Leadership Skills Pro Coaches Use To Provide More Value (And Charge More, Too!)

April 11th, 2017 | no comments

If you’ve been following along as I navigate motherhood, you may already know it’s been quite a struggle to find a Violet Care Partner (this feels like her true title, rather than “nanny”).

I reviewed over 50 applications, interviewed 11 women in person and had numerous trial days looking for the right woman to support me for 21 hours a week watching Violet, while I work and take self-care time.

And (drum roll please)…

I found her. She’s amazing! She starts this week. I really appreciate all your love notes, encouragement and tips along the way. In the process I learned to take my time, perfect my interview process, trust my intuition and surrender the need for controlling things. These are not small things. These are life changing lessons!

My entire focus was devoted to finding the right woman, and because I let other things take a back seat, I now feel the energy and security of knowing Violet is incredibly loved and cared for. This gives me the freedom and ability to take better care of myself and finally dig deep into the heart, planning a new retreat for the women I serve.

In the meantime, have you been following along with my FREE training series all about coaching session skills?

I’ve been walking you through some of the key skills you’ll need to use inside your life coaching sessions if you’re determined to set yourself apart and become a truly life-changing coach.

Let’s recap the training series:

Part 1: The 2 questions you need to correctly diagnose your clients.
Part 2: How to become an expert listener.
Part 3: The clear communication techniques to use in every coaching session.

And now it’s time for Part 4: Leadership skills the pro coaches use to provide more value (and charge more money).

As a life coach, leadership skills are all about getting your client to willingly do what she wouldn’t normally do if you hadn’t coached her through it. Those big-time coaches you love and admire are the ones who really “get” this concept.

Your client is paying to get results that she wouldn’t get without you, so if you want those kind of results, your client needs to do something she wouldn’t normally wouldn’t be willing to do!

Let’s review the 5 main types of leadership – because it can take many different forms:

Facilitative leadership

The ability to make a final decision. It’s less directive in nature. Instead, you’re facilitating your client in doing whatever she needs to do to move forward. “Facilitating” means supporting your client and creating a space for her to thrive. She’s doing all the work and you’re helping her go in one direction or another. One way to do this is to make firm decisions yourself in the way you schedule your sessions and commit to your contracts. Don’t let your client decide when your sessions are. You decide by looking at the life experience you want to have, the times of day and the frequency each day that empowers you to bring your best coaching ability. Then you open up those limited amount of spots to your client. And if she is late, or doesn’t show, stick to your contract. Teach your client to have integrity by making decisions in your business and sticking to it.

Debate leadership

Convincing your client to agree with you or disagree with you. Both are powerful tactics. This is a very important style of leadership to master for those times you’re in the face of disagreement, which will happen from time to time in the coaching relationship. After all, if you agree with everything your client says, then what good are you? You’ve assumed the role of a cheerleader, not a coach.

Each time there’s a disagreement, your client has a chance to learn something new, so the leadership isn’t about you being “right” or correcting your client. It’s about debating when you need to, to ultimately give your client what she really wants and needs.

This skill is important when talking about your client’s ability to invest in coaching as well. You don’t want to just settle for the belief that your prospects can not afford coaching. How can you challenge them to look at the potential instead? This will make all the difference in taking prospects from free to committed and transformed.

Managerial leadership

This style of leadership is all about holding your client accountable for her commitments and helping her maintain the standard she’s set for herself. This is important for any client who needs to take action or maintain any change consistently for more than a week or two. She’ll need to know that you as her manager expect her to continue to take action each time you meet.

Emotional leadership

Change your client’s feelings, and you’ll have greater access to almost any other leadership skill. Because it’s the ultimate leadership skill, there are a few techniques that fall under emotional leadership:

Humor. The moment your client laughs about it all is the moment her emotions begin to change.
Reframing. Reframing things for your clients into a more empowering perspective, and you’re able to shift her emotions as well.
Changing triads. Changing your client’s physiology, language, focus, and beliefs in a way that shift how she feels.

The ability to access the 4 human needs.

Love. If you help your client find a way to experience love outside the coaching session, you’ve successfully provided emotional change. An even deeper level of emotional leadership would be to help her maintain that feeling as an ongoing emotional resource.
Connection. If you give your client a sense of comfort or control both inside and outside of your coaching sessions, you’ve provided emotional leadership.
Variety. When you help your client change up the routines in her life, it’s powerful.
Significance. If you make your client feel important to you or in any area of her life, you’ll have led her in a very important emotional area.

Guru leadership

Put on a pedestal, leaders who have assumed the position of guru in our industry have an unmistakable level of authority. There are two main types of guru leadership:

Thought leadership. Leading with your thoughts! Show or tell your client how to think, which thoughts are best, or even correct their way of thinking. You can practice life-changing guru leadership when you lead by example, too. Share how you think and allow her to follow your lead! (This is one of the advanced techniques we perfect in Mentor Masterclass.)
Authoritative leadership. It’s like being the drill sergeant. You’ll lead your client as she jumps through hoops for you. Or you might have her doing things that seemed so ridiculous at first, but you charge her with the task of doing these things anyway. If your client can see the value in undertaking these helpful things, she’s allowed you into the guru posture with her.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this 4-part coaching session skills training, and learned some new techniques along the way! If you feel led to explore any of these skills more deeply, you should feel into the idea of joining the Mentor Masterclass Sisterhood and Life Coach Training while we have available spots. You can click here to learn more and take a baby step in filling out an application.

All my love,

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