Super Life Coach To The Rescue – Or Not

• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

I had a phone call the other day from a lady looking for life coaching. She asked me what I could do for her and I responded with “Well what do you want me to do for you?”  She then set off listing the things in her life that she would like to change or improve on. If I had a list of what I do most often with clients it was on that list. In fact at one point I thought it may be a set up by a friend or somebody just wiling away the day.

If you have ever worked in outside sales you may well have used the cringe worthy question “If your phone were to ring right now and it was an ideal client enquiry, what would the person at the other end say?” I was supposed to use that in one job I had many years ago and steadfastly refused other than when my manager was with me of course, but that’s another story.

So anyway, this lady went off on one and listed the following things: I am going from memory as I don’t make notes during consultations so I may have missed one or two but this is the gist:

Procrastination issues
Stress management problems
Unhappy in her career
Trouble sleeping
Anxious about the future
Self-limiting beliefs (she didn’t actually call it that but that was what she was getting at, I forget exactly how she explained it)
Beats herself up
And here is the coup de grass thrown in almost as an after thought:

She was fearful of her boss.

We chatted for some while and I said I did all those things even dealing with peoples fears. I don’t actually list that on my website because although I like doing it from time to time, I also like to build up relationships, and typically things like fear of flying only take one session to deal with.

In retrospect I think I blew it right there and then by claiming to be able to cure her fears. I’m sure she thought I believed I was some sort of Super Life Coach that could cure the world of all its ills whilst balancing a live alligator on my head and eating a bag of skittles.

She didn’t sign up.

I reflected on this afterwards and now know what I did wrong. It wasn’t claiming to be able to do those things; it was doing so before I had built up any real level of rapport and trust. That way when I delivered the message she was probably dubious at best, and highly suspicious at worst. Oh well, it was an interesting learning experience and not one I’ll need to be go through again, not for a while anyway.