Welcome to the Masterful Coach Podcast with Molly Claire, where coaches learn Skill Mastery, Business Mastery, and Life Mastery at a whole new level. If you're ready to create a meaningful coaching business that makes a difference, you're in the right place. And now your host, Master coach instructor, Molly Claire. Hey coaches, welcome to this week's episode. We are talking a little bit about how to make your coaching sessions even more powerful. I'm going to be talking with you today about four principles that you can bring in, you can think about these before your sessions, you can think about these when you're preparing for sessions. I think that when you can use these four simple things to really guide you in the coaching process, you're going to find that you will become a more intuitive coach. You will be a coach who is more connected to your clients, and able to really serve them at a more powerful and impactful level. I'm really excited to touch on each of these with you. Before I do, thank you so much to all those of you who came to our MasterClass in the Coaching Collective last week. Every month in the Collective, we have our free MasterClass where Aimee or I teach on either a coaching skill improvement, sometimes it's business, sometimes it's life. Last week, we were talking all about how to coach difficult clients. I am certainly a difficult client much of the time. The good news is that that's okay. Our clients get to be how they are and actually, the challenges that we face with them are the opportunities that we have to really help them at the highest level. Anyway, it was so much fun to be there with all of you on that class. Thank you for coming. Thank you for your questions and your participation. I absolutely love, love to be there with you.  Let’s talk about some important principles to live by. These four things come down to belief in your client, the needs of your client, trust in your client, and service of your client. These are the four principles that you can really anchor yourself in and bring into the sessions and it will be everything. Let’s talk a little bit about the first one belief.  Believe in your client bigger than they can, bigger than they do, and teach them to do the same. This is an opportunity for you to really model for your client, what is possible for their own belief in themselves. Think about this, if you believe that your client can lose weight, and you're confident in that when your client comes to you and says, “I can't lose weight, I messed up again, it's never going to happen. We’ve been working together for six weeks, and I'm still not following my plan.” Let's assume that you start to believe that maybe that's true. “Yeah, you know what, it has been six weeks, they really haven't done it. What if they can't? What am I going to do? Maybe I'm not a very good coach, I'm not sure how to handle this.”  I guarantee that that is not a place that you can coach your client for the results that they want. Because what happens is your kind of matching the energy or belief of your client, which will never serve them. It’s so important to always set yourself in a higher level of belief for your client. I think about when my kids were little, I use this example all the time, because it's so clear and so evident that when my kids were little, and they were learning to walk, I knew that they would learn to walk. I would give them some space, I would hold that belief for them. Then when they fall, I encourage and I stay where I am, when they fall, I teach them what they may need to do to keep going forward. I put some things in place.  Whereas if when my kid falls, I think oh, no, maybe they can't walk, I would treat them so differently. I wouldn't hold that space for them to come toward me. I would go rescue them, I would pick them up, I would carry them all the time. I would treat them as if they weren't capable of walking, which would impact their ability to learn to walk, it would impact how quickly they were able to learn to walk all of those things. Such a simple example, but I promise that bringing in ultimate belief of what your client is capable of will always serve them. Check-in on your belief about your clients regularly and show them regularly what they are capable of.  [00:05:00] Treat them as if they are absolutely capable and they will rise to the occasion. Let’s talk about Principle number two, tune in to the needs of your client and teach them to do the same. When you come to a session with your client, you always want to be prepared. However, you want to make sure that when you're with your client, you are paying attention to what needs they have in that session in that moment. This comes by you asking yourself, tuning into what do they need? Even sometimes asking your client, “Tell me what do you think you most need here?” The reason this is so powerful is because it allows you to always be adapting your coaching tools, your sessions, whatever methodology you use, you end up adapting it to the personal needs of your client, rather than using a cookie-cutter approach that may or may not be helpful for your client on that day.  The other thing this does is it helps your client to create an internal pattern of paying attention to and meeting their needs and finding others who can help them meet their needs. I really believe I know this to be true for me that as a coach, you become the voice in your clients’ heads often. I have experienced this personally, where I can hear my coach's voice in my head, and my clients will say to me, “I hear your voice in my head.” When we can be a voice in their head that is telling them to pay attention to their needs to meet their needs, that's really powerful for them long term. Make sure that you are tuning into your client's needs, asking yourself what they need, noticing what they need, asking the client what they need.  Next principle, trust your client as the expert in their life. This is something that gets lost often in the coaching space because as a coach, we think we're supposed to be the expert, we're supposed to be the leader, we're supposed to be the guide, and we are a guide in the process. However, we are not the expert in our clients’ life. We don't know what they should do. We don't know what they want. We don't know what they should think, what they should feel, we really don't know. When we think that we do, this is when we lose out on this magical space with our client of allowing them to develop more self-trust. A much more powerful approach, rather than coming in thinking that you know what's best for your client is to really offer your client questions to help them discover what they want, who they are, and what they want to think, feel and create. You as a coach, then serve them as you help them tap into what they need to do to make it happen. You don't set the agenda for their life, you ask questions to allow them to discover what agenda they have for their life. Along these lines, if you are ever feeling that sense of frustration with a client or wanting them to see something different, or do something different, or move at a different pace, just notice that that is your discomfort coming through, that is you wanting to be a good coach, that is you believing things should be different for the client. That is your discomfort coming through.  Instead, really help them to tune into what they want, and help them to understand why they are not getting there. Remember that not only is their life, their life, and their choices, theirs, but their pace is their pace as well and not yours. I have seen this to be true with clients where I hold space for their pace even though I'm thinking, I don't know, are they making progress? I have those doubts come in, and then I reset myself and I stay the pace, I stay the course. Then lo and behold, when that client is ready to shift, oftentimes things happen with a client much more quickly at that point. You have to make plenty of space for your clients’ pace to be theirs and not yours. The other thing I want to touch on with this aspect of self-trust is by the end of working with you, your clients should have more self-trust and self-confidence than they had before. When you are coaching them in helping to instill this trust in themselves, you're constantly turning them back to themselves with self-trust in all that they accomplish, turning them back to remembering and believing that they know what is best for themselves. When you constantly turn them back to themselves and turn them back to self-trust in all they accomplish, it will impact them profoundly for the long haul.  [00:10:02] Last principle we're going to talk about in your sessions, be there in service of your clients and teach them to do the same. That hour or 45 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever timeframe it is should be all about the client's needs, and the client's progress and not about you doing a good job. Now, I know we all want to do a good job and we all want some outside validation. I do have an episode specific to this, the validation trap, so please, please go listen to that, because it's very normal to have this come into your coaching. But I really want you to think about how you can really clear that hour or that session time for all of your energy to go toward your client only, doing these things that I've already shared with you believing in them, tuning into their needs, trusting them and teaching them to do the same in all of these areas.  When you can bring all of your energy toward that client and clear all of your outside energy, it's pretty powerful. That really sets the example to the client as well, that it's important for them to show up in service of themselves. That hour is all about them and such a great opportunity and a rare opportunity that we don't really have in a lot of spaces in our lives. That’s what I've got for you coaches.  Thank you so much for being here. Try to bring these principles into your coaching over the next few weeks. Give this a try. I would love to connect with some of you on Instagram. Lean into these things, try to bring in a little more belief, trust, service, and helping to tune into your client's needs and let me know how it's going. I always love to hear from you. I think you're going to find this to be very simple and yet very powerful. Thanks so much for being here. Love all of you so much. Thanks for listening to the Masterful Coach Podcast. You can check out www.thecoachingcollective.com for info about the ultimate program for coaches building a business. To find out more about Molly, you can visit www.mollyclaire.com.