Coaches' Corner~Mindset

There is a lot of talk of mindset and this is never more crucial than in the coaching arena.  As a coach, much of what you do impacts your client’s mindset and in fact it has to.  If you cannot sign off on this simple concept and you do not have a coach, this is a clear indication that you need a coach.  And if you are a coach, your client can benefit from the introduction to the importance of their mindset.  Developing your methodology for coaching, understanding the need for coaching and setting the goals in your business are all influenced by the mindset.  With so much riding on the mindset, you would think there was a step by step process that one could adopt so that the “mindset” problem could be taken care of.  You have all heard a list of the top sales objections and how to eliminate them, haven’t you?  Well such a thing is not possible for the mindset as it is much more individualized and situational.

I find that I have a tendency to feel accused whenever someone does something other than put on the uniform, adorn the pom-poms and scream, “Go, Victor, Go…..Yeah!!!  Victor!”  And while the cheerleaders show up less frequently than I would like, I have conditioned my mind to turn the slightest compliment to make me feel like they did show up.  Quite often, though, the opposite happens.  I enjoy spirited conversation and I was having one with my friend, Carl, just the other day.  He was once again telling me about an experience he had and how he handled it.  It was not that big a deal but he was saying that he would not just “Roll over and wet himself” but instead take charge of the situation.  Since he handled it differently than I would, I did not pass GO, did not get two hundred dollars and went straight to the part where he was calling me a sissy or something less than a man.  Here is my friend for nearly twenty years and really has showed me in more ways than one that he cares for me but I felt victimized because of something that he said.  Chances are he was expressing himself and was not attacking me at all but because of my mindset, I took it personally.  Have you had a similar experience?

During this upcoming political season, many friendships will be lost and there will be lots of fights.  The reason for this is unclear except to say that we all want to be right.  Assessment of our current president range from him doing a fantastic job to him being the worst president ever.  How can that be so when all persons sharing an opinion have lived in this country the whole time?  The reason is also simple.  Two people can examine the same data and come up with two completely different ideas of what went on.  Have you witnessed an accident along with another person and then disagreed with what happened?  Of course you have as have I.  Our minds play weird tricks on us in that whatever thought we are or were having tends to find comfort in the very next thought.  And the more thoughts we have had of a certain ilk, the more we will have.  Our minds, that is, our subconscious minds work 100% of the time to validate what we think about a particular thing.  What we think of is our own doing at first, then it happens automatically.  Quantum physics tells us that when we look at something, what we look at changes and that is why we see things so differently. 

I have had talks with folks who say they are being objective and that is not even possible.  Being objective is a card we play when we are masking our own feelings about a particular thing.  But until we can take ourselves completely out of a situation, we can never be objective.  One of the distinctions of business coaching is that of our likely story.  We all have one and it is used to explain away all the disappointments and shortcomings in our lives.  It is often subconscious and we are not present to it.  As you coach your clients, keep in mind their story about coaches and the person you are in general is impacting the effect your coaching has on them.  Make no mistake about it, you are helping them because what you do, they can never do.  The first thing you are doing for them is providing a different view than their own, you are holding them accountable and you are creating a result they could never have without you.  The point of today’s blog is to realize in your practice that everyone wants the best even when it does not look like it.  Your clients may have some resistance to your helping them and you are able to manage that.  Your mindset will determine how you manage to separate you from your own mindset.  If you cannot do that, you will not be as effective a coach as you can be.  That is reason number 1 for having your own coach.  Like your client, you can’t know what you don’t know until you find out.