Professional Coach Certification

This module is about what it takes to forge an effective coaching relationship between you and the client. We’ve devoted an entire module to training you in the types of skills and strategies that will enable you to connect with the client very quickly in order to start building that relationship of trust, honesty, and mutual respect right away. Part of this involves doing certain things to let the client know that your coaching space (whether in person, on the phone, or via some other type of medium) is a place of complete safety; it’s a place where they can open up without fear of being judged, criticized or labeled.

How successful you are in these beginning stages of the coaching process also depends greatly on how you choose to engage with the client. Of course, this involves setting the stage with powerful insights and questions, but a big part of it is also about knowing how to just sit back and observe, to receive the information presented to you with an open heart and mind.

In this module, you’re going to learn:

• Why building a strong relationship of rapport, fostering a relationship of open communication, and creating an environment of safety is of paramount importance to the coaching process.
• Tips and techniques that will help you build a space of trust and safety with the client.
• A simple way to evaluate your listening skills in order to discover where you are strong and where you could use some improvement.
• Techniques to quickly build rapport with your clients.
• The art of “Powerful Questions” – what they are, why they are important, and how you can use them for maximum success with your clients.
• A comprehensive list of Powerful Questions to utilize as a resource when practicing your coaching skills and working with clients.

A lot of what determines your success will take place before the coaching sessions begin. The old saying, “Success happens when preparation meets opportunity,” sums up exactly what we mean. This section is about putting in some of the “Groundwork” that must be done in order to get your coaching practice off the ground. Part of this is about creating a unique identity for your business that tells people right away why they should work with you as opposed to someone else.

Setting the stage for success also means you are doing the work to release any of your own internal conflicts that could potentially hold you back. This might require you to challenge many ideas you previously held to be true. You may have to learn to see yourself and the business of coaching in completely new ways. To become a really great coach entails discovering deeper truths about yourself and other people.

You must insist that your clients engage with you and themselves at this level of complete honesty. Otherwise, the work you do will be ineffective. Until people are truly ready to get brutally honest with themselves, the type of transformative change that we create as coaches cannot take place.

Here is what you’re going to learn in this module:

• How you can use specializing to set you apart from the competition and create a stream of clients eager to pay for your services.
• Some of the unspoken beliefs that hold many coaches back from achieving their true potential.
• The principles of “Adult Learning” and why they are important for you to know.
• An instructional tool known as the “Cone of Experience” to help you design learning processes to fit your clients’ individual needs.
• What the “Coaching Agreement” is, and how you can create one that gives you a professional image, sets expectations and boundaries, and elicits “Buy-In” from the client.
• A sample “Coaching Contract” you can use for your practice.
• The value of having each client fill out a comprehensive “Intake Form” before you begin the first session, why this tool is so indispensable, and the types of valuable information you can gather from it.
• A full and thorough intake form to use with your clients.

In this module, we’re going to cover what to do in your first coaching session with a client. You are going to discover why it’s probably much easier than you think to make this process work. A lot of times, promising coaches fail to see that they will get results with clients, as long as they continue to utilize the tools, techniques, and strategies they’ve learned in training. But what we’re going to do in this section is walk you through the basics of getting your client started in the right direction by creating a vision, establishing an objective, and laying out some steps that will move them closer to their desired outcome.

This is about putting everything in place to give your client the very best odds for achieving success. You’re going to take what they imagine in their head and lay it out in a more tangible and achievable format; you’re going to take what they’ve only dreamed of and change it into a very achievable possibility.

This is what you will be learning in this section:

• Why it’s important to both understand and rely on the process of coaching.
• The value of establishing a “Direction” with your clients as opposed to only focusing on the achievement of goals.
• The principles of setting “Goals” for maximum success – how to make sure your client creates objectives that are well formed and sensible to pursue.
• Why all of your “Action Plans” should be customized to fit the individual needs of your client.
• A script that exemplifies a very effective way to reinforce the action plan and make sure it works.
• How to make sure your client has the resources and tools they need to successively achieve what they want.
• How to break down very large plans and goals into smaller, more manageable chunks (script included).
• How to give your client’s subconscious mind a clear target through imagination.
• And much more…

In this module, we’re going to talk about different ways you can modify your client’s coaching program and, as a result, accelerate their ability to get what they want. In order to do this, you must observe what is occurring in the client’s life by looking at the results they’re getting, and from that, figure out whether learning certain skills might help them get what they want even faster.

