Posted by Dave Buck on January 30, 2009 under Business Academy | 
This is another essential foundational element to your thriving business: Knowing exactly what you offer; What it is called, how to describe it in a few sentences, the value to the receiver and the investment in time and/or money.
Remember!!!! It is all about certainty. Like running is to soccer or basketball, certainty is to business. You can’t play soccer if you don’t run – even the goalies run. You can’t play business if you don’t cultivate certainty.
Every project we have undertaken so far has that one single purpose in mind.
Then we spoke briefly about pricing your coaching services. The key at this point is to have one solid coaching service offering. You have to know the price AND exactly what they get for the money in terms
Posted by Dave Buck on under | DAVE BUCK |
The modern coach must be aware of the core pursuits – most often unspoken – of anyone playing a BIG game in life. And you must be highly aware of the key dynamic of each pursuit. With this understanding you can speak powerfully to the heart and soul of what people truly desire. All the while guiding them along in the day-to-day activities, opportunities and setbacks of their games / objectives.
***
Excerpted from You Can Coach!
The Ultimate Guide to Professional Coaching
by Coaching Maven Dave Buck and
Coaching Founder Thomas Leonard
Chapter 1 – The Coaching Manifesto
(details about the living, learning eBook are here)
***
1) The Diagram
The Venn diagram has three components:
A) The 3 Pursuits (eg. Human Greatness)
B) The Key Dynamic for each pursuit (eg. support / challenge)
C) The 3 by products of these pursuits (eg. Mastery)
2) Human Greatness – Support / Challenge
This is the primary pursuit of coaching and where all coaching begins: with the desire to do something – or as I would say: “Play your game better, and win on your own terms”.
Most people who hire a Coach begin with an achievement in mind. This is a great place to start AND greatness is more than achievement, it also includes mastery.
Another way of describing this is the distinction between what your player is doing and who your player is becoming. Greatness requires both doing and becoming.
Human greatness occurs when the player reaches a level in the game where they go beyond personal achievement and lift the whole game and everyone who plays it. Often you hear about a great player on a team who makes everyone around them better – even the other team! This is possible through coaching.
The essential dynamic is support and challenge. Human greatness is only arises in the face of challenges. AND challenges are only overcome with lots of support. There is a delicate balance between support and challenge. As a Coach you must read your player and the situation on a moment to moment basis and know when to support and when to challenge. You will explore this dynamic throughout this program.
The biggest job of a Coach is to keep your player just outside of their comfort zone where they are facing challenges and overcoming them with your support and the support of others.
As I mentioned earlier, the Coach must constantly monitor the players situation to know when to support and when to challenge and this can change from one to the other in the middle of a session.
Human greatness is such a beautiful and moving thing to behold. Life is sweet. And as more people have a Coach in their life inspiring them in the pursuit of greatness – it will be even sweeter.
We call our method for this Coaching pursuit the Play Better Coaching Method TM which you will learn more about later in this chapter.
3) Flow State – Perturb / Align Energy
The state of flow is the Holy Grail of playing and Coaching; the place of fluidity and grace where the desired results occur as the natural byproduct of full self- expression. You are resourceful, resilient and responding to the moment. Ahhhh. In any challenging and worthwhile game these moments happen once in a while and they are made precious by lots of other moments of where the flow is blocked and there is the experience of struggle.
A simple formula: Skill X Flow = Results
An essential purpose of Coaching is to help your player experience more flow more often. We do this by providing them with the awareness to notice when they are out of the flow and tools to get them back into it.
The thing that is flowing is energy in the form of thoughts, feelings and actions. Flow happens when your thoughts, feelings and actions are aligned on a clear intention and there are no blocks or leaks.
The essential dynamic is the balance between perturbing and aligning energy.
As a Coach sometimes you challenge your player to think bigger or expand into new territories which perturbs the energy and creates chaos. It takes them out of the flow but you do it on purpose to create growth. Then you are focused on creating alignment of energy and ease in the new or bigger game.
The experience of flow is such a delight that all of the moments when it is NOT flowing pale in comparison. We cherish those moments and then we keep playing so that we can experience it again and again.
We call our method for this pursuit the Superconductivity Coaching Method TM; you will learn more about that later in this chapter.
4) Personal Evolution – Adapting / Reflecting with Environments
Personal evolution is the “Big Picture” pursuit of the coaching industry. Our ultimate purpose as a community is to forward humanity one person at a time. It is a extremely compelling and passion sparking notion. This is what Thomas was playing for every day in everything he created for the Coaching community.
This pursuit speaks to the interconnectedness of all things. The inner environment is made up of your values, beliefs, emotions, character and ideas. The outer environment is made up of people, places and things.
Both the inner and outer environments occur in patterns and can be designed using pattern language. A theory originally developed by Architect / Philosopher Christopher Alexander.
The key dynamic is the interplay between our reflecting and adapting to our environments. We know that humans are both adapting to the world around them AND creating the world around them as a reflection of who they are.
