What kind of coaching do you need?

I hope that if you’re reading this, you’re doing well.  However, the current statistics on mental health challenges are somewhat alarming.  I would guess that, if you’re reading this, you’ve been giving some serious thought and consideration to getting coaching or some other type of help in the last few months. If not, this will likely be a boring article, but if you’ve been on the fence for a while, let’s chat.

What kind of coaching do you need?

I want to congratulate you on even thinking about getting help.  To me, that’s a step in the right direction.  Too many people believe that it’s better to solve challenges on your own and many of us were taught that as we grew up.  However, when you need help with a task that you’ve not been given training, tools, or support with in the past, does it make sense for you to try to figure it out on your own or is it more logical to ask someone else for help? 

The next question I’d like to ask you is: would you ask one of your friends for help if they’ve never been through what you are going through? (If they’ve never done that task?)  Too many coaches in our industry are experts in particular niches and so many of them are convinced that their system will work for anyone just because it worked for someone.  This is why I’m asking you these questions because what type of coaching you need directly applies to what kind of problem you have, the type of solution you’re seeking, and the support you need. 

Life coaching, business coaching, and all the other coaching. 

I think it’s important that if we look at coaching, we look at the area of life you’d like to get help with.  Depending on who you talk to, there are anywhere from 3 to 10 areas of life, I sit in the happy 8 areas of life range – but that said, Use whatever number makes sense for you as we move forward.   There are plenty of people (like me) who are well-rounded enough to be able to help you find balance and progress in any area of life.  However, some coaches have a specific passion and expertise in one area of life more so than another.  So, I wanted to go through each area of life and reflect on what kind of coaching or support would be helpful.  

Should you start with life or business coaching

There is no “should” when it comes to coaching – there is not a right or wrong answer with where you should start. When I explain the different kinds, I’m going to start with life coaching in a minute. Before I do, I also want to address business coaching (This is not career coaching, which I put under life coaching.)  Business Coaching is a specific set of coaching skills that help with the varying areas of business.  If you aren’t a business owner, or struggling with a specific aspect of business/career, you may not need business coaching, although I recommend a regular check-in to reflect on if business coaching makes sense or not. 

Business coaches are people who have successful business entrepreneurship in their background.  They’ve started a business, built their businesses, and have a claim to call themself a business coach.  I want to point out that business coaching is STILL not a one-size-fits-all all – I can say that most people claiming to sell you a “system” to fix all your business problems are selling you a system that worked for them and that chances are, that it won’t work perfectly for you in the same way – even if it does help, it may not be the right solution for long term and sustainable success.

I challenge every business client I work with to start with a better understanding of themselves and what works for them before we dive into business.  It doesn’t matter how successful my system is or how hard you try, if you don’t know yourself well enough to let me know what’s not working there is no way my system is going to be a successful option for you.  That’s why I start with life coaching and self-development FIRST.

Life coaching

Let’s start with Life coaching and the 8 areas of life that I mentioned. I look at people as entire beings (spiritual, physical, and intellectual) that have these different elements of life that impact them as humans.  This is “Life.”  There is a system called the bucket system which talks about 5 areas of life, and Buddhism talks about 7 areas of life, but like I mentioned before, I have settled on 8.  

Here are mine: 

1. Physical Health & Wellness
2. Spiritual Growth
3. Emotional Wellness
4. Financial wellbeing
5. Community Contribution (Career / Business / Giving etc.) 
6. Family
7. Fun & Friends
8. Personal development (which depending on where you’re at could be spiritual growth.)

Each of these areas is an important aspect of a human who feels fulfilled and well-balanced.  I want you to think about the way you’ve lived in the last decade of your life.  How stable has each one of these things been? Have you ever experienced one of them being severely out of whack from one month to the next, or from one year to the next? 

I used to think about balance as a “goal.” We talk about work/life balance like it’s something to “Achieve” but the truth is, I have come to understand it differently in the last two years.  Just like the act of balancing on a balance beam – balance is an active state. It’s an active state that engages multiple muscles.  Life does that too – Balance is about taking care of all of your areas of life and sometimes putting more focus on one muscle or another.  

