The other day I saw a question in a facebook group for coaches. It’s a question that a lot of coaches struggle with.“I’m constantly running overtime because I can’t interrupt a client in his deepest thoughts, I just feel rude. I’m trying to find ways that don’t make them feel like they’re an automatic cash machine.”
Besides the obvious limiting belief around interrupting being rude, there’s something else going on that probably makes her go over time. I read through the comments, and while there was some good advice, there was also something missing.
Other than tips to the effect of mentioning the time remaining: “We only have 10 minutes left…” to transforming the limiting belief that interrupting is rude (which probably means she is not interrupting enough and letting the client vent too much), most likely the biggest thing that is missing is a clear structure that guides the client through transformation.
She mentioned that often the most important stuff ends up coming up when they are starting to run out of time and the client feels like they have more to share.
When you have a clear pathway to getting to the heart of the matter and you know exactly what information you are looking for (the kind that leads to transformation), the client will actually feel far more listened to than if they were to share tons of stories where they’re only hypnotizing themselves into their problem even more. Because that is often a client’s misconception, right, that you’ll understand them by giving you a thousand examples.
And if you don’t have a way of dealing with that, interrupting alone won’t help.
Here’s what you can do to not only make interruptions more effective, but to make your coaching sessions more efficient and powerful than ever before:
First, once you have the overall outcome of the session determined, you want your client to share the context in which they want that outcome but their inner state and resulting actions aren’t in line with it.
So for example, if your client wants to get to a desired weight level, a context in which they might need to change is when they are going out to dinner with friends. They end up wanting to eat all the good foods and worry their friends will think they’re a bore. Thinking and feeling differently in that context will allow them to align their actions with the desired outcome.
Once you have the context, you get them to recall a specific time where they experienced that situation and weren’t able to respond or act in the way they wanted. In the case of the example above, your client may have gone out to dinner with friends in the past week, in which case you can use that to start exploring your client’s inner game. By having a specific example to work with, you are able to stay focused on one thing whilst you gather the information you need. Now, this means you are using your skills of questioning to identify what triggered them in that situation.
Examples of triggers are someone raising their voice at you, stepping on the scale and seeing you gained a pound, seeing no-one commented on your facebook post.For the client who wants to lose weight, the trigger might be seeing all the pictures of food in the menu. Or it could be one of their friends saying: “Ohhh, are you on a diet AGAIN?”
Either of these can be what trigger your client into an unresourceful state.
Triggers, in and of themselves, are neutral. They have no meaning unless they’re given meaning. And that’s where your client can get stuck in a mind-body-emotion state that drives unwanted behavior. Once you have the trigger, you can find out how they gave meaning to that trigger using their thoughts and internal processes of conjuring up images, bringing up reference experiences, making associations with other situations and people where they had something similar happen.
By thoroughly understanding how your client ascribes meaning, and how this then affects their neurology, you can start to identify the core limiting beliefs and distortions in their meaning making. And because you are using just one example, you are using your time to gather relevant information rather than hoping to stumble across it in the last five minutes of the coaching session. It not only saves you a lot of time, you also get greater results because you get to address what needs to be addressed and change what needs to be changed.
Now you might be wondering “Hey, you’re talking about the problem here, what about the outcome and the solution?”Well, for one, the solution is hidden inside of the structure of the problem. Not only that, it’s much easier for your client to identify what they want instead once they are no longer trapped inside their problem way of thinking.So by uncovering the problem in detail, you’ll be able to co-create a desired outcome in just a couple of minutes AND you’ll know exactly what your client needs to change in order to get to that outcome.
This process usually takes about 30 minutes, which leaves you with 30 minutes to create and solidify the change and follow up with an action plan.
During the session you’ll know exactly what information to listen for and what information isn’t relevant, so it’s much easier to know when and why to interrupt. Also, you won’t need to worry about interrupting your client at the end, because you’ll both have a sense of completion at the end of the session.
I teach this exact process in a small group setting during a 3-month intensive.
My unique, deceptively simple system allows you to get results with both 1-on-1 clients as well as in a group setting. Not only does it allow you to be more efficient in your time, you’ll also get far more powerful results, because you get to go much deeper early on in the process and learn how to create a shift on a neurological level no matter the topic or the type of client you are working with.
The process is easily repeatable, so you’ll be able to get more consistent results. My clients are constantly saying that they finally feel that they can properly promise their clients the results they want. This means their integrity stays fully intact and they are even able to dramatically increase their fees.
If you are interested in my program, then simply email me. I’ll ask you a few questions to see if you’re a good fit for my program and, if so, we can get you started right away.