At this point, you are also going to help your client to think of things they can do to bring both their outer world and inner desires into alignment. In other words, you’re going to create a plan they can use to maximize their environment for success. Our lives are integrated and interrelated with the lives of others. Everyone else is looking to satisfy their own needs, fulfill their own agenda, and basically take care of themselves.

Therefore, in order to have the best chance at achieving success, your client must learn to work with and around other people. This means the ideal thing to do would be to enlist their help and support in making their dreams a reality. That’s what you’re going to learn to help them do in this section.

This is what you’re going to learn in this module:

• How to help your client develop new abilities that will enable them to achieve what they want faster and easier than they may have thought possible before.
• How to determine which skill sets and aptitudes your client should work on developing first.
• Exercises that will help you identify and work on skills you need to improve to become a great coach.
• The ways in which your client’s everyday environment can become either their greatest advantage or biggest hindrance.
• Different types of environments your client may be a part of and how each one can affect them in different ways.
• How to help your clients create and sustain supportive environments that will facilitate their progress and success.
• A full breakdown and explanation of the International Coach Federation’s (ICF) “Core Competencies” and how they are used and applied to real-life coaching situations.

In this section, you’re going to learn some different coaching models that can assist you in helping your client identify their true desires, discover untapped resources, and come up with specific action steps that will move them closer to what they want. This is about working with a systematic strategy that facilitates the progression from one level of achievement to the next.

When you have a coaching model to work from, it gives you a structure that is virtually guaranteed to get results. All you have to do is insert details from the client’s life – their goals and objectives, their challenges, obstacles, and environmental conditions – and the process will reveal to them the most logical thing to do next.

In this sixth module, you’re going to learn:

• Why a systemized coaching strategy can be a great tool to help you stay on track with clients and facilitate their progress from wherever they are.
• The “FUEL” model – a four-step coaching system that helps to increase your client’s level of awareness and opens possibilities for them at the subconscious level.
• A working model of the FUEL questions and structure.
• The GROW model – a way of facilitating positive coaching conversation and to point your client’s mind in the direction of solutions.
• Sample GROW model questions to use with your clients.
• The “Personal Brilliance Model” – a strategy that gives you a deep understanding of who your client is now and who they are to become in order to achieve their objectives.
• A Personal Brilliance Model assessment you can use to evaluate your strengths for using this system.
• How to use the “Wheel of Life” – a tool that gives your client a visual evaluation of different areas of their life and illustrates where they are out of balance.

In this section, we’re going to explore the metaphoric nature of subconscious communication. The subconscious mind does not communicate in words or verbal language; those are attributes of the conscious mind. The subconscious expresses itself through images, feelings, metaphors, and analogies.

We know that virtually all problems exist at the subconscious level of the mind. It just doesn’t make sense for the client to consciously create and maintain challenges because then they wouldn’t really be challenges. The client would simply use their conscious intellect to resolve issues in the same way they made them up in the first place.

Because subconscious communication is metaphorical in nature, it means that oftentimes your client’s problems will be figurative representations of deeper issues. This means the presenting problem might not be the main problem, but merely something that symbolizes what’s going on in another area of your client’s life. In fact, the challenge your client is facing could simply be mirroring a circumstance or dynamic they saw someone else going through earlier in their life. This is where things can get very interesting and maybe even a bit strange, to say the least. However, working with metaphors is a very powerful way to facilitate effective and long-lasting change on the subconscious level.

Here is what you’re going to learn in this module:

• How your client’s present problem, their relationships, and even the language they use to describe their life can be metaphorical representations of deeper issues.
• How certain figures of speech can be literal translations of how the client is experiencing their problem.
• How cultural paradigms can reinforce beliefs and thought patterns that limit your client’s capacity for behavioral flexibility.
• Powerful tools useful in setting your clients free from the metaphorical cages they have created for themselves.
• How to give your client access to the experiences, perspectives, and resources of other people by stepping into different “Perceptual Positions.”
• The power of using other people in your client’s life as resources to help them progress.

Now we’re going to get into some of the more advanced skill sets and interventions that can become very important parts of your coaching toolkit. These are the higher-level techniques that few professional coaches really understand or know how to utilize effectively.

Everything your client does is motivated by a positive intention on some level. In this section, we’re exploring a process that will enable you to find out what that intention is and to elevate your client’s focus, to fulfill his needs at a much higher level. This highly powerful technique will enable you to facilitate incredible changes in your client’s lives.

