175: Should Coaches Know More Than Their Clients?

This episode is an eye opener. Find the full transcript for this episode at prosperouscoach.com/175. 

I don’t think there’s a new coach anywhere who hasn’t wondered … should I know more than my clients? Won’t they expect that I have expertise to guide them? Otherwise, why would they pay me … right?

I’ve heard coaches from all walks of life question their fitness to be a professional coach — whether the coach is younger or older, highly credentialed or not at all, has vast work experience or none. It’s what I call a garden variety doubt. It comes with the territory of offering services in exchange for fees. 

Let’s look into this powerful question a bit more because the answer is a paradox. And paradoxes are full of possibility. 

So, should you know more than your coaching clients? It completely depends on what you’re offering – what you’ll be doing with your coaching skills. And it’s also a matter of semantics – what is knowing anyway?

What Do You Want to Do with Your Coaching Skills?

After coach training I was like a convert. I clung tightly to every aspect of the doctrine and guidelines. I read, listened and watched anything I could find about coaching. I attended all the local ICF chapter meetings and conferences.

My coach training school taught me to create a Coaching Practice, not a business, so I had this vague vision of working with dozens of clients one on one in an office somewhere, much like a therapist does. I’d charge fees by the session. I’d hold professional distance.

I was tempted to apply coaching skills to every conversation. I annoyed my friends and family because I felt that I knew THE secrets to communication. And I do think the tenets of coaching are best communication practices but I hadn’t yet matured those skills with good timing and knowing when to stay silent.

I was, in those early years, what I would now call a pure coach – a traditional coach the way that the ICF and my coach training school intended.

But I was also a poor coach in the sense that I undercharged for years. I stayed in student mode and hoped for the best. I didn’t consider the marketing required to attract clients or any other aspect of running a business and so bumbled around feeling I hadn’t made it as a coach.

You’re probably much more savvy than I was because you know from the get go that you must build and run a financially strong business. How to do that is the next challenge and that’s where my passion is now.

I eventually realized there had to be a better way for me. Prosperous Coach Podcast is all about that better way.

By the way, over time, every coach finds their style and their place — or they drop their coaching business and go get a job.

I have become a non-traditional coach. I no longer feel that the pure coach model is for me. I still honor my coach training and use coaching skills but I’ve brought my full self into what I’m offering now, which includes expertise.

About a certain set of things that I’ve studied deeply, I know more

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