Okay. So, I'm curious because we talked about like the business stuff and we both had our happy endings with the business elements. Do you have any things like any mistakes or things that you now see as mistakes in like coaching that you want to talk about? Yeah. I mean, I I have I have some things that I'm now careful about. M um I I have worked with a lot of the same clients for a long time, so I know the ins and outs of a lot of people's lives. Um, I have a pretty like I would say I probably I have a pretty high returning rate of clients and I think the thing that I'm conscious about because it's happened before where I will almost get like I use friendliness and warmth a lot as as a coaching tool but sometimes I have found myself starting to venture into things that are not on topic with clients. Like I have some clients who are like very friendly like what did you do this weekend d and I'm like I now will answer in a sentence and move right into their coaching. I try not to share a lot of like personal stuff. Not that I don't share I I share things on social media. You know there's not a lot of secrets about me. Everybody knows you know about my spiritual practices. I think um I don't think anything in my life would be very surprising to most of my clients, but if it's not specifically relevant to their coaching, I um I've had some moments where I'm like, "Oh, this person has a very different political attitude than I do." Or, "Oh, this person has a very different attitude on a prickly topic." Something that's prickly for me. maybe it's not for them. And it has just helped those moments where I maybe overstep and say something that I'm like this is not within the con context of coaching. Um I've had those embarrassing moments where I now am like this person did not hire me to talk about their political affiliation. So when that comes up, I will move into another direction because I can't help them with that. They're not asking me to help them with that. They're not asking me for coaching on that. I'm here for their business. I'm here for their vision. And then if it ever comes up and they want coaching on it, I will be as clean of a slate as I can be. Yeah.
So, I've had moments where I'm like in my mind I'm like, "Oh [Â __Â ] that was that was not the right thing to say." Not that it's ever come into I've never come into like conflict with someone, but I've had moments where I'm like I've like kind of kicked myself out of being present because I'm just like scan scan scan. How do I make sure we're not going outside of the scope of what they are paying me for right now? And I have to I think that's kind of the reminder. The reminder is like I am here to support this person on the thing that they asked me to coach them on today. Uhhuh. My job is not to change their thinking or argue with them or any of that stuff. It's really to actually be present. Yeah. And that's hard sometimes. That's really hard. It's interesting. I um had the experience, it was a little bit of an awakening to me along those lines when I went from coaching in a feminist coaching community to coaching farmers. Not to say there aren't like farmers of all political alignments, but there was just there was a certain level of um common ground that and like assumption making which I probably shouldn't have done even for folks in the leftist feminine coaching feminist coaching community. Um but there was like a certain Yeah. like like I made some assumptions and there were some like sort of bonding that I did not in conflict with the coaching I don't think it was like actually more of a effort to create a safe space and to like be like I'm I witness you I understand and you're validated um that I think a couple of times I probably like did that unconsciously in the other community and at times it was fine and other times it didn't never led to conflict like you're saying But afterward I was like, "Oh, I just made a lot of assumptions about this person that probably actually are not true. So like I need to take a step back and be careful about how I'm bonding and why I'm like trying to bond. Is it like I don't need my client to like me necessarily. Sometimes it's in service of the coaching to have like, you know, a cenial relationship, but like do I need to in those ways? Maybe not." I think that that is so beautiful because it kind of reminds me of this idea like our clients aren't paying us to think like them. They're paying us to think to be like another brain with a whole different set of possibilities. And that means that a lot of those things don't have to be necessarily like fully aligned. I've, you know, I am a I I mean, I think about this, this is very much about my personal life, not about coaching, but like I think about how many people I know that have um who are part of religions that literally think I am like that my my people in my religion are like going to hell. Mhm. I've had people make some crazy assumptions about like without knowing anything about what I practice or what I do, make a lot of crazy assumptions about what that is. Um, I also was in a cult for a number of years. It was like not a not like a sexy cult that like has Netflix documentary. It's not a really super salacious one unfortunately. Um, oh my god. Yes. Oh my. We could talk about all these things, but I just remember like in that in that period of my life, the people who would come at me with um different opinions or like wanted to tell me that I was in a cult, I like couldn't hear them because I was like, "Oh, they just don't understand. They're not, you know, they're not part of this community. They don't see it." And I just saw how like isolating that was. And when I as I like came out of that community, I was like, I'm never I'm going to try not to do that. I'm going to just try to be the person who's on the outside of someone else's way of thinking so that if they ever need someone to explore that with who's not going to pull them back in, I'll be there. I'm never going to try to pull somebody into my way of thinking because I want to be the safe person on the outside. Yeah. And I've been and it like that has been really interesting. I've had there are people who have left really high demand religions and I was the only friend they had that was not part of that religion. Wow. I've had clients who've left cults and and you know pretty serious communities and they were like I needed to have my coach not also be somebody who was associated with this way of thinking. And I'm like, "Yeah, that's what coaches do. We're supposed to be a person to help you explore your thinking and find what you want and what's resonating with you and then we help you go in that direction." So, I kind of like remind myself of that when when I come across someone who just thinks differently or has a different opinion about something that I feel really strongly about. Yeah, it's hard. I think it would be interesting to have a separate conversation as well about like how to navigate like I I think there is a little bit of a unhelpful myth in the coaching community or coaching industry that like you should be able not only should you be able to coach everyone but like you should aspire to be as neutral as possible and coach everyone. It might be interesting to talk about how we navigate that because there are certain clients who I'm just like that wouldn't be a good fit and I don't really like Oh yeah. Like if there's a better coach for you, I don't necessarily want to be coaching you. Yeah. And I I think that's important too is like just because someone signs up for a consult doesn't mean they're going to be a client you want to work with. And I think like you have the professional responsibility to yourself and to that other person to like not get into that relationship. I've said no to many people.
