Bill: Marty, I'm really looking forward to talking about our topic today. As am I. Which is the life of a life coach.

Marty: The life

Bill: of a leadership coach. The life of a results coach.

Marty: The life of a coach.

Bill: Yeah. And if you're listening and you're a coach, great. See if you can apply this to yourself. If you're listening and you're not a coach, consider that you might be more of a coach than you think you are.

Bill: You might have something in common with us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the life of a coach. And so before we hit record, we were talking about what are some of the things that, what are our talking points, what are we going to talk about? And so let's start with this the first one that you mentioned, the life of someone who has the training to be a coach is the life of a coach.

Bill: And so what responsibilities do we have knowing that craft knowing how to be a coach? What are those responsibilities?

Marty: Because what we've been trained to do is it's very powerful, it's, it, there's so there's responsibility involved with, wherever there's great power, there's great responsibility kind of thing.

Marty: So it's ironic because on one, on the one hand, what we're trained at is something it's so basic. Like how to live a powerful life as a human being. It's super basic. It's it's so basic. It's not even taught in school, right?

Bill: It's assumed that everybody should know how to do that.

Marty: I wonder, and most but on the other hand, most of the people on the planet are not applying these principles that we've been taught. And taught how to bring out in others, like that ability to live a trans constantly transformed life to, to get yourself out of the way of results that you're not current, in your current mindset and circumstances, you're not able to these are fantastic tools to have and they're not taught, it's not like there's a class on that in high school or that.

Marty: Yeah. Imagine if high school were oriented around these questions. I think that with that does come a huge responsibility.

Bill: Responsible for, responsible to, what, so what do you, what are you thinking? The responsibility is I'm responsible if I'm a life coach and I'm trained in these skills. Yeah,

Marty: it's if you're the president of the United States, your states, you are responsible for whether or not we go.

Marty: Congress is whether or not we go to war, but I was thinking of the, the old adage or warning that, the president's going to have his fingers on the button to take us to global nuclear war. So with that, Role comes responsibility. And so I'm thinking the same thing about coaching because it is because there's great power that gets unleashed in people when we practice our craft.

Marty: So the craft itself is something to be responsible for and with and to whom well to the world, to, to our clients and to ourselves and to. Everybody that gets impacted, when somebody transforms their business or, learns how to communicate on the 1 hand, it's, I think part of what's interesting about the question is that it invokes something so basic, how to live life well, the craft of living life.

Marty: And on the other hand. It's not generally known it's not everybody's trained at that.

Bill: Do you have an idea, let me ask the question differently, of course you do, what is your idea about why that is? Why aren't most people able to live, I've heard you use the word powerful, or transforming life?

Marty: That's a great question

Bill: I'm asking it from this place. , I agree with you that there's great responsibility when we have clients that are coming to us to learn how to do that. Yeah. To develop the ability to do that. And I know that, I just hit, I listened to episode two where I interviewed you and I know that your response, that your philosophy of coaching is that everyone has it inside themselves to be the expert in their own lives.

Bill: You might've said it a slightly different way, but that's what I got from listening to that episode again. Yeah. So given that everybody has that inside, let's assume that's true. I happen to agree with that. That's part of my philosophy as well. If they don't already know how to do that, why not?

Bill: If they've got it inside, why aren't they doing it? Yeah.

Marty: For one thing, I think it's human condition. As we've developed these huge brains, And I think there's And the capacity to have, imaginations like crazy, we can imagine going to the moon and then build a technology to get there. And we've also developed, this whole psychology this, all of these. The ability to house inside of us, all these different sub personalities and conversations between them and all that.

Marty: I think it's, it is the human condition to be to, to have that separation from our power. So I'm not pointing the finger at people who don't have the craft that we've learned is how to get. How to get beyond that, how to turn that into something that you use to build a better life and a better world.

Marty: And I think that the reason why more people don't have it is just because. We don't we haven't valued it. We haven't prioritized it as a society. We prioritize making things building things, right? Getting things done. That's been our priority. Yeah. It doesn't matter if people are hurting each other left and right at the factory.

Marty: Just get the cars made. That's what's important. And go home and work it out on your own. And so that ability to be transformed in every moment. It's just hasn't been prioritized. I think if you look at a community I was watching a YouTube video about a small community in Malaysia, a Muslim community, actually, where everybody we would say it's like 3rd world but everybody in that community.

Marty: Practices meditation together, everybody in that community participates in us in supportive relationships, like coaching relationships, like with a, with you, you are somebody else's apprentice with the master at making shoes or building boats or fishing. And so there there's this tight weave in which everybody gets empowered and the spiritual dimension of it allows people to see their connection, not only to each other, but to nature.

Marty: And there's a lot that gets covered in our coaching calls that they get just by being members of that society.

