Pat's Cheap Coaching School

Essential Coaching Elements: What They Are

I recognize the following essential components/levels/elements in coaching:

Soul/spiritual/emotional: Being a coach, doing the coaching thing, has to bring you joy and pleasure. It has to feed your soul to be a coach. Don't go there if it's not there.

Not only does it have to be there in the beginning, in the form of delight in learning about coaching, in interacting with clients or in some way that fits you in the coaching world, but you also have to maintain it, feed it, build it in, and renew your spirit so that joy and satisfaction doesn't diminish.

Freely adapt and innovate, retool, tweak and transform your coaching activities, areas of specialization or investigation, so it fits you.  You may need to evolve coaching and/or your part in it or use of it for coaching to be continually a satisfying area to be in (not everybody needs to, but you may).

Structure/framework--the business part, and the routines. Neglect these at your peril. Establish your business framework and routines first. Tweak and improve them as you go along. Evaluate them at regular intervals. Put it on your calendar.

Interpersonal--clients and associates (other coaches, friends, fellow students, professional contacts). You have to enjoy being around the people in your field. Not all of them, because there are going to be irritating ones, incompetent ones, and just plain stinkers.

But, find compatriots you enjoy and interact with them. Partner, and if that partner, or those partners don't quite work, seek others and gently distance from the ones who aren't as satisfying. Do not take, or keep when you discover they aren't satisfying, clients who don't give you joy. If you feel drained after a call, it's a good indication the match isn't right.

Creation--Innovation, ideas, products, new ways of approaching coaching, client needs and your needs, evolution, importing from another field, educating yourself.
Coaching is a living art, it flows and evolves. Keep the good stuff you discover, and make it your own. But, keep the pipeline flowing, add to, innovate with, discover and tweak.

Satisfaction: Coaching can be very satisfying and energizing. And it can also be very dissatisfying and discouraging. There is nothing quite like helping a client make a wonderful life change, or to hear someone say with passion, "You changed my life!" But, from those highs, there are also the disappointments, disrespectful clients, ungrateful clients, liars and cheats.

Make sure you add, purposefully, five satisfiers for yourself, from some source, for every dissatisfying experience. You'll need that to keep your satisfaction balance in the black column.

What else is there? Want to share your experiences, tips, suggestions and opinions?  If so, please comment below.

Prof Pat

Personal, Desktop Based Coaching system for realtors

"RISMEDIA, Oct. 31, 2005—The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® is pleased to introduce The Pacific Institute (TPI) as its newest partner in the REALTOR Benefits(sm) Program. The international corporation specializes in personal and organizational performance improvement and professional growth.

A major initiative of 2006 NAR President Tom Stevens, TPI offers NAR members and Association staff a 10% discount on their Investment in Excellence-Today® (IIE-Today) a personal, desktop based coaching system, and a 10% discount on all customized corporate performance and facilitation services.

An acknowledged leader in the field of performance enhancement, The Pacific Institute’s offerings address the very foundation of all human action—human thought. The sessions on the IIE-Today coaching system can immediately and significantly improve performance in one’s personal, professional, and organizational life. This product is designed to create profoundly effective and lasting change. Rooted in a deep understanding of human psychology and real-life decision-making processes, IIE - Today helps participants dramatically boost personal efficacy, motivation, and visualization skills in a way that will forever alter how they look at professional and personal situations." Read the rest of it here.

All you techie students, take heed, and get your monitors shining, creating your own desktop coaching program. Nicheiness opportunity.

Prof Pat

Handy, Dandy Froms

Just for fun, and to make me feel better after my newsletter got accused of being SPAM, (good grief!) I created some forms for my favorite students to use. That's you, of course.

They are in PDF file format. So, you'll need a PDF reader to open them (free download from Adobe, if you don't have one).

Several are two page forms, one lined, one plain.

Click on what you want below. Their file names are pretty clear, and if not, you'll have a nice surprise, I hope.

Pat
Chancellor, Pat's Cheap Coaching School

Download todoornot.pdf

Download cheaplittletodo.pdf

Download calendar_reminders.pdf

Download cheapcontacts.pdf

Download extreme_self_care.pdf

Download improvements.pdf

Download naughty_student_assignments.pdf

Download nice_student_assignments.pdf

Download passwordsids.pdf

Download session_notes.pdf

Download steplightly.pdf

Download who_can_i_be_nice_to.pdf

Writing and Publishing Links

Copyright definitions and info site at http://www.whatiscopyright.org

Creative Commons is a non profit that offers a flexible copyright for creative work. You can add their graphics to your web site or blog to indicate the level of use permitted for your work. http://creativecommons.org

Publishing email discussion list (I own it) PUBLISH-L
http://www.publish-l.com

Self-Publishing email discussion list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Self-Publishing/

Smart Enough To Link To Ye Olde School

The sites below are owned by people smart enough to know a good thing when they see one, and who have excellent taste in where they link to--namely here. I know you're going to want to click on the site locations and visit them all, frequently, and maybe even link to them too.