In this module, you’re going to learn:

• A diagram and description of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – a model that explains how and under what circumstances people are internally motivated to pursue different levels of needs.
• The “Transcendence” approach – an incredibly powerful, life-changing tool that will enable you to guide your client into the fulfillment of his highest-level intention.
• A full script that demonstrates how to perform the Transcendence technique from start to finish.
• Why problems are really tools of communication and how to detect what’s being said in the client’s life on a deeper level.

In this module, you’re going to learn the techniques and strategies to increase your client’s capacity for accelerated learning. The more you can help your client learn, the more they will experience transformation in a much shorter time frame. We’ve come to understand that the relationship between time and learning is an important one to coach.

To facilitate change, you will also need to help your clients alter their behavior and transform their habits. Your clients’ habits are controlled by a part of their mind called the “Unconscious Mind,” and in this section, we’re going to give you some great tools to help them take control and start using their mind in new ways.

Here is what you’re going to learn in this module:

• Why Accelerated Learning is an essential component of your coaching skills set.
• The “Swish” pattern – an incredibly powerful, life-changing tool that enables you to help your client replace habits that don’t serve them with habits that do.
• A full script that demonstrates how to perform the Swish pattern from start to finish.
• How to help your client build “Mental Bridges” in order to cross over from one state of mind to another.
• The “New Behavior Generator” – a tool that allows your clients to rehearse their new behaviors in the safety of their imagination.
• A full script that demonstrates how to perform the New Behavior Generator technique from start to finish.
• What “Anchoring” is and how it can become one of your most powerful tools in facilitating change with your clients.
• How to use anchoring to help your clients access the resourceful states of being and bring them into different contexts.

We are all designed to be “Creators.” We’re at our happiest and most fulfilled when we are creating, designing, and developing new aspects of ourselves and our lives. As a coach, you will need to help your clients get to this place by giving them access to their own abilities as creators of their own destinies.

As you progress in your own coaching practice, you will begin to recognize the patterns of life that seem to repeat themselves over and over again. These are the deep patterns and structures that have come to define your client’s way of being. If these patterns are not working in their favor, then they are clearly going to need to be upgraded.

In this final module, you’re going to learn:

• What it really means to “Design Your Destiny” – the essence of what you’re trying to facilitate for your clients.
• How to give your clients a practical understanding of “Modeling” – a process that enables them to step into the reality of their desired future in order to create a roadmap to get there.
• A full script that demonstrates how to perform the Modeling technique from start to finish.
• What “Sleight of Mouth” patterns are and how they can become one of your most powerful tools to help clients experience transformation on a very deep level.
• How to use Sleight of Mouth patterns to help your clients reframe their perceptions and change their beliefs about what’s possible.
• A full script that demonstrates how to perform a Sleight of Mouth pattern from start to finish.
• How to prepare your client to deal with potential challenges that may arise after the coaching sessions have concluded.
• How to transition your client to a more self-reliant place where they don’t need you to help them think or make decisions for them anymore.

Leaders who want to get the most out of their teams often seek the help of a professional coach – someone who knows how to bring different personalities together and get groups of people cooperatively working toward a common goal. In this module, we’re going to explore some of the foundational principles of leadership coaching. This is what you’re going to learn:

• The basic tenets of leadership coaching – a field in which you can work to help leaders bring the best out of their employees and team members.
• About diverse types of leaders and leadership styles and how they work in different situations and for different types of organizations.
• A thorough assessment form you can use to evaluate and identify your client’s preferred “Leadership Style.”
• Different coaching models and strategies that are effective in the workplace.
• How to coach leaders in delegating effectively and successfully.

Even your average family could use a little bit of coaching from time to time. Just like any organization that brings people together toward a common goal, a good family will be one that is organized around principles that nurture and support the people involved. It is important that the family also exists for a purpose – one that the parents and children know and understand. In this module, you’re going to learn:

• What a Family Coach is, and why many households need one in today’s world.
• The foundation and fundamentals of a healthy and functional family.
• How to help your clients clearly define an ideal “culture” for their family.
• What a family “Mission Statement” is, why it is so important, and how you can help your clients create one that works.
• How to help your clients identify and create a clear sense of values for the family.
• The importance of helping your clients to establish clear and consistent “guidelines” to live by in the home.
• Worksheets you can use to help your client family come up with their own mission statement, values, and guidelines.