Bill: But because we aren't in that society or one like it, people need coaching or we're

Marty: between that society and ours is this, emphasis on doing and making, as opposed to, let's say, being and related.

Bill: Yes. Yeah. As coaches, we are trained in the scrap and we are responsible to help people to develop and learn about some of the things that we've been trained in. And hopefully that we've been practicing and continuing to develop in ourselves.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. Does anything that I would you add anything to what I just said about this responsibility piece or yeah.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: As I was listening to you I should have been taking some notes because I was thinking about even on a what I heard you say was like pretty glot abroad and global what I heard partially was we have this problem in society really where what's valued where we live.

Bill: Yeah. Is doing rather than being is product productivity. Rather than relativity and I was thinking about in the actual relationship between a coach and a client, what is the coach responsible for? And I think that it's dangerous even for the coach to indicate to a client that they are responsible for the results.

Bill: That the coach is responsible for the results because they cannot be no matter how great the coaches, no matter how well they relate to the client, and no matter how much success they have in helping the client to get these new concepts and implement and integrate them into their lives, if the coach is taking responsibility for the results, or if the client is under the impression that the coach is responsible for the results, then one of the most important things that the client can learn with them.

Bill: Has been lost, or at least it hasn't been learned yet. And that is that we ultimately, we, each of us have to be responsible for the results that we get in our lives, the experiences that we have in life in our lives. Not only is

Marty: it not that's interesting. I'm sorry, may I break in? Sure. Go ahead.

Marty: If you'd rather I don't say so. See, I think this really, this starts to rub up against what I'm that this global point that I'm making, I realized, in fact, I'm a little embarrassed oh, yeah, the responsibility in the conversation of the coaching. That seems a lot more relevant. But when you say it the way you say it, I get present to why I put it that way, or why I'm.

Marty: Thinking about that, because yes, we are all each responsibility responsible for the results we get in our life. Okay. But notice that in that Malaysian community, nobody would ever say that. They don't have to, they are all responsible for each other. And so that statement, you're responsible for the results in your life.

Marty: It doesn't come up there. And yet it's true, right? When we look at them, we can see how, that guy was, he fixed the boat. He's responsible for his own fishing business or whatever. But when we see that in the West, you're responsible for the results in your life. There's already something missing that we're teaching and coaching or that, that comes maybe not teaching, but it, the coaching relationship brings out this partnership that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

Marty: And of course, most of the time when you coach somebody on producing a result. They've got to go get involved in with other people in their lives. It's usually not just about themselves. I'm just hearing as we're discussing like that. There's there is this something that might actually be working against us in our society when we say you are responsible for your own results.

Bill: There's more, of course, to the agreement between a coach and a client. Yeah. And one of the agreements I have with my clients is that it is agreed that they're responsible for the results. But the other agreement, one of the other agreements is I, as the coach, am responsible to support them in achieving those results.

Bill: So I'm responsible for the process that I facilitate for the philosophy that I bring into coaching. Yeah, I'm responsible to to be within my integrity and actually believe in the client. And if I don't to own that, to, to own that, I don't, that I don't have the faith and the belief in the client that they have the capacity to achieve whatever it is that they came to coaching to achieve.

Bill: That's a huge responsibility. And one, that's really hard to own. And I've had clients where I just didn't believe in them and and it's a much different experience trying to coach someone that I don't believe in than when I'm trying to coach someone that, that I do believe in. So there's responsibility in that responsible to stay within my integrity, to be honest, to be forward, to acknowledge what I'm not the best fit.

Bill: Yeah, whether that's because of ethical issues between, whatever the client is, that is the client is doing and how they're doing it. Or I think an extreme example of that would be if I found out a client was breaking the law and they wanted my support in, in, in helping them to break the law better.

Bill: So that they could get the result in that particular way for me to support in that way. I don't believe in them. I don't believe in their way and I don't believe in the outcome that they wanted. So I'm responsible for having integrity around that and say, no, I don't think we're a good fit here.

Marty: Yeah. I'd have to look up the Concept of responsibility and how that lives like in Malay and their language, right? But, or other languages, but, clearly human beings create their own reality. And I'm just one wondering one if.

Marty: One of the key factors to having any power doing that, creating our own, only our reality is this very coming together and sharing of it. With these roles and working together, partnering on becoming a, it's in connection that things get produced. Even possibilities are seen in connection. If I'm just if I'm just rehearsing my own thoughts.

Marty: There's no new possibility. It's when I start talking to you that, okay click, snap, crackle, pop, new possibilities are coming on in community, right? So that's part of what we are being responsible for as coaches is partnership dimension to this creation of reality. I

Bill: agree. Absolutely. So do we want to move on to the next piece?

Bill: Or is there more to say about this about response? I'm good. I think there's a lot more we could say about it. There is nothing's coming to mind right now. And maybe we'll swing back around to to bring it.

