same is true for thinking of the future or thinking of goals, right?

Like what are the things that if I had this result, what would I be thinking? How would I be feeling? How would I be interacting with the world? So that’s the number one thing, right? If you don’t know how to coach, definitely go find how to coach.

The second thing that I do find, I do put this second because it’s a little ironic, because I just said skill and now the second thing I’m going to say, is coaches thinking they need to get more and more training. Which is kind of the same thing, right? Like I do think you need to learn skill somewhere, you need to know how to coach in order to be a coach.

But what you don’t need to do is have 20 coaching trainings or keep thinking, take your brain to the place where you’re like, what I have right now isn’t good enough and I need more. Because what will happen, and not that it’s, I mean, I have a lot of trainings, I have a lot of certifications.

So not that there’s anything wrong with having them, but there’s a difference between strategically and from abundance, saying, oh, I see this is missing, I really want to go learn this skill. Versus, I have already learned these skills, I don’t really have many clients, I’m not using them a lot. And then thinking what I have isn’t enough and I need to go get this other things so that it can finally be enough. That’s very different, it creates a very different energy, very different results in your coaching.

When I think about just the simple foundational tools that I teach in The Coach Lab I always think this is what every coach needs to know, period. Are there other things outside of that that you can go learn? Absolutely. Are some of those things pretty amazing? Absolutely.

So I’m never thinking like, oh, this is the one way and this is the only way. But I am thinking and this is perfect for every coach. If you only have this, you can be an incredible coach, right? If you only have these skills.

This is something that came up for me when I was a newer coach. At one point I did have this thought of, oh, I need all of these trainings. And, oh, look at all these people, they have this and this and this and they’re all so amazing, and let me just go kind of collect trainings.

And so at one point, I signed up for a couple different things. And it doesn’t really matter what they were, but basically they were kind of opposite of each other. Which is fine, they’re both great tools. But because I did it at the same time, what happened is it created so much confusion and so much just kind of spinning out in outer space instead of really deeply learning one thing and focusing on it and then deciding, okay, now do I want to go learn this other thing?

So for those of you that find yourself doing that, I would just suggest asking yourself what do I have right now that I already know how to use, or that I haven’t maybe quite mastered yet? That’s one thing that we work on in The Coach Lab and definitely in my mastermind, Coaching Masters, where I really show you how what you have right now is enough.

And of course in The Coach Lab I do teach skills, but then I very much encourage you have to ask, okay, how do I use these skills and take this work deeper? How do I take these tools and make them my own?

Because that is really where your coaching magic is going to come to life, right? Not when you’re just like regurgitating something you’ve heard or something you’ve learned from me or from someone else. But when you can take that skill and practice it over and over until you know it well enough to make it your own.

This makes me think of, I don’t know why this just came to mind, but I have a daughter who is learning to write in cursive. I think she actually learned it a year or two ago. And I know that we hear like they don’t really teach cursive anymore and she certainly didn’t learn it like I did where I felt like when I was her age we spent days and days learning, weeks, whatever, months, maybe the whole year, years, I don’t know, learning how to perfectly write cursive.

I don’t know that they did it that involved. But there’s like the learning of it, Right? Like okay this is how I write the H, her name is Harper. So this is how I write the H, this is how I write the A. But then after a while, if you can take your mind back to like when you learned to do that, think about the little frills and like intricacies you would add into your own writing, right?

First you learn how to do it, but then you learn how to make it yours. It’s a funny example kind of because my handwriting is not amazing. That’s definitely a thought, but it feels pretty true to me. Especially it feels like the older I get, I can write very neatly, but the older I get and the less I care, the less other people can read my writing, which is kind of funny.

But I think about like that’s how coaching is, right? You learn a skill and at first you just have to know how to do the thing. How to do the skill, how to execute it, how to use it with clients. And then over time you can start making it your own, right? How do I do this that’s different than other people? What are my little intricacies or frills that I add that my clients love? How will they know that this is my coaching, not someone else’s?

The next thing I see that gets in the way of so many coaches, so many, between them and their coaching brilliance is trying to go too fast. Trying to coach very quickly because they’re thinking this client has to see this quickly or we have to get them to the breakthrough quickly.

And if you think about that, like when we think about coaching if we think about how our thoughts affect the way we feel, which affects the way we’re showing up in the moment, showing up in the world, which creates our results. If you’re thinking I have to hurry, this should be faster, like as the coach. This should be faster, we should be going faster, this client should be getting it. Just think about how that shows up in your body, right?

How does that feel? When you’re believing that, especially when you’re in a session with a client and you’re believing that, how does that feel to you? And then how do you interact differently with your client when you’re thinking that?