Yeah. Oh, fun. Okay. I can't wait to talk about that more. Um, this is a kind of a hard question for me to answer because I think my journey through the early earlier career coaching was full of so much picking myself apart and beating myself up that now I'm kind of like, yeah, I've made like hundreds of mistakes and most of them were not as big of a deal as I thought they were in the moment. And like I've already beat myself up so much over them and I'm like just not down to do that anymore. Not that not that like examining ourselves is equivalent to beating ourselves up in fact like quite the opposite, but I do think like I had sort of more of like a hypervigilance in my earlier coaching days and like every after every session I would be like I did this wrong and this wrong and this wrong. Um, and honestly in retrospect, I think like this isn't very specific, but I think like one of the biggest mistakes I made was I was so hard on myself that I was in my head a lot in sessions, not as present with clients as I could have been if I weren't like so hung up on whether I was asking the right question or whether it was open-ended or whether I was like phrasing it in a in a way, a neutral enough way. Um, so I think like I I withheld a lot of myself when I was starting out coaching in a way that I thought I was supposed to but like wasn't very helpful at the time. Yeah, that's I mean I think there's so many people who can experience that. But like then even seeing that how do you now differentiate between giving yourself like feedback for growth versus getting hung up on like was that the right question? Was that the best question? Should I have asked this? Like how did you actually shift out of that? Because I see a lot of coaches I've I've like supported coaches and you so have you supported coaches as they grow and it's really hard because I'm like I don't want you to take this and make this the next thing you go whipping yourself with. But Right. Yeah. You're in your head. Can you be more present? They're like, "Oh no, now I'm in my head. Now I'm not present. Now I'm not." So, how did you like figure out how to maybe put some of that down and shift into being discerning over like self scolding? Oo, that's such a good question. Um, so I think the how is that happened kind of out of necessity. I think when I was going through master coach training and I was getting so much feedback. Yeah. every single week, every month, I would get like tons of feedback, more than I could like conceivably, like I read through it all, but I could not possibly like process and implement all of the feedback on the timeline that we were working on. And I tried to for the first couple of months, it was a six month six months. Yeah, six month program. Um, and I really tried very hard like the first couple of months, but I got to a point where I was like, this is making my coaching worse. Yeah. And I like need to find another way. Um, so I think that's actually when I I was like, "Okay, let me just assume I'm doing like a a million things quote unquote wrong that I could be doing better." and in and rather than like fixating on it, give myself more permission to like mess it up and to like not get it right and to and that shift, I think, helped me take a step back and develop my own ideas about what was right and wrong and actually question some of the feedback a little bit more. um and like give myself the authority to decide what feedback I wanted to take in and what feedback I didn't. Um yeah, it wasn't an instantaneous shift, but it was like a pretty big mental and emotional shift in how I related to feedback. And now I would say um I think I I try to focus this is it's easier said than done but I try to focus a little more on the macro than on the micro. So there might be things in session where I'm like I didn't quite read the room when I said that or like oh that came across a little more brusk than I man I hope to or like oh I said that and that was a little confusing but couple years ago I would have like butt out on that and like thought about exactly what I said and kicked myself for it. And now I'm just sort of like like I cringe a little and then I move on. And if I find myself consistently doing that or if I find myself there's like a pattern of missing something or like a skill maybe that I feel like I'm missing like my clients are really needing a certain type of processing and the coaching just like seems a little surface level then that's something that I want to work on and maybe I need to like develop some skills to work on it. It's really good. Yeah. Thanks. That's really good.