Marty: I'm just maybe to acknowledge I, I see that if the client doesn't take responsibility for doing her homework or producing the results, taking the actions, having the conversations necessary, then, you can't blame the coach, but the client is responsible for her results.

Marty: I get that. I get

Bill: that. Yeah. One of the things that comes up in marketing you're in business for yourself, Marty. I'm in business for myself. Marketing simply means getting the message out that I do this thing and I help people get these results. And this is how to do business with me.

Bill: That's essentially, I believe, what marketing is. Would you agree? Yeah. So when, one of the things that, that I've learned about as I study marketing is that often it's a good idea to offer some sort of a guarantee. So this question of who's responsible for what comes up, what could I possibly guarantee as a coach?

Bill: And I have always shied away from offering guarantees because there is no guarantee that the philosophy that I bring to coaching, the commitment that a client makes to taking actions. Their ability to go inside and be with what's in there and learn from that and develop into change is completely out of my power.

Bill: It's completely out of my hand. So what I guess what I'm saying, I'm not responsible as a coach, really what I'm saying is there are certain things that are beyond my power and influence that the client is, it's entirely up to the client.

Marty: Right. And I grant you it's, this is a much more global kind of

Marty: thing that I'm pointing at, but. In a world where everybody is why I'm not responsible, you're, if everybody was not responsible, then we wouldn't get anything done. So we do take responsibility for our end of it. And we do point to this phenomenon where in, things.

Marty: Like possibility and results only happen in connection.

Bill: So we're talking about the life of a coach, the life of a life coach, leadership coach, results coach, whatever kind of coach we might be. And what we've talked about so far is responsibility. What are the responsibilities of a life coach, given that we have the training and that we have, and that we're getting paid to help people.

Bill: In their lives in whatever area that they want. I guess one more thing to say about that is that the coach also has a responsibility to stay with what is important to the client. The client has to coaching for a specific reason. If the coach believes that the client could benefit for in another way.

Bill: And that ends up overriding the request and the desire of the client. That's not coaching

Marty: anymore. That's not coaching anymore. That's

Bill: something else. But it's so easy to do. It is so easy to do because it gets interesting. Let's say a client comes, I want to, I'm coming to coaching because in the area of career.

Bill: I find myself in the middle always. I'm not at the bottom of the pile. I'm not the top of the pile. I don't want to be in either place. I'm in the middle, but I want to feel better about what I'm doing. And I want to feel like I've got a purpose. So that would be an example of a reason someone might come to coaching as coach.

Bill: If I'm hearing that it's going to be my responsibility to really understand the desire for that change to get underneath and help the, and in so doing help the client get underneath what's behind it. And then collaborate in connection and community with that client to, to find a different way to find a way for them to have the outcome results that they came to coaching for and the same goes for the session itself.

Bill: A client comes into a coaching session with a coaching request or without one, but the overarching purpose for the coaching in the first place started out as I don't want to be at the bottom of the top or the middle. Really? I want to be. I want to feel like I've got a purpose and then it's making a difference.

Bill: If that's what the client's original request was. And if that changes, the coach is responsible for acknowledging that. Are we still you. Is that still our focus or has that changed in our coaching relationship and often it does. So the coach, I believe, is responsible for holding a container, the container of safety, the container of structure and the container of process.

Marty: Process it. Yeah, that it is our responsibility in the relationship as coaches to be monitoring. Where is this conversation going? Is it being productive? Is it producing, is it going in a healthy way? Is it staying on task? All of that? I do give it money back guarantee in my contract. I do guarantee that you guarantee that they will get the results that we agree on if they attend all these meetings. I see and do the homework. That's what it says. If you attend all the meetings and you do all the homework. Then the results that we've agreed to by, it's usually by the 2nd or 3rd meeting.

Marty: If you don't get those results. And you've been coming and doing the homework it that's on me then. That's not your fault. Yeah. So I do give them money back guarantee. Actually. That's a

Bill: lot of confidence.

Marty: Nobody, I've been doing it for 25 years and nobody has ever asked for their money back.

Bill: Yeah.

Bill: That's probably because you're so intimidating and they're afraid to ask for

Marty: it. Oh, I know. I'm so scary. Another responsibility that we have, and this is moving into our next topic. If you don't mind. No, go ahead. It's to keep in shape. It's easy to lose this presence that it takes to manage these conversations.

Marty: And be there for another person selflessly, it's not. There's, there, there are, we have to practice that. We have to keep at it. You can't just become self-absorbed and continue coaching like that won't work. So there are ways like calisthenic speak that we do to be in this game, day in and day out.

Marty: And so I think that we have, and we're, that's part of our responsibility as coaches. So what do you do? What do you do to stay. In the, in the mind and in the spirit and physical shape that you need to be in to do what you do?

