This question has been on our minds lately.

The answers may not be what you think because there is more to being an “ideal” coaching client than meets the eye.

Just because you make a fresh fruit smoothie first thing in the morning or load up your shopping cart with healthy produce or celebrate yourself, on the scale, when you notice you’ve lost weight does not make you an “ideal” client…although doing all this is great!

What really makes a person an “ideal” candidate for coaching has everything to do with the following five things:

  • Having the desire or personal will to change.
  • Showing up with an open mind and curiosity.
  • Finding your MoFa (Motivating Factor) for wanting change.
  • Trusting the coach enough to be honest and open.
  • Surrendering to the unknown and the unfamiliar.

These five points are a really good start to a healthy and successful coaching relationship. If you’re missing any one of them, your ability to succeed in the coaching process is compromised.

The first two points are the most essential, without which, change is near impossible. The third point helps a lot to create a pathway for the next two points, without which change is, again, near impossible.

That said, coaches who graduate from HCI are professionally trained to coach on client objections and to create a rapport from the start to establish a space of trust, which definitely helps to till the soil for these five things to flourish.

Negative attitudes and traits such as skepticism, self-deprecation and self-sabotage, however, can sometimes even create fertile ground for deep work as long as there is a willingness on the client’s part to question it so that it can change.

The way you approach anything in life is super important and sets the stage for how things flow. It’s the same with a coaching session. You, the client, get what you give.

If you give from a place of curiosity, willingness, open-mindedness and positivity from the start, then you’ve taken the first, and hardest, step towards the possibility for real change. But if you give from a place of skepticism, mistrust, cynicism and negativity, then you won’t get much back.

Coaches don’t have magic wands—even though when you witness, or experience, masterful coaching in action, it may seem like they do.
And it’s important to remember that the coach-client relationship is a relationship, which, like any other relationship has to be based on trust, honesty, and vulnerability in order for depth to be reached and something meaningful, like change, to occur.

That’s where the magic of coaching happens…and miracles too.
xxx

Write to us! We would love to hear your takeaway from this post. What else do you think makes an “ideal” coaching client? We want to hear from YOU!

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Want more info on how Health Coaches facilitate successful change for clients? Call a Clarity Coach at (877) 914-2242!

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Health Coach Institute provides aspiring Health and Life Coaches with the tools, training, and support to make a great living transforming lives.