Pointing Out Behavior That Gets in the Way Without Shaming

If you read my earlier post called “To Coach a Friend or Not to Coach a Friend”, here’s the update. Friend and I had an appt. yesterday at 10a.m. I had offered to place the call because I have flat rate long distance service and I offer that to all of my clients if they want it. So I called at 10 and the line was busy. I called at 10:03, 10:05 and 10:08. Same result. Then I wrote the following email:

Hi,

I’ve tried your number now about 4 or 5 times for our 10a.m. call this morning. It’s busy. It’s looking like you have a lot of resistance going on to this coaching relationship. You’ve forgotten an appt, had a repair man appear at the time of the call and now the phone’s busy. No blame. Just something for you to investigate. However, I don’t want this to affect our relationship so I leave it to you to contact me and you will probably have to kind of talk me into the efficacy of this part of our relationship. Hope all is well. I’m off to Curves.

She called later. She wrote about what is happening with her and took responsibility. But for now I want to deal with how the coach handles the situation. This is tricky business. Even though you are hired to help a client overcome their resistance or uncover and meet their goals and speak the truth as you see it, there is a fine line you walk as a coach.

Will it be too much for them to handle? Will they retreat, blame you (even just in their mind) and quit coaching? Or will they be glad you are helping them move forward through the tough stuff? There are no right answers here. It takes experience, awareness, self-confidence, a strong bond with your client and probably many things I’m not thinking of right now.

Results in this case? Our friendship is unimpaired. I may provide some support but she won’ t feel guilty or unsupported and I won’t feel drained or overly responsible for her. I consider this a success.

To Coach a Friend or Not to Coach a Friend?

I have a friend for many years. When I first, formally started my coaching practice, she was one of my first clients. I wasn’t able yet to observe myself in the coaching process enough to be able to evaluate whether our coaching was beneficial to her or not. I just used the “if they still send you a check, it must be working” method of evaluating the results.

A couple of weeks ago she called and said I need your help. I’m overwhelmed and confused about creating my business so I either watch TV or eat to avoid the whole thing. I agreed immediately but we didn’t really lay out what she expected from me and from the coaching itself. The lack of having done that immediately showed up as a problem. She missed an appointment, then had a gas company guy come at the time of the next appt. and was heavy into negativity when we finally spoke on the delayed appointment.

I don’t perceive my job as talking a client out of their negativity. I perceive my job as working with it to change it. Subtle difference but a big difference in results for the client – and results for me. Which leads me to what I experienced that day.

When I hung up from our call I was tired and drained. I thought it was because I didn’t have enough sleep. But several hours later I had my next client appt. and although later in the day, I felt exhilarated and stoked which is how I most often feel after coaching – which I’ve used as an indicator that coaching is a gift of mine. Also, I remember learning from John Gray about a zillion years ago that if a relationship is giving you energy, it’s a good relationship and if it’s taking away energy, there are problems. He was referring to intimate relationships but what’s more intimate than a relationship between a coach and a client?

So back to my question: to coach a friend or not to coach a friend? I still don’t know if it’ll work in this case but I have begun to remedy the situation by requesting my friend to please write down her expectations of me and of our coaching. We will speak about it next week and we’ll see where we end up.

Lesson learned: friend or not, expectations of the results of coaching need to be laid out in advance.