How can I help someone build a multi-million dollar business if I’ve never done it?
How can I help someone with their law firm if I’m not a lawyer?
How can I help someone have a dope relationship if I’m still single?
I hear this kind of thing a lot from coaches. I get it. I mean I wouldn’t want to learn how to cook from someone who couldn’t make toast. I wouldn’t want to learn guitar from someone who can’t play basic chords.
But coaching isn’t like cooking or guitar.
To be a good cook you need to do cooking. Because you have to learn the nuances of making food in order to teach it to someone else.
With coaching you’re not teaching someone a skill. You’re using a totally different set of skills to help them improve their skills.
Skills like:
– Observation
– Curiosity
– Contextualization
– Empathy
– Analysis
Just to name a few.
But even more important than those skills… you’re being someone for your client.
You’re being a stand for possibility. Which just means you choose to stand in a place where you can see that so much more is possible than your client realizes.
In the movie, a Star is Born the famous singer sees a young singer with talent performing somewhere and takes an interest in them. The famous singer is standing in possibility. They see that so much more is possible for this young singer then they even realize. More so, they have the ability to draw it out of them.
THE MOST VALUABLE THING YOU DO AS A COACH IS THIS!!!
And you don’t need to be a famous singer to do it.
What you need is an intimate understanding of possibility. What you need is an experience of someone standing for your possibility.
What you need is practice in the art of being with someone, finding out what they want, figuring out what’s in the way, and supporting them to take on the steps and beliefs. It’s a whole different set of skills than building a million dollar business or running a law firm.
And it’s why I coached a CFO at Nokia.
A CEO of a digital marketing agency in Peru.
A writer with work in the NYTimes
without ever doing ANY of these things.
The skill they needed to do their job was irrelevant to the skills I needed.
I never let a client’s desire for something I can’t do, stand in the way of what I see as possible for them.
If you’re wondering how you can help these people.
PRACTICE HELPING PEOPLE.
The deeply felt confidence you get when you realize you can choose to stand for anybody’s life, and possibility is irreplaceable.
Love,
Toku
PS The Spring Dojo is already over half full. If you want one of the five remaining slots. Please let us know. It’s the ONLY dojo we’re running in 2021 right now.