--Deborah Brown-Volkman, President of SurpassYourDreams.com, offers start-up, marketing, and practice building for those who want to make coaching their next career.  http://www.surpassyourdreams.com/coaches.html

--Coaching Insider Magazine has been very nice to your dear chancellor, mentioning her and this site more than once. Be sure and subscribe to this free online magazine at http://www.coachinginsider.com

Miscellaneous Link Goodies

The following links were shared by Deborah Brown-Volkman:

--The Wi-Fi-FreeSpot Directory is a listing of Wi-Fi enabled locations that offer Free Wireless High Speed Internet Access.

--Copyscape is a new no-cost Web-based service powered by sophisticated Web search technology that enables you to find copies of your content on the Web quickly and easily. Simply type in the URL of the page of your original content and the Copyscape engine goes to work and finds matching content in seconds. If you find pages that are plagiarizing your work, there are also helpful articles and hotlinks to legal sites to guide you in what to do.

--A Free Internet Course On How To Start A Business.

--A Small Business Administration guide to legally structuring your coaching practice.

--Web-site that clean out the ">" and other formatting characters out of your emails: http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm

List of 400 literary agents at http://www.authorsteam.com/agents/

Become a better presenter: http://www.PresentersUniversity.com

Yahoo Group For Listing Your Teleclass

Stephnie Brail has a Yahoo Group for posting teleclass announcements at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teleclass

Find What's Missing On Coachville's Site And Elsewhwere

Y'know how it feels when an old neighborhood changes, and you can't find the places you used to love and enjoy and use? Well, http://www.coachville.com has made a lot of changes since its founder Thomas Leonard died, and some folks are wandering around the pages asking "Wha' happen!!?" and other expletives that I shall not reproduce here.

Well, them that owns it gets to change it. But there may be some hope for retrieval of some of what has gone missing, and it's the Way Back Machine. I kid you not, there is such a thing. It's an internet archival site at http://www.waybackmachine.org where one can search for web pages of the past. So, you can look for missing material, and some if will actually appear. Some won't, and I have no idea why. But, go there and try.

School Supplies

All students need school supplies, and we are here to help. Peruse our new offerings at Pat's Cheap Coaching School Emporium. More goodies will be arriving soon!

Click on the banner below to get a discount.

Case Study: No Money, Liabilities, No Resources

Stephanie Brail  http://www.feelgoodgirl.com posed the following question on my email discussion list COACHTALK-L (posted here with permission).

"So how do you manage coaching someone out of an environmental hole? The person has tremendous liabilities in some form or another. Perhaps debts or a health issue or a massive depletion in energy and resources?

"What's the answer for those folks? Of course, this begs the question whether they are even able to afford a coach in the first place..."

Add your suggestions, comments, and advice for coaching a client with such problems, or your own experience coaching them below, using the comments feature.

The Rules

1. The owner of this site is solely responsible for what may be posted here. She will take down any material she feels inappropriate for any reason, including just because she wants to. But, this does not mean she takes responsibility for anyone else's material posted here.

2. No naughty language.

3. No unkind language.

4. No blatant self promotion. (No sneaky marketing either.)

5. Be brief whenever reasonably possible.

More rules to follow.

Coaching Tips

Add your tips, whatever the subject, to this post by clicking on "comment" below (not necessarialy commenting on this post or any other, but you can if you want to).

Give your tip a name or title, if you like, as in the sample below, and add your name, email address and web site URL (nothing more, please):

Sample Tip: TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST.

Coaches can easily get so caught up in helping their clients, learning more, even in "being successful" that they forget to take care of their own personal needs and wants. Remember to always give out of a full cup, with what runs over the side.

Disclaimer

The material on this site is here for your use, but with no indication or assumption as to how useful or effective it may be for you. That means, if it doesn't work for you, don't blame us. If it doesn't sound right to you, don't use it. If you want to use it, try it a tiny bit, and evaluate its usefulness before proceeding.

This is a public forum, thus the material here is owned by those posting it, including all copyright rights. You may make a copy for yourself for your own personal use. But, if you want to incorporate any of it into your own derivative works, you've got to get permission from the originating owner of that particular material.

The owner of this site takes no responsibility for content posted here as to its effectiveness, safety, or originality.

A Creative Commons thingy will appear soon, to make it all more smooth and crunchy.

Pat's Coaching School

I own and manage the email discussion list COACHTALK-L. On that list we were discussing the quality of coaching, including how to determine if someone is a coach one would want to refer clients to. I'd been thinking about putting up a blog/web site like this one for awhile, sort of a fun and useful thing to do as a coach and for coaches. At some point the two pieces seemed to support each other--the discussion and my idea for a quirky blog on coaching. So, here it is.

This is a place to add material to, if you're inclined, to take info from, adhering to the rules of the site, including the Creative Commons restrictions on how you can use material posted here. Be sure and read the disclaimer (look for it under Categories in the sidebar).

There are so many coaching schools, hyped to the sky--some good, some mediocre, some not so good. I figure, why not have one that promises nothing, doesn't promote itself, and is free. Why not. Let's do it. Think of this blog/site as a place to share those bits and pieces about coaching that don't fit anywhere else. And, as a showcase for your coaching talents as well.

Pat Gundry
Chancellor