Business coaching

Like life coaching, there are many areas of business. Think about the business you have now (or if you’re in a corporate organization, think about the different departments that you have, or your career so far.) Watch as I turn the above areas into business areas. 

1. Sales & Marketing (the health and wellness of your business)
2. Innovation & Product Development (spiritual elements of your business – working for a purpose)
3. Human Resources (Emotional Intelligence – hopefully!) 
4. Finance & Accounting (financial wellbeing) 
5. Community involvement & innovation/product development (You are giving back from a business perspective) 
6. Management & Leadership (Family – I know this can be a little controversial but the amount of time we spend with our employees at work, family much more resembles this area than friends.) 
7. Employee & Customer Engagement (Friends – think experiences and fun) 
8. Strategic Alignment – (Personal / Professional Development)

Of course, there are plenty of other niche areas of business that are hidden in each one of these areas, and some things straddle multiple areas of business (just like in life.)  Typically, we see people seek out business coaches when they’re struggling with one of the areas above.   Sales and Marketing, causing growth to fall flat and quotas to be missed… or High Attrition and Low engagement which many people think falls into section 7 but that is also wildly dependent on the person and usually actually falls into sections 6 and 8. 

Other types of coaching

With so many coaches being asked to Niche down – and the market filling up with well-defined coaches who have ideal clients, ideal problems, and ideal solutions – it’s hard to figure out which coaching is right for you.  If you’re looking to write a book, you may find yourself faced with a plethora of book coaches or creative coaches and they may promise a wide variety of things… like a best-seller title, making your book profitable, finishing & launching your book in 30 days, organizing your book and getting your thoughts into a streamlined marketing plan.  Heck many of them will even tell you that they can help with how to balance writing with all the other things we have to do as humans.  The truth is that no matter what the problem is, or what you want assistance with, you can find SOMEONE out there to help you with that. 

The problem with paying for a coaching program right now.

This is a problem I have had myself, and a problem I see a lot in humans in general.  Most humans start a coaching program with someone because they heard that that coach could solve a problem that they think they have.   I can tell you that the industry is littered with “Coaching” Business Coaches”‘ who are there to help those of us with coaching businesses learn how to make 6 figures in a year.  These coaches help people like me to speak directly to you… to what your problem is, and to how we have the answers.  The truth is, most of us got into this field to help people, and to help people who are struggling with the things we struggled with.  This strategy makes a lot of sense to us because it’s easy to think about what we would have said to us, in retrospect. 

Unfortunately, what I’ve both witnessed and experienced is that coaches have their own idea of what people need based on their own experience and bias, and when they move into this method of “sales & marketing” they aren’t thinking about the client, but rather their egos and their desire to help them or worse, their desire to make 6 figures.  They stop asking questions and they start offering solutions that they think will solve any problem. However, this only works for a small amount of their clients and in the end, many of those highly esteemed coaches chalk their success rates up to people who are uninterested, un-motivated, or un-inspired. And they aren’t wrong, because you can keep interest, motivation, and inspiration brewing in your clients if you’re serving them up a “system” and then telling them when it’s not working that it’s because of them. 

So, what kind of coaching do YOU need? 

If you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t have all of the answers to give you a good idea of “what you need.” That’s for good reason.  I have a firm belief that a good leader and a good coach helps their clients find out what works for them and empowers them to find the resources and tools they need to figure that out.   

Ideally, my clients should not need to sign back up with me right away if I’ve done my job.  Most of my clients do come back at some point in the future because LIFE HAPPENS.  I usually see them again after they’ve gone back out into the broken systems that we still cling to as a society.  The broken systems that keep people trapped in victim mentalities with misinformation and deep-rooted conditioning.  Many times, clients come back for one-offs to get a different perspective because they know that I can validate what they are experiencing and also offer them a perspective that leads to empowerment and self-trust. If that all sounds good, you can rest assured that I still don’t know what you need. 

