How to Avoid Becoming a Bad Coach

Hey guys, welcome back to my show. This show is where I share what I'm learning along the way of building my education business. So today I want to talk about coaching because coaching is everywhere in the education space, like no matter what you're sharing with your audience, it can be marketing, it can be web design, it can be how to make sourdough bread. I think the chances of you having coaching in your offering is very high, but I think the key point here is good coaching is really, really hard.

For example, you cannot really be giving answers to your clients. You should be guiding them and you want to motivate and push them forward.

But at the same time you don't want to discourage them. That's why coaching is something worth talking about today

I'm, not a certified coach, but i've been thinking about like how to groom people in my life Because back then in my career I was managing a 20 ish person team and I was doing monthly checkup with everyone trying to help them move forward in their role. And now i'm a father of two, so i'm literally figuring out how to coach my daughters every single day. Today I want to tell you two real stories happening in my family and what I learned about coaching from these stories.

All right, let's jump into story one.

So one day we were going to somewhere and we got back to the car park. When we got off the car to our house, my wife picked up our younger daughter, Audrey, one year old. She couldn't walk at that time, so yeah, you have to carry her but right at that moment our three year old daughter, Avery, started throwing a tantrum because she wanted to be carried as well. You know when the younger sister got it, she wants to have it as well. And usually at that moment, lots of things are going in the parents mind like you're thinking "well, we have so much to carry back to the house. You are the older kid. Maybe you should walk by yourself." I think that's really the default path because it's tiring to have a family and do so many things. But I didn't want to do that, so I picked up Avery and then we start going. And I said to myself inside my mind, I could always come back for a second round for the stuff in the car.

And the main reason I said that is because even though she's the big sister, she's only three years old. How can I expect so much from her? And I just don't think that being two years older means that they should always be the one who's like giving So that got me thinking, are we expecting too much from our children sometimes?

And are we expecting so much from our clients when it comes to coaching? Sometimes I think the keyword here is like "you should", and "you should be able to do blah, blah, blah". Like in my program, Build in Public Mastery, we focus a lot on documentation. And the reasoning is because I find out that if you're able to jot down your ideas all the time, then you can tell great stories. You can create amazing content because it's much easier to convert Ideas into stories than, you know just sitting here and thinking about what should I talk about?

So I put that really early in the program because it's so important, but I think like a lot of people would assume that when you teach something you expect the students to know it. All of a sudden that knowledge is in their head. I did that really early days when I just started teaching. But heck no. Like you find out that it doesn't work that way. They might know the concept because you have told them you have taught them, but then so many of them are not able to create a habit around it yet. So at this point, if you expect a lot from them, and then you continue to stuff more concepts in their mind, they're not going to learn. In fact, they might even give up because they think, "Oh, I cannot even do this step. So there are more steps. So I better just give up now and come back later." So I think in this case, You want to lower your expectation. Just because you said something once or twice or three times, it doesn't mean that people can do it. And it's important to look at where they are and further break down the steps for them. So, for example, what I would do is I try to really listen to them and see what they're struggling with.

And then I can help them break down even a small task, like jogging down ideas to see how we can make it even smaller steps. For example, before jotting down ideas, maybe you should block some time on your calendar. So figuring those steps would make them feel achieved and have some progress. And then they will continue to go through the program.

Overall, I think the reason why people want to learn from you or get coached by you is because they cannot do it themselves. They need your help with the smallest steps.

Now let's go to story two.

Let's talk about sleeping for babies. It's a big topic, you know, in the first few years. Our first daughter, Avery, has been a really good sleeper.

So she's able to sleep through the night when she was like maybe one year old plus And even though she might wake up sometimes crying for food a bottle of milk would immediately put her back to sleep So we are really lucky and I think we get so used to this Avery's way, and then when Audrey, our younger one, came by, we by default just use the same method. And I'm not just talking about sleeping routine, but the choice of food, you know, the daytime schedule, every tiny little things you can think of.

We were using it the Avery's way and to give us some guidance at certain milestones. So then we're really forced to design a new system just for our younger daughter, Audrey. So that really got me thinking like: Are we often making one success method, the default option for all the other people out there? I think this is pretty common because it's so easy to say that this has worked for someone else before, so this is going to work for you. I think a lot of people sell things like that online today. Let's not focus on talking about dishonesty, but I want to focus on, you know, in coaching, you cannot assume a default method.

What we want to do is put out our ears and really listen carefully to figure out where they're struggling and how we can help them, because it's not going to be a very clear roadmap for every single person. It's going to be, everyone has a different starting point and ending point. and you might want to move faster with them because you are thinking, wow, there's so much I want to cover in this program let's keep going. Let's keep going. Trust the process. But I've also learned that sometimes. You don't need to cover everything. Sometimes the key is to coach them. So then they figure out that one small thing and they unlocked everything they need.

Let's give you an example. I was in a public speaking class last few weeks because I was invited into the cohort. And I learned that we just need to slow down when we talk. Yeah, just slow down, and our speech will become much better already. And the key thing here is because when we slow down, we're allowing our minds to like, wander a little bit as we talk.

And we are also allowing the audience to listen. And to digest what you have to say, honestly, I would say I'm never a good speaker because I have all these things that I want to say, and I would just like throw them out when I'm recording a video. And I want to go so fast that I get all the value pack in a 10 minute video or so, but I think now I'm able to step back and just never ever assume everyone to need the same thing to be successful, because that's just so not true.

Now let's talk a little bit about what's happening at small school.

I'm offering a new program called Build Your Core Asset.

It's a three week program one on one where i'll guide you through creating your core asset in your education business The things that we'll cover is product planning, outlining, we'll strategize the go to market as in how you should place this asset in your business so that it does its job. So I haven't really put this out in public yet because I only want to work with people who have. Learn from me before in other programs. So if this sounds interesting, if this is what you need and you have bought one of my other products, well, talk to me because I'm happy to share more about this one on one program and see if it can help you.

All right. That's it for today. Broc and roll guys. I'll see you around.

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