Want to know how to be a better coach? Check this out—New coaching book
Hey, I’m delighted to offer you a kindle copy of my new book, which is FREE today and tomorrow (Sept 26, 27, 2021, otherwise only $2.99)! It’s called Life Coaches! Find Your Zen & Step Up Your Game, the second book in my series of short, easy to digest guidebooks called Shortcuts to Success.
But it’s not just for coaches. It’s for mentors, therapists, counsellors, trainers—anyone in fact who works one-to-one with people in a professional capacity with the aim to help or guide in some way.
Let me tell you a story.
Years ago, when I had about a decade of life-coaching experience under my belt, I took a course in advanced coaching to step up my game.
I was enjoying this course up in Northern California, among the Redwoods in Sonoma County. I’ve always figured that if you’re going to spend a couple of weeks training somewhere, it may as well be a nice somewhere, so there I was.
It was a rigorous course and a big part of the training was running mock coaching sessions with various partners, that is, other participants on the course.
On this particular day I had a very experienced coach I was partnering with. He was a bit daunting for me; I had a lot of respect for him and was, I confess, a little anxious to impress him.
We went through our session, taking turns coaching each other and the idea was to give helpful feedback.
His sage advice
At the end of my turn as coach, he had four words of feedback for me: “You’re working too hard.”
Ack. How embarrassing. Internally I bristled, while externally I thanked him for his comments. But in my head I was busy making excuses for myself. Of course I came across as working too hard, trying to impress. It was an unnatural situation and I knew I was being critiqued, yap, yap, yap.
He then went on. “Let the client do the work, not you. That’s not your job. Just let go and relax. You have a strong personality; don’t let it intrude on your coaching.
You just need to find your Zen place.”
My Zen place…
Those words made me reel with a confusion of emotions, but I knew what he meant.
I was familiar with Zen. I had been fascinated with it as a college student, had read all of Alan Watts’s books, had devoured Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and generally joined in the zeitgeist of all things Zen of that era. Zen was trendy in my day.
Zen is best known for enabling a state of relaxation, zero fear, being totally present and undistracted.
‘Unfazed’ as Alan Watts described it.
Unfazed. What a great word—the essence of cool, undaunted, unperturbed, undismayed by circumstances. Non-reactive. In control of your emotions and able to handle criticism. Bullet proof.
The perfect place for a coach—and anybody for that matter.
My partner was urging me to find that state of calm, the Zen state of coaching, where everything flows and so much is happening.
And it appears you are doing nothing.
(Excerpt from Life Coaches! Find Your Zen & Step Up Your Game)
This book is the tale of my subsequent odyssey to become a better coach and trainer.
It’s fun, and short—you can read it in less than 2 hours—and reveals 5 insider secrets I discovered about coaching that helped me step up my game. I believe you will find these secrets very practical in many contexts, not just coaching.
- Come along with me as I set out to find my Zen
- Enjoy the chapter on A Coachable Cat
- Discover what they don’t teach you in coaching college
- Learn how to step up your game no matter what line of work you are in.
I would love to hear from you how you liked it and where you found it useful in your life and work. Email me here with any feedback.
And I would be so happy if you wanted to leave a nice review on Amazon. Reviews are the lifeblood of authors and help us so much. As this is a new book, I need a certain number of reviews to be able to advertise it. So your review really, really counts!