When you’re thinking I have to hurry and get them to the breakthrough so that dot, dot dot, whatever the thought is. So they believe I’m a good coach. So that they want to keep paying me. So that they tell all their friends about me. So that they just have bigger, faster breakthroughs all the time, all the time. Just think about how that feels and then how you’re interacting with your client.

I have been on the receiving end of coaching like this. And I will say, and you may have noticed this on my podcast. I don’t know what the technical term for it would be, but I think I’m kind of a slow processor. I think that sometimes I am very thoughtful, like I like to think about things and pause and think about things.

I know because some of you have given me feedback that I talk slow or that I, you know, whatever. And that you want to be able to listen faster, which in most apps you can, by the way. You can put it on like one and a half speed or whatever. But to me, it’s not a problem. I don’t make that a problem at all.

But I think some coaches that I’ve worked with in the past have taken my quietness or my inward, my thinking, me like pausing to think as like, oh no, something has gone wrong. And then they start to fill in the gaps of, oh, well, maybe you’re thinking this or maybe this is coming up for you. Right? Like their brain starts trying to hurry me or create an answer for me. Where really what’s happening in my mind is I’m maybe even having a huge realization.

I think silence on a coaching call is magic. Now, not for every coaching call, not in every situation. Sometimes your clients do need a little more, you know, I think you have to read it. Like what is my client thinking? Especially if you’re on Zoom, you can usually tell what’s the body language?

Are they looking at me like I’m crazy? Or are they like looking up, are their eyes pointed up towards the ceiling? Are they maybe being a little more inwardly inquisitive, like oh, what is this thought that I’m having? Or how am I feeling right now? Just consider that.

Anytime you find yourself being the coach who’s like, oh, we have to hurry and get to the breakthrough, just consider what it would be like if that wasn’t there. Maybe explore that for yourself and think about how would my coaching change if I wasn’t having that thought? How would I even maybe just feel differently about my coaching if I wasn’t having that thought?

All right, the next thing that might be getting in between you and your coaching brilliance are just your thoughts about coaching or other coaches. So I’ll give you some examples. So maybe you have seen coaches doing things in the world that you’re like, oh, I don’t like that. Or I think that this is wrong, they shouldn’t be doing this.

Or maybe you get coaching from one coach and you don’t like the coaching or it’s not great coaching. And then you internalize those thoughts about other coaches or about something you’ve seen and you make it true for the whole industry, right? Including yourself.

Even though you’re a coach, you’re like, oh great, now either I have to watch out for this or be super careful not to do this, which sometimes can be useful, right? If you’re like, oh, I don’t like this, I’m not going to do this, that can definitely be useful.

But when you start using it against yourself and like thinking about, oh, there’s this thing about coaching that I don’t like, because you’ve seen it with one coach or had an experience with one coach, or even heard about someone else having an experience with one coach.

I would encourage you, that if that is you, if that has ever happened to you or happened, it’s just in your world at all to consider there are bad physicians. There are bad dentists. There are bad lawyers. There are bad, I don’t know, teachers. There are definitely bad teachers. There are also amazing teachers, and amazing physicians, and amazing dentists and whatever other profession you want to think of.

There’s going to be someone for everyone, and there’s going to be someone on the spectrum from good to bad in your opinion, right? Like a great coach to me, for me might be a terrible coach for you for whatever reason, right? Maybe you don’t like a coach that leaves a lot of space like I do. Just something to consider, right.

So just check all your thoughts about things that other coaches are doing or things you see. I also think coaching is very interesting, I think it’s an interesting industry because we do so much on social media. And so many coaches are talking about their ideas, their philosophies, what they do as a coach and what their beliefs are as a coach on social media. Which is very different than most professions.

Yes, of course, there are teachers who are on social media, but let’s just use teachers as an example. Most teachers, like teachers aren’t on social media selling teaching. They don’t have to do that, kids just go to school. So you’re very rarely seeing teachers say like, oh, this is what I believe about the world. This is how I, here are my teaching philosophies. Of course, there are exceptions to this, right.

But I just think that social media brings an interesting aspect into our coaching awareness because we constantly are being aware of all the things that other coaches are doing, and thinking, and putting out into the world.

Another one that will get quickly in the way of you and your coaching brilliance, and this could be if you’re a new coach, if you’re an established coach, if you are anywhere in between, if you’ve been doing it for 20 years. Other people’s thoughts about coaching or what coaching is.

Now, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to hear other people’s thoughts about coaching. Other people that really don’t know at all what coaching is talking about, oh, this thing about coaching or, oh, I heard this. Coaching is a scam. Coaching is a pyramid scheme. Coaching is a, I don’t even know, all the things.

