Let’s talk about the difference between coaching & consulting, and how this distinction radically affects your client results and your business.

I’ve seen a trend happening over the last 6 or so years: coaches, teachers and healers are doing less & less coaching, teaching and healing…and more and more consulting.

In other words, practitioners have been shying away from the coaching principles of:

– asking exceptional break-through questions,
– penetrating the surface to the depths of their clients’ desires, behaviors & patterns,
– getting underneath the nitty-grittys of client goals to uncover authentic visions,
– supporting clients to befriend their fears & resistances
– truly removing blocks & obstacles with their clients
– co-creating transformational awareness & self-love
– creating long-lasting learning

Instead, it seems that many practitioners these days are relying more & more solely on their expertise in their field: giving advice and “how-to” information on marketing or relationships or health & wellness or sales or career change.

Let’s be clear that this is consulting, not coaching.

Consultant [k uh n-sul-tnt]: a person who gives professional or expert advice.

Coach [kohch]: a person who prepares another for mastery, transformation or achievement.

Now, here is where this gets important:

One reason for some of the “consult-more-than-coach” phenomenon is because somehow the craziness of the online marketing industry has given us the message that as coaches, we need to serve up solutions quickly in order for prospects to buy from us.

There are too many individuals who entered the coaching and healing field truly desiring to transform others, to create deep awareness for others, and to impact others beyond one particular project or goal…

…but somehow ended up teaching surface methodology or formulaic information or simply just sharing with their clients how they achieved their own success.

When you do this, you might be able to help clients achieve certain goals, but you definitely don’t impact your clients on the heart & soul level that completely changes their lives.

And, chances are that if you are relying mostly on consulting, your work feels a little empty and surface-oriented. You’re not going as deep as you’d like to be going, you’re maybe getting a little bored by giving out the same advice over & over again, you’re longing for more magical & a-ha moments with your clients.

The antidote to all this? Consult less and coach more in your client sessions!

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong at all, whatsoever, with giving advice and how-to information. I do a ton of consulting with my clients. I share my expertise and acquired wisdom with them all the time.

And it is very valuable to my clients.

However, I do it in beautiful balance with real, authentic, powerful coaching.

Because the truth is that the BEST results are achieved when you combine your unique expertise & advice with masterful coaching skills.

When you combine consulting and coaching:
–you get crystal clear on your clients’ deepest desires and your expertise can be even more personalized
–you share your methodology, and then know how to walk your clients through their fear when they get stuck executing the methodology
–you create deep inner awareness & transformation while also supporting your clients to achieve their greatest goals

It is a total, baloney, BS online marketing myth that in order to succeed as a coach you must deliver the “solution” right away – whether you work 1:1 or with groups.

Real clients – the clients that really want to be impacted on a heart, mind and soul level – know that true transformation takes time and that real learning and goal-achieving requires deep learning, not surface solutions.

The practitioners that are remembered the most by their clients – and the practitioners who manifest the most referrals and re-signs – are the ones that give fantastic information, but consistently go beyond advice-giving into creating spaces for valuable self-reflection and inner change.

If this conversation is piquing your interest, here’s an assignment for you: over the next week, track your client sessions, classes and interactions and begin to notice what percentage of the time you are consulting and what percentage of the time you are coaching and see how that’s working for you.