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One of the sobering things I’ve learned in my years of coaching is that I’m not nearly as good as I thought I was at diagnosis: identifying God’s agenda in a person’s life. I discovered how poor I was at diagnosis when I began to really listen to people. Oh, I listened before when someone came […]

Since coaching is first and foremost a relationship, investing in creating a safe, transparent friendship pays off big in the long run. Here’s an easy way to take your relationship deep right from the start (which is vital if you want to do transformational coaching). For your initial coaching appointments, get together for twice as long as

A crucial step for a coach is to clarify expectations in coaching relationships. Back when I was in my twenties I bought an investment property with a close friend. After owning it and living in it together for several years, I got married and wanted to get my money out of the house. The circumstances

The single most important success factor in a coaching relationship is the motivation of the client. So before you begin, stop and do a motivation check-up. Clients who are paying out of their own pockets to be coached usually have a high degree of buy-in. Those who approach you out of the blue and ask for

Intuition is by definition an intuitive process, more art than science. But we can become more cognizant of what kinds of things cause us to sit up and take notice. A first step is to identify and name the common types of phenomena that activate our coaching intuition. The more we make intuition a conscious

To be a great coach, you have to be a great listener. An important way to improve your listening is to identify and eliminate distractions in your environment.Listening intently is hard work. Often simple changes like taking a few minutes before a coaching appointment to get centered, purchasing a headset or turning off your computer

Becoming a great coach requires developing an extraordinary listening ability. I often find myself telling trainees, “Don’t try to figure out the client’s problem—just listen! The client will tell you the answer. You just need to be listening intently enough to pick up on it.” When trainees do focus in on listening instead of trying to

Is God a listener or a teller? Think about it: when you are communicating with God in prayer, what is He doing most of the time? Is He constantly talking, filling every quiet moment with sage advice and cosmic ideas? Or is He mostly listening? God, who knows our every need before we ask and the

Listening is the first of the four key elements of the coaching conversation. Every coaching relationship starts with listening, because it is through the power of listening that we learn to know who our clients are and what is on their hearts. The act of listening creates a great environment for change. In our culture it’s

This month we’re going to focus in on coaching the calling journey— the life stages and transitions we go through as we move toward our ultimate call. Thinking of call as something we move toward in stages–the calling process–opens up all kinds of interesting opportunities for the life coach. Rather than coaching everyone to find and