I have a whole workshop on this in the free training, don’t you worry. I think we could also find those things out there for most professions too, right? Here’s why this is bad, here’s why this is bad. And I would just question any of those things that you’re hearing, why are you believing them, right?

It’s one thing for people to say it, and then it’s another thing for you to accept it and say yep, and I believe you. I’m going to let this hold me back from helping my clients, from helping the people that I know I can help.

I actually think this is super normal because of how new of a profession coaching is. So if you think back to, if you think about therapy, for example. Not too long ago therapy was this totally taboo thing we don’t talk about. And now mental health, therapy, all of the healing modalities are really stepping into kind of the forefront of being so important.

When we think about medicine and people’s mental health, people’s just states in general, there’s the physical and the mental, and it’s included, right? Like now it’s become kind of regular and I think coaching is just a new piece.

It’s like here’s this new thing, a lot of people don’t understand it. I think sometimes even coaches don’t really understand it and so they get tripped up about how do I talk about it. Which just, of course, then affects how people view what they’re doing. And this is okay. We’re going to work through it, this is just a thing that happens with all new professions.

I’ll share with you something that happened to me when I was launching The Coach Lab months ago. When it very first came out, it was very first launching I was sending all these sales emails talking all about The Coach Lab. In a lot of the emails it was like here are things that will be happening inside the lab, here are all of these assets.

I was so proud of it and had put so much work into it. And one of the assets that I talk about within The Coach Lab and that I was talking about, I think I sent an entire email about, is that I have guest coaches who come in and coach. Now, I’m still doing a lot of the coaching but maybe once a month I have a guest coach come in. I have a handful of them, they all have different coaching styles.

I think it is part of the magic of The Coach Lab because I think it is actually really important to see the way other coaches coach, right? Instead of seeing one person and thinking, oh, I have to coach like that. And sometimes I have experts come in and do workshops that are things that wouldn’t be my area of expertise.

And anyway, so I sent an email selling this to my audience about why it’s amazing. So I got an email back that said, literally it said, “Lindsay, you are the epitome of what is wrong with the coaching industry.” Now, a couple years ago, had that happened I am positive it would have destroyed me.

I would have been so upset and just devastated that someone would think that about me. I would probably get to work figuring out why the person thought that and what I needed to change and what, you know, all of that. I also would have, I’m sure, gotten a lot of coaching on it.

But in that moment I read it, I let it sink in, I just read it again. And I just decided that’s not true. I just don’t believe you, right? And her reasoning, I believe it was a woman, anyway her reasoning was how could I be selling something where it wasn’t just me delivering it 100% of the time.

Now, if this person is listening, if it is you, I still love you. It’s okay. You can be in my world. I don’t even remember your name, I have no idea who you are. But I want you to know that you’re wrong. And the reason you’re wrong, the reason I believe that you’re wrong is because I teach my clients that it’s important to rest your brain, that it’s important to take time off, that it is important to be exposed to all different styles of coaching, right?

I have so many amazing reasons that I include guest coaches in my program that you can never convince me that that’s a bad thing to do. Absolutely not. But this just goes to show, other people’s thoughts, they don’t have to be true. We don’t have to accept them and just believe them when someone tells you something about the coaching industry or about you as a coach, right? This was specifically directed at me.

Now my assumption is she has probably unsubscribed and doesn’t follow and all of the things, so she will probably never hear this. But if I could, I would just say to her, like let me tell you why that’s not true and how it’s going to suck for you as a coach if you continue to think that, right? Just think of all the possibilities.

Now I’m not saying that every coach should just be farming out all their coaching and not taking responsibility for what their container is or how you show up within it, right? I’m actually saying the opposite. I just have so many strong beliefs that as coaches we have to take care of ourselves.

It’s not just, yes, it’s all about taking care of the clients and taking care of them as best we can. Of course, right? It’s all I talk about on this podcast, is how to be a great coach, how to serve your clients really well. But we can’t ever forget that we also have to take care of ourselves.

So maybe we’re sick, or maybe we’re on vacation with our family, or maybe whatever it is and you just need a week off. Maybe you just need to rest, sometimes that’s a thing. Guest coaches are amazing. And I’m just, I don’t take anyone else’s beliefs any different.

Could we go find examples where maybe there’s a situation happening where that’s not amazing? Yeah, probably. Just like we could find examples of bad things happening or like not great things for clients or coaches taking advantage of clients. I’m sure that’s a thing. But not here. Not in my world. That’s not what we’re doing. All right, and one of the very last things, one of the things that I think about a lot that I see get in so many coaches way is are your thoughts about yourself and how you should show up as a coach, right? Maybe comparing yourself to other coaches.