All of us – you, me, and everyone we meet – have to become salespeople from time to time. It doesn’t matter if you were formerly employed as a salesperson or not. When we want others to consider our ideas, want to explain the value of a certain course of action to children, or are simply trying to get a better table when going out to eat, we all make at least an occasional attempt to convince other people to do what we want. In business, however, sales is the driving force. That’s why sales coaches are so sought after for their expertise in today’s workplace. The sales process is simply another method of moving people from where they are to where you want them to be. Just like the many other methodologies we’ve covered in this course, there are several principles, fundamentals, and guidelines that make the sales process work.

In this module, you’re going to learn:

• How we are all in sales and why every single person on the planet can benefit tremendously from going through sales training.
• Why sales coaches are needed by businesses all over the world today.
• Why it makes perfect sense – for both you and your customers – to charge a premium fee for sales coaching services rendered.
• How to keep all people on a sales team unified and working in a single direction.
• A technique that will show your clients how to get their prospects working for them in order to provide the organization or salesperson with numerous pre-qualified leads.
• The art of constructing and executing an effective “pre-close” that presupposes the sale as a given, and therefore makes the need for an official close obsolete.
• How to make sure each of your clients has a unique way to stand out in their prospect’s minds.
• The importance of focusing on “process” just as much as “results.”

A wellness coach might be retained to help his clients achieve a number of different outcomes. This could include losing weight, eating better, managing time and activities more effectively, increasing productivity, exploring opportunities for recreation, achieving clarity, or any combination of services that serve to complete the client’s overall vision of health and wellness. Here’s some of what we’ll be exploring in this module:

• The definition of “Health and Wellness Coaching” and why it is such an important resource to have in today’s world.
• The effect energy levels have on your client’s life.
• How the energy we have greatly depends upon what we eat, how we engage our minds and emotions, and what we do to take care of our bodies.
• Ways to help your client put more physical movement into his life.
• A general Health and Wellness Coaching Assessment that will enable you to narrow down the real cause of your client’s difficulty.
• Three different methods to increase your client’s productivity.
• A breathing technique to help facilitate deep relaxation and peace of mind.

When people disrupt their body’s natural ability to restore itself and maintain stability, health and wellness coaches help bring them back into balance. This field is less about targeting one specific area of development and more about readjusting the client’s lifestyle to facilitate well-being throughout the system. The result of your health and wellness coaching practice should be to elevate the individual to a higher plane of existence – to ignite within the client an internal sense of recognition that he is, in fact, someone who deserves to feel good, be happy, think clearly, and operate at peak physical levels of performance. We offer a complete training course focused entirely on the art of health and wellness coaching. However, for our purposes here, we’re going to cover just enough of the main areas of this field to get you started in the market and give you the tools to work with clients right away.

Spiritual Coaching is yet another specialized field that is gaining ground in the hearts and minds of many people across the globe. People who seek a spiritual coach want to engage with reality on a higher plane; they want to connect with the universal mind and manifest miracles in their lives. Spiritual coaching has to do with helping your client receive guidance from an inner wisdom that knows more than the five senses can detect. In this module, you are going to learn:

• What “Spiritual Coaching” is and how it has taken a foothold in today’s marketplace.
• The dangers people face when they neglect to take care of nurturing their spiritual sides.
• A spiritual-care technique you can use to help your client feed his soul on a regular basis.
• A mental-imagery process you can utilize to teach your client how to go inside and locate his internal well of inspiration.
• An exercise you can use to initiate your client into the practice of mindfulness.
• The difference between a worry and a genuine concern.

This module is about helping the client access parts of himself he may have forgotten about or doesn’t realize exist. One of the tenets of NLP is “People already have all the resources that they need,” and the underlying premise of that statement is what we will be exploring in this section. Oftentimes, your client will have already exhibited a particular quality in the past that he needs to overcome in his present-day challenges. Your job will be to remind him of these abilities, to help him find ways to access those resources, and then to “map” them over to the area he needs help in.

Sometimes, however, a client will simply need to do more of something in order to realize he has the ability to succeed. In these cases, it can be useful to prescribe the problem as the answer; in other words, have your client fail more often in a short period of time in order for his mind to get the reference points it needs in order to know everything will be okay.

In this section, you’ll learn:

• How to enlist different versions of the client’s personality – who he was at different points in life – to resolve the difficulties and problems he is facing today.
• How you can help your client achieve positive results by getting him to fail more often.
• The conditions you must meet in your relationship and interactions with the client before real change can take place.
• How to uncover your client’s deepest desires.
• How to turn a burning desire into specific action steps your client can take to move forward.
• Different ways of scrambling your client’s strategy for creating the problem, so he can no longer access it in the same way.
• How to set up your coaching program so it becomes easy for your client to succeed and difficult to fail in the long term.