I'm trying to think of like when I feel like I did something wrong. Okay, so mine is like I trust that I can repair it. Was like, "Oh, I asked a yes or no question in a coaching session." I was like, "Well, I got a yes or no answer." Can I say I do that all the time now? Actually, I like I went through, you know, I was tried tried to be very disciplined about never doing that. There's I don't I don't know what if everyone here has been like through the same schooling that we have. Yeah. Indoctrination that we have, but there's like a pretty like a a philos I don't know if you call it a phil a guideline that you should ask open-ended questions. And I I see like it's often much more expansive. And I think asking like yes or no questions can be provocative in a really good way sometimes in sessions and it can be challenging and also like sometimes that's just what comes to mind and is more important for me to like be present than it is for me to monitor everything I'm saying. Yeah. I think too like meeting coaches from other modalities of coaching where I'm just like that's against the law in coaching. what are you doing? I think like just having my mind expanded because something that I learned, I don't know if you also learned this was like don't reiterate back to the client what they said. Oh yes. Don't like echo back what I also threw that one out. But there's other coaching modalities that are like the very first thing you do is you echo back what you heard to the person. And I remember people doing this to me. I'm like, "Stop [Â __Â ] saying what I just said. It's it was so mad. I'm like, "Stop mirroring me. Like, you're not getting me on your side. This is some weird technique." And I hate it as a client. Um, but like there are other schools of thinking that they always start with, "So, what you're saying is or what I understand you saying is this." And that was like against the law for for us. Yes or no questions. You were supposed to always ask an open-ended question. Oh, and then this the hardest one for me to break was like not giving any ideas or opinions to your client. Oh yeah. We were supposed to always like find their help them find their wisdom, find out what they think, find out what they should do. And I remember feeling one day in in my business coaching like someone was they had this idea about some like marketing campaign they were going to do and I had just been coaching someone else who said that that was like a waste of money and it was terrible for their business and it was like not good. And I'm like sitting there, I'm like, should I tell them that all my other clients like don't want to do that marketing thing because they found out it was like they wasted $30,000 on this thing. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to share from another business owner. Take it or leave it. But this was their experience of that. Yeah. No, no confidentiality was breached or anything, but I was like, I would suggest you explore other options because this is what I'm hearing from people who are doing that exact thing. Mhm. And I was like, actually just help people and not say, well, what does your inner wisdom think about this marketing campaign you've never tried before, but everyone else is [Â __Â ] talking online and in my Yes.
Yes. I would be so mad at my coach if they were like sitting on information for like a third not like I I might I don't know. Like that's so helpful to hear. Yeah. Like if we have a strategy, we have a tool, we have something, some piece of information, I share resources with my clients all the time. If I'm reading a book I think that would be helpful to them, I send it. If I know of a program that they might want to check out for the thing exact solution that they're looking for but someone else said was great, I can say, "I haven't tried this, but I'm going to send you this info because another client with the same kind of business model said they really like it." I just think like what if our job as coaches is just to help our clients and it's not to follow the rigid rules of whatever our methodology is. Yeah. and to know like I guess to move beyond this idea of right or wrong in coaching and like more pay attention to like cause and effect in coaching like it's is it it's not like right or wrong. It's not wrong to ask an a closedended question. However, you can observe the cause and effect of asking a close-ended question. And if your goal is to go really deep with a client and get a lot more information and also like step back and not really have your hands in the pot quite as much, then asking a close-ended question might not get you there. Yeah. In the way that asking an open-ended question might. That is not to say they're all over the place. Sometimes you're like, I got to rein this person in because right support them is getting really clear on do you want this or not. Yes or no. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So it's like more Yeah. I think that's something that has really shifted like and weirdly makes this question a little bit complicated to answer of like mistakes I've made. Yeah, I make like mistakes every single day, quote unquote mistakes, but like they're not as earthshattering as they were before, because it's not like one mistake has I I don't believe one mistake has going to single-handedly sever an entire relationship or like harm a person. There is the possibility of repair. And also I think there's value in moving beyond that very strict view. Yes. Of coaching. Yeah. I'm like more committed to helping the person in front of me than following the rules. The rules of one person of one school of opinion, one methodology, right? Yeah. Totally. Yes. which is also like I I I have taught coaching as you have and like I'm sure you've experienced like I certainly give feedback on my opinion and share that freely. Um and at the same time I hope that my clients or the people that I'm teaching are taking ownership as well of like how they take in that feedback and like what I say is not gospel. It's just my own thoughts about things. Yeah. So good. Yes. How's your cocktail? Delicious and almost done. How's yours? Mine, too. This was fun. Mhm. Cheers. Cheers. And thanks to folks who are listening um your questions and your ideas, like we love them. So, keep them coming. Yes, please share more questions if you'd like or opinions or things you just want us to talk endlessly about and debate and turn in circles. Yeah. And and bait us into telling you embarrassing stories. Oh, yes, please. So many embarrassing stories. I've revealed my What else? What else can I reveal?
Not a sexy. Yeah, that someday. Yes, please. That would that would be very interesting. I actually was raised in a religion that is like borderline cult. Maybe maybe not borderline. Depends on your perspective, I guess. But yeah. Oh, yeah. We should have a whole interesting lessons from our cult experiences, what we learned and our red flags for other people.
That'll be a side podcast. Yeah. Yeah.
All right, my friend. Nice to see you. Thanks everybody. Thanks everyone.