When I was a brand new coach I was surrounded by and hiring coaches who had very different personalities than me, very different energies. They were all about the selling, the marketing, like a big energy. And I spent a lot of time thinking, oh, I have to be like that. Like I have to figure out how to be that.

And now I know, and almost 100% of what I teach it’s, no, you have to figure out how to do you as a coach, right? Like I’m just Lindsay as a coach. What does that look like? You’re just you know, whoever you are, whatever your name is, as a coach. Are there things that I’ve changed and adjusted along the way? Of course, but for the most part I’m just me, I’m just showing up here to be a coach.

I used to have so much drama about, oh, I’m just too calm and I don’t have this big energy. And now the number one thing that people say about me, at least to my face, I don’t know what they say behind my back. But at least to my face the number one thing I hear people say is, you’re just such a calming presence, right? Like your coaching is like a warm hug.

Which sometimes is funny because my coaching can also be pretty tough. But it’s almost like, I think of it as like tough wrapped in a warm hug. Like, why wouldn’t it be? That’s just how I think of coaching. And now it’s become my superpower. This thing that I thought was such a bad thing about, not really about me as a human, but just about me as a coach is now my superpower. It’s the thing that people talk about.

I was actually at a coach conference, I guess, is what you would call it last week. And I was there as a teacher for my business coach. I was there helping her and coaching. And I coach in her community and I host some of her breakout sessions, which is so fun, one of my favorite things. And I just love that energy. I love being surrounded by all the coaches.

And someone came up to me, if it was you I love you so much, you know who you are. They came up to me and said, and like we kind of stopped each other and we never met in person before. And we introduced ourselves, we both knew, I knew who she was, she knew who I was. And we talked for a second.

And then she said, “Oh, I just have to tell you something. I love listening to your podcast. Like I know most podcasts you can’t listen to at night, but your voice is just so calming and so soothing. And it’s just one of my favorite things to listen to. I always listen to yours in the evening.” And she said, and she’s not from the United States, and she said, “And I usually hate American accents.” Which just cracked me up. Right?

And she was like, I just love it, it’s so calm, it’s so soothing. Now just imagine if I had kept those thoughts about myself, and who I was as a coach, and how I needed to be different, and started to try to apply those changes, right? Like started trying to change myself to be someone else and show up as someone who I’m not.

It would be really interesting, right? Imagine listening to this podcast right now and me talking really fast, or just, I don’t know, talking really loud, or just changing the tone of my voice. It would be weird, right? You’d be like, something’s weird here, something’s off. You probably wouldn’t be listening.

So just think about that for you. Whatever the thoughts are that you have about yourself as a coach, any of them, literally any of them, I want you to challenge them and just say like, what if this is just who I am? Now, there are things, of course, like there are things about my personality that you don’t necessarily hear all the time on here. And I don’t, like those things don’t happen on coaching calls. Like I can be very sarcastic, I love being sarcastic. Not in a mean way, but I love laughing, I love other people laughing, I love joking around.

That’s not something I do a lot on here or when I’m coaching. I think sometimes people are surprised by that when they meet me in person, not always because I do joke around sometimes. Especially if you’re in my mastermind, I’m sure you see that side of me, or occasionally in The Coach Lab.

But that’s just a side of my personality that it’s like, okay, that doesn’t always belong in these spaces, but it still shows up. I’m not like being the opposite of that, I’m just harnessing it a little bit. I’m just like, okay, let’s just pull back on that just a little bit. This isn’t the space.

All right, friends, that’s it. That’s all I have. Those are the things. I’m sure that there are others and I’m sure we’re going to be covering all of these plus more in Coach Week. So please join us September 19th. Go click the link.

The other thing that I didn’t mention since I’m doing all these different workshops, which are already planned out, by the way. So if you go sign up, if you click the link, you can see what all the workshops are.

And the other thing I’m doing is I am hosting a couple of coach panels, which will be really fun. One of them is going to be a panel of some coaches who coach for me in The Coach Lab. So they’ve kind of been coaching for a while. All of them have been in my Coaching Masters mastermind, and you will have the opportunity to come ask them anything. And I’ll be there too, of course.

And then I’m having a panel of coaches that are just in The Coach Lab. Some of them newer coaches, but some of them more established coaches. But they’ll kind of talk about why they’re there, what they’re getting out of it, why they love being there. And it’s going to be so fun. You can come, ask us questions, participate as little or as much as you want. And I can’t wait to see you there. All right, see you soon. Bye, coach.

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.