As a Coach we help our players find their place in the world. Then we help them design the world so that the environment pulls them toward the vision of who they wish to become.
Other ways of describing this pursuit are conscious evolution and transformation.
One of our coaching mantras is: the Environment ALWAYS wins
(so its best to have it on your team!) As a Coach you help your player become highly aware of the obvious truth: What we can do is a function of our environments AND who we become is a function of our environments. With this truth as a backdrop they begin to notice that everything around them matters. Everything within them matters.
In the pursuit of Personal Evolution there are times when it is wise to focus on the environments that you are in and upgrade them to be a better reflection of who you want to become. At other times it is wise to move yourself into a totally new environment and adapt to. Sometimes it is best to persist in an environment and learn from it because it is a reflection of you. Other times, you just have to get out of there.
As a Coach you see the dynamic balance between reflecting and adapting and guide your player to make wise choices based on the interconnectedness of all things and experiences.
This brings a deep feeling of peace that can quickly restore our energy for playing the games of our lives.
We call our method for this pursuit the Pattern Language Coaching Method and we make great use of Thomas’ Nine Environments of YOU model which you will learn more about later in the book.
5) Mastery
When you combine the pursuit of human greatness with the pursuit of the flow state you get the experience of Mastery. A Coach is always aware of helping the player become more masterful with the skills and strategies of the game
6) Awareness
When you combine the pursuit of the flow state through energy awareness with the pursuit of personal evolution through environmental awareness what you get is expanded awareness. The more you are aware of, the better you will play in any game.
7) Sustainability
When you combine the pursuit of human greatness with the pursuit of personal evolution you get sustainability; where the player stays connected to the world and continues to play at a high level.
Please share your thoughts about this article on CoachBlog.
The blog version of the article is here
for more information about
You Can Coach!
The Ultimate Guide to Professional Coaching
click here
Posted by Dave Buck on January 22, 2009 under Business Academy |
Business Academy Session #3
We started with a round up of scores from the game last week. Many of the teams did really well. Team 3 had the top score with 134 out of a possible 140. (Vicki, Brad, Doug and Julica) Awesome.
As with every game we play, the only way to lose is to NOT PLAY at all.
The game last week was to interview 5 people who are playing the game you Coach. The first challenge is to find them. Then get them to say YES to the interview – great practice in playing for Yeses.
The purpose of the interview is to find out what joys they experience and challenges they face in the game – this will help you craft the way you talk aobut what you do.
The next part of the game was to complete Getting to Yes Playbook part 2 - articulate your coaching method. This is a BIG project that happens to be life altering for a Coach. Coaching can seem vague to many people, this project makes it REALLY tangible REALLY fast. It goes beyond the benefits of Coaching and into exactly HOW you do what you do.
When you can explain that in 5 minutes or less, your certainty goes way up. Remember… Getting to YES! is the object of the game, building your level of certainty is the number one thing you do to play better. It is like going to the gym for an athlete – you just have to do it because it works.
Then of course the final part of the game is making offers, counting yeses and fulfilling what you offer. This is what the game is all about. It is sooo exciting to me to see so many high scores from the teams – this means you are out there making offers and getting some yeses. You may not know it yet, but you are building a skill that will serve you well in every business or leadership game you play for the rest of your life. It’s huge. Keep playing. You will get better and better.
FEEDBACK requested.
1) What did you learn from doing your interviews? About the game? The people who play it? about yourself? How was the excercise valuable for you?
2) What did you learn by defining your coaching method? Was the exercise easy? challenging? How was it valuable for you?
3) What are you learning about making offers? Every week 5 more offers. Is it getting easier? harder? Is it stretching you?
Bonus question…
4) Give me a little status report on talking to people about how you do what you do as a Coach! How is it going?
To reply you can simply comment to this post. Or send me an email if you want to keep your feedback private.
Keep playing!
Coach Dave
Posted by Dave Buck on January 12, 2009 under Business Academy |
The new CoachVille Business Academy is only in it’s second week, and already there are amazing stories to be told. And it is also great to hear about challenges so that we can support each other.
Please post your thoughts about session #2. Here are 9 questions I would love for you to answer…
(this will also provide a little recap of what we talked about)
IMPORTANT!
I must get an email or CoachBlog post from you with your specific winnable game for this season:
How many paying clients will you have by March 23 2009?
What will your Coaching revenue be in April 2009? (You will build up to it this season)
Please share about the following:
1) Your winnable game (as stated above)
2) How did you feel about putting a clear specific objective forward for your team (and me?)
3) Tell me why you think this is a winnable game for you over the next 11 weeks (in a few bullet items)
4) How do your currently describe your “A Game” as a Coach? (a sentence or two)
5) How have you earned the right to Coach this game (in a few bullet points; just the highlights)
6) How do you feel about answering that question?
7) Tell me how you feel about the 5 interview assignment; This is a powerful AND challenging assignment. Keep me posted on your progress – especially if an interview reveals something surprising.
What did you enjoy most about session #2
9) What challenged you the most during session #2
Thanks for your time with these answers!
Check back very soon!