Only you know what you need, but many people don’t know it consciously.  Trying to figure out what you need after years of deep conditioning and just having people tell you what you should and shouldn’t do causes us to doubt our instincts, our emotions, and our needs.  So, if you’re in the space of self-doubt, imposter syndrome, confusion, chaos, or misalignment, (like many of my clients) then you can’t possibly know what you need, and THATS OKAY! 

So, what happens if you don’t know what kind of coaching you need? 

You work with a coach or a coaching program that will help you to find clarity and alignment.  This is not a coach that you need every day, but a coach you need once or twice a month to help you get in the right headspace and uncover the ACTUAL problems. 

This is a sweet spot of mine, short and sweet, just enough to give you clarity about what you might want to work on.   THEN we work together to find the tools, resources, and sometimes even other coaches who can give you a system or a solution that makes sense for you.  We work together to make sure that this person can meet you where you are and is going to give you a system that will work with you whether that is 1:1 or group coaching or another type of system.  They need to be able to have a program that will work for you and with you. 

Working with someone who can help you get clarity, find alignment, and create a plan of action, will also help you identify whether it makes more sense for you to be in a group or a 1:1 program.  A coach like this can also share with you some of the challenges that you might want to address.  So many times, we get into situations where we know there’s a problem, but we don’t know what it is or what we need to do to fix it, and that’s where a coach like this can help. If you are curious and want to dive a little deeper, you can book a call with me: I’m happy to help. 

There are differeing kinds of coaching programs.

After I reflected on what I’ve shared so far, I wanted to share some lingo with you, just in case you’re not entirely sure what the different programs are. 

1 to 1 or 1:1:

This is what it sounds like, this is you and your coach only. 1 (you) and 1 (your coach) which allows you to get customized care and coaching.   If you’ve already got a customized plan from someone like me, you may not need 1:1 coaching.  I recommend 1:1 coaching with a specific type of coach if they are working with you on BIG changes to make BIG impacts.  

An Example

So, say you came to me and said that of all the areas of your life that you are most struggling with, it would be your health. In this scenario, when I ask what you’d like to see in terms of changes, you tell me that you want to lose a significant amount of weight, lower your blood pressure, increase your energy, and run 5 miles by the end of the quarter. You’ve also told me that your current lifestyle is sedentary (sitting at a desk all day for work and watching a lot of TV or reading a lot of books at night with little to no exercise and your diet is a lot of takeout and boxed/partially prepared) food. 

I may have you start a weekly or quarterly check-in with me to look at small changes FIRST.  Let’s go for a short walk each day or a longer walk 3-4 times a week. Or maybe take one take-out meal and turn it into a veggie or fruit-filled meal at home.  Once you’re on the right track and ready to really center into your health and wellness journey.  Maybe you’d like to run a marathon but without losing balance in the other areas of your life. 

My job is to find you a coach who can meet you where you are and take you to the next level (I happen to know a running coach who can do just that – check her out here: https://runroi.com/ ) This would be a way that I utilize 1:1 coaching program.  A 1:1 health coach, maybe someone like a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a dietician, or someone who has general wellness knowledge, can help you address all of these things but with 1:1 support. 

Group Coaching: 

This is a “1 to many” concept.  Where several people work with the same coach at the same time.  This is most helpful for increasing accountability when people need more diversity in finding solutions, and when it’s likely that many people have a similar problem as someone else. 

Using the example above, I may refer you to this type of coach or program if we find that you need accountability, and a larger group of people will help you with this. I may also refer you to this type of program if I find you can find those changes yourself, but having the guidance and the place to ask questions when you’re feeling like you need additional guidance is helpful. I run several group coaching programs myself because I find that people find growth sometimes with others.  The magic that happens when multiple people get into the same room together is quite phenomenal.

