Three Skills Coaches Must Have…
I’m grateful to Mark Forster, founder of the Euro Coach List and the Time Freedom Coach for permission to cross-post this entry. Mark sent it to the Euro Coach List, and I thought it so well summed up my philosophy about coaching and business, I wanted you to see it.
Mark said:
“I think the events of the few weeks since the Eurocoach Conference have only gone to emphasize even more the points which I made in my opening remarks to the conference. I’ll repeat them, slightly updated, as a reminder to those who were there and for the benefit of those who weren’t.
“However good our ability as coaches is, it isn’t that ability that will make the difference between having a successful coaching business or an unsuccessful one. As Chris Barrow once said “The difference between a dentist earning £40,000 a year and one earning £400,000 a year has nothing to do with how well they fill teeth.” I might say that the difference between a coach whose business will survive the current crisis and one whose business will go under doesn’t have much to do with how good a coach they are.
“I’m not saying that our coaching skills aren’t important – just that our business demands some additional skills and it’s on these we need to focus in order to survive as coaches.
“The three skills I identified at the conference were:
- Marketing. My message was if you don’t like marketing, get over it. Your business can’t survive without it. You must have this skill. If you don’t have it already, learn it.
- Public speaking. You’re not really going to go anywhere without the ability to speak in public. Some people would die rather than stand up in public. Well, we’ve all got to die sometime – might as well get it over with!
- Writing. The ability to write is not an optional extra. It’s an essential. You have got to establish credibility as a coach and as an expert in your field. Writing is the best way to do this.
“In addition to these skills you also need to be able to trust your own ability to get things done. If your personal organisation isn’t up to scratch, then you are not going to be able to trust yourself to carry out your ideas.
“This will have the result of either stopping you from launching projects in the first place or preventing you from following through on them properly. The one essential resource we need to survive the recession is our own ability to deal with whatever life throws at us.”
Mark Forster
The Time Freedom Coach
www.markforster.net
And if you don’t already have Mark’s book “How to Make Your Dreams Come True”, can I suggest you buy it? The Goal Achievement Method described in the book has the power to transform your life. If you use it. And do you think it might work for your coaching clients too? Hmmmm…..?