Countless coaches, therapists and other transformation professionals are passionate about making a difference in the lives of others. But far fewer understand what’s involved in getting clients, having a transformational impact and growing a thriving practice.
One key difference nearly everyone overlooks is this:
You need to get the difference between ‘Understanding’ and ‘Tactics’
Stop for a moment and think of the coaches, speakers and transformation professionals you know who are really thriving. When you look at the people who are really smashing it, you see their tactics, because those pieces are visible. You see them speaking on stages, or launching bestselling books, or doing Facebook Live broadcasts or growing a massive following. Their tactics are visible, but the understanding that those tactics are running on; that’s invisible.
Here’s a way of thinking about it. You probably use a variety of apps on your smartphone. Those apps are visible – you can see them. But the operating system they’re running on is invisible. Yet without the (invisible) operating system, none of the (visible) apps will work.
Your embodied understanding of what it takes to be a thriving coach is like the operating system that all your tactics can run on. I speak to lots of coaches who are running in circles trying to use tactics. They’re struggling to:
– Etc.
But 99% of the time they’re doing the equivalent of trying to run the latest Facebook App on an old Nokia phone from the 1990s – they’re trying to use tactics without understanding the nature of being a thriving coach.
And the fact is, tactics are ten-a-penny. The chances are, you already have notebooks full of them, from courses you’ve attended or books you’ve read or online master-classes you’ve listened to. If tactics were the answer, you’d already have it.
There’s a reason this distinction is possibly the most important one of all when it comes to thriving as a coach or therapist. Technology is changing faster than ever before. The tactics that work today, in 2017, will be out of date a year from now, and new tactics will be discovered. But your embodied understanding of the nature of being a thriving coach is relevant today, and twenty years from today. And the good news is, just seeing the distinction between tactics and understanding is already deepening your understanding.
Question / Thought experiment/ etc?: What are some of your more impactful insights and realisations that are already increasing your understanding of what it means to be a thriving coach?