Self-Guided Coaching:

This is where the coach provides you with videos, workbooks, tools, and resources.  This allows you to use their information and experience to get the answers that you need.  I rarely advise ONLY this program for my clients, there’s something about having an accountability factor or at the very least a Q&A that is SUPER important in success, but for some people, this is the right solution.  Especially for clients who struggle with social anxiety, or who have incredibly busy schedules and need to do things on their own time.  If you work through one of these programs, I highly advise that you have some sort of support avenue where you can ask questions in case you get stuck, don’t understand, or need tech support because something is missing or isn’t there. 

Hybrid:

Depending on the type of program you’re looking at this could be a hybrid between in-person and virtual coaching, or it could be a hybrid between 1:1, group, or self-guided coaching. 

Considering Locations in what kind of coaching is right for you

In-Person Coaching: This is especially helpful if you feel like you work best with a coach 1:1 and need that face-to-face contact but may need a physical presence – so, for health, this is potentially a really good option depending on the situation.  It may also be a good solution if you’re looking for business coaching and having someone there and in person to see your challenges and struggles would be helpful. 

Remote or Virtual: This is almost the new standard.  It’s a great solution for both coaches and clients so they can call or jump on a Zoom from wherever they are no matter what’s going on.  This also may be the right solution if the type of expertise you’re looking for is not something that’s common or if you can’t find someone near you who has availability. 

Honestly, I have found that the most effective for me is a combination of all of these.   That’s my own experience, and I find that most people are the same but not everyone.  This is why it’s important that you have a coach that meets you where you are… because in my experience when your coach can meet you where you are, you’ll be successful.  

I can’t tell you from a blog post what kind of coaching is for you.

Like I’ve said, I meet my clients where they are.  There is no way for me to tell you from this blog post which type of coaching you need without having a really good conversation with you. (And sometimes more than one.) Most of the time I take my clients through a 4–6-week alignment program and then from there we figure out the next steps.   

Even my team meets clients where they are.  I have plenty of specialists on the Perspective Shifters hub and some have niches with particular sets of customers that they work with… but each of them believes that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all.  They meet their clients where they are.  Some of their recommendations may be consistent across clients, but each of them either works directly with the client to help them find the solutions that will work for them, or they have a way to allow the client to do that. 

Why the Perspective Shifters Hub for any kind of coaching?

I wanted a community of clients and specialists who would be able to provide support for each other. I knew that many people who seek coaching, aren’t really sure what they need or how they need it.  Essentially, I designed the hub for my prospective clients who I knew would want to drill into their specific coaching needs eventually.  I also wanted a place to put all of the resources that I’d created and gathered this far. 

This hub is a hybrid of courses, chat support, live virtual support, and the opportunity for 1:1 support (which is an increase in membership costs.) I knew that not everyone who needed help like this could afford it. (I know when I started down this path, I couldn’t afford what coaches were asking.) 

Knowing you need help and knowing you can’t afford it can create a pivotal point in your development.  Not to mention the mental health challenges of feeling trapped and stuck in situations you don’t want to be in and don’t know how to escape.  I didn’t want anyone to have to do this.   This hub is the price of a couple of streaming services each month.  It’s a dollar a day if you look at the annual plan… So, if you grab a soda from a vending machine or pay for two streaming services right now and you REALLY want change, this hub is a place for you to get the help you need. 

For more info – check out this page. 

Above all else

Before I advise anyone on coaching, I ask some really hard questions about your current support system.   If you’re in a toxic environment, with people who destroy your sense of self or tear you down, it won’t matter how much coaching we do.  The rates of success in coaching with an unsupportive family or work network are hard to determine because as people grow and want to be successful some significant challenges and changes have to happen so that they can move forward.  

From a mental health perspective – the way you view things is 90% of what makes a successful person.  Experts have found that having emotional intelligence makes it far more likely for you to be considered for leadership positions than even experience or knowledge of the job itself.  Your brain & emotional health is, ABOVE ALL ELSE, the most important factor here.  So, when I created the hub, I also aimed to create a support system for people who needed long-term support or who needed a quick perspective shift.  Whether it’s business coaching or personal coaching, we’re here for you – no matter where you are.