In this module, you’re going to learn about things you can do to make sure that the change your client wants will work in all areas of his life. This will involve getting other people to help your client succeed by showing him the benefits he is likely to gain as a result. You are also going to learn a strategy for coaching people who have trouble with letting go of negative events from their past and are afraid to move on and allow themselves to be at peace with what happened.

Sometimes you will be hired by a client who wants to achieve certain goals, but you know that helping him to do so will eventually damage his self-esteem and lead him down a destructive path. What should you do in situations like this? We will explore that topic in this section as well.

In order to become a great coach, you must know when to push forward through your own internal barriers, and know what circumstances might make it okay for you to back off. Remember that a big part of this learning process involves mastering your own psychology and becoming the kind of person who can lead others from a place of being grounded yourself in an understanding of the deeper truths we’re exploring in this course.

Here’s what you’re going to learn in this module:

• What “Ecology” is and why you must make sure to consider it when creating and implementing all interventions.
• How to help your client encourage the people around him to support his goals.
• A full script demonstrating a very flexible, multiple-technique process for coaching people who have difficulty with letting go of past mistakes and practice self-punishing behaviors.
• How to detect when your client might be driven by self-defeating motivations, and how to elegantly steer him in a more productive direction.
• How to determine when you should push forward with fearless and relentless coaching, and when it may be time to pull back a little.
• How to manage your own psychology so you are prepared to “show up” fully and completely for each of your clients.
• A powerful technique you can use to get over some of the negative events from your own past.

In this module, we’re going to discuss the importance of “state control” including what it is and how we use it to achieve the very best results possible with clients. As you already know, the state a person is in at any given moment will determine how well they can perform at whatever they’re doing.

Here’s what you’re going to learn in this section:

• How a person’s “state” will largely affect what they can and will do in any situation.
• Why depending on external state control can easily create an unpredictable roller coaster of chaotic emotions.
• The benefits of helping your client achieve internal state control.
• A technique you can use to quickly help your clients transition from unpleasant or unproductive states into a sense of inner peace, balance, and calmness of mind.
• A script that demonstrates how you can use the power of metaphor to move your clients from one state to another.

In this module, we’re going to talk about how you can uncover limiting beliefs that may be hiding inside of your client’s language about who they are and how their life works. In addition, we will cover a specific technique that will allow you to very quickly change your client’s perspective from one of limitation to one of choice. We’re also going to talk a little bit more about strategies. First, you’ll learn a powerful way to interrupt your client’s problem strategy so they can no longer access it in the same way. Additionally, we will go over the process of creating a “Recovery Strategy” that will turn your client back in the direction of “true north” if they ever fall off course.

We will also talk about some of the ways people limit their behavioral flexibility by living their lives within the boundaries of outdated scripts and coping patterns. Lastly, we will go over a technique you can use to help your client discover the numerous choices available to them in any situation.

Here’s what you’ll learn specifically in this module:

• How to analyze your client’s judgments about themselves and their life in order to uncover their deeply held beliefs.
• A technique that will enable you to quickly transform your client’s perceived limitations into wonderful possibilities for the future.
• Another powerful way to “scramble” problematic strategies.
• How to install a “Recovery Strategy” into your client’s learning process to provide a way of immediately and automatically turning setbacks into leverage points for success.
• The different ways people use patterns, habits and routines to script and run their lives.
• How to identify when your client’s problem is the result of a limiting decision they made earlier in life.
• A technique that will enable you to help your client reconsider their limiting decisions and access new ways of thinking and behaving.

In this module, we’re going to talk about how to make the transition from being an effective coach to being a successful one. You may already be a great coach, but if you can’t make a living at it, you will be forced to spend your time doing something else in order to pay the bills.

Here’s what we’ll be covering in this section:

• How to attract clients to your practice and keep them there over the long term.
• The importance of choosing a specialty area to focus on, and how to find one that’s right for you.
• How to “market” yourself in a way that’s congruent with your values and draws people to your practice.
• Some of the main considerations involved in setting your fees and pricing your services.
• How to collect fees and get paid on time, every time.
• How to keep your clients coming back for more sessions, even after they’ve achieved their initial goals.
• How to get referrals from your clients and others in your network.
• What to do when a client is not making the progress they want or is not experiencing the results they were expecting.
• How to effectively run a coaching session from start to finish.