Bill: As far as the mind goes. I do a lot of reading. Listening to, or reading a book and at least 1 or 2 at a time.

Bill: Some of them are around running my business. Some of them are around the different modalities that I use within my coaching some and some of them are in support of the trainings that I've been in the past and continue to be in right. As far as emotionally, what I do is I use the model that I use in my coaching, with my coaching clients, which is internal family systems, so that when I noticed something happening inside of me that I didn't that I didn't consciously pick to have happen, I know that I'm being influenced by a part of me that's having its own reaction and influencing me in such a way that I may do or say something.

Bill: That doesn't really reflect my true authentic self. So when that happens, I pay attention to that and I do the work that IFS has shown me how to do, which is to go inside, get curious about the part of me that's gotten activated, see what it needs and see if it maybe even needs some healing. And so I'll do spot therapy sessions.

Bill: I will, I've got my own coach. I think maybe one of the, and when you interviewed me, I think I said this. Several times throughout that conversation that the most important thing that I can do to stay in shape is do my own internal work.

Marty: What about you? No, I agree with everything that you just said.

Marty: I want to say something about having doing your own internal work definitely is probably number 1, but having a broad as broad a view of the client and their life. So again, I'm going to the global, but seriously, I think it's an important thing. If I get as a coach I get mired in the personality conflict inside with my client.

Marty: That's not really helping them. I need them. I need to be above that. I need to coach their relationship with their boss or their wife. And that's what I'm and so I need and, if I don't know, the range of at least something about the range of possible ways that companies can resolve these kinds of issues.

Marty: And, I just know 1, or I'm going, just pounding out the 1 that my client knows I need to know look, there's a lot of other ways this could go right. And so that we can, I think. That global perspective, there's a lot of other things possible. Let's I think that's so whatever keeps me in that, being well read clearing my mind, meditating being well informed, experiencing other cultures and languages.

Marty: I think that helps me as a coach.

Bill: Absolutely. Especially now, thanks to the pandemic that, that you like I are doing so much of your work on zoom, which means that we don't have the boundaries that we used to have. How many international clients that you have, but I've got, I've been working with more international clients in the last three years than I ever did in the first 10 that I was

Marty: a coach.

Marty: Yeah. I know that I've gotten better at this. With age too, and it's helped me. I'm, I do coach better now. I used to follow more of a formula for business development than I do now. Now, when a client comes and wants to develop their business, there are, I know a number of ways that we could do that.

Marty: It's not just some one way that everybody's got to do. And that's because of experience. That's because of having coached a variety of people and seeing the different ways that can happen.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. I would have to say, Marty, just based on your conversation, your comment just now that of all the trainings that I've taken and all the books that I've read of all the coaching that I've gotten that the most effective way to, to improve as a coach is to coach people and learn what works and what doesn't.

Marty: And really the king of coaching is presence. Being in the moment, being present, feeling what they're feeling, and and seeing what they're seeing and experiencing with it, that we're talking about what we need to do to stay in shape to be coaches, staying present is probably the king.

Bill: Yeah, because it's in that presence that curiosity is going to show up. And that's what informs the questions. I believe that also what informs the questions, however, is the coaching objective. Hearing from the client that they're having this experience over there and I'm listening and I'm feeling what they're feeling and I'm understanding what they're saying and I feel like I've got their perspective and how then from curiosity, but with a little bit of an agenda, how does what we're seeing right now and talking about reflect on the objective.

Bill: For the session and the objective for coaching overall and the response. There's another responsibility as a coach is to bring it back to that again. How is what we're talking about right now related to what you're trying to accomplish in your life. Marty. I'm noticing our time. We had several more things that we were going to talk about and I commented that I guess I'm guessing I said that we're probably going to easily or not so easily get through all of these.

Bill: We probably have plenty of questions and we certainly do. So we need to wrap up and maybe even make a second continuing in the next episode. Okay, sounds good. That's good. The other questions for the next episode that we will come back to then are and I just want to point out that we haven't even really begun to talk about the actual life of the coach outside of coaching sessions and outside of coaching and so I think that's going to be an important piece of this the other questions are one that I brought up, which is in life.

Bill: When is it appropriate to be wearing my coach hat outside of coaching sessions with clients? Is there, is it ever appropriate to be me wearing my coaching hat? Meaning to apply the principles that I use in coaching sessions with clients to my relationships in life. You brought up the spiritual dimension of the job of being,

Marty: which I brought up in everything I've said.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: but I think that specifically focusing on that would be really a great conversation. Yeah, good. And then that inspired me to say maybe we also just need to talk about how that coaching philosophy that we bring in to sessions with our clients is applied in our own lives and the impact that has and possibly what would happen if we had one philosophy for our clients and another one for ourselves that, that didn't align.

Bill: So more to talk about. We'll continue that in our next episode. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Bye.