Ep #21: Oops! Did Your Needs Slip Into Your Coaching Sessions?

As a coach, if you've ever completed a coaching session and felt like you could have done better, you could have asked a more perfect question, or you wished you had taken the coaching in a different direction, then that's probably because you've been trying to get your needs met in the coaching session with the client. I've seen a lot of coaches derail their confidence simply by not clearly identifying what their core driving needs are and then looking for ways outside of the coaching sessions to get those needs met.

I'm Kendall. This episode is for you if you want to discover how to show up for your coaching clear, clean, and empowered in your energy. Free of any lurking neediness and feeling amazing about your coaching after the session is completed. It's all here for you in this episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Money Coach School Podcast. To really excel at coaching women, you have to be skilled, confident, and even fearless at money coaching. If you're passionate about women holding genuine money power and love supporting women entrepreneurs, then this is the show for you. Now, here's your host, money feminist Kendall SummerHawk.

Hello, beautiful coaches. I am so glad you're here with me today. I just finished leading a group coaching call for the students in my Money Breakthrough Business Coach certified coach training, and a topic came up that I knew right away I wanted to bring to you as well.

I absolutely love the group coaching space that we include with certification because that's where I get to geek out on all things coaching. I get to support everyone who's on their certification path. Also those who have already become certified because we have an open space. We have women in there who just came into certification like a week ago, and we have women in there who got certified months and years ago. So it's just really yummy mix, and everyone is just so supportive of each other. They're celebrating every victory. They're being right there for someone when they need that support and encouragement.

Apparently, me keeping the space open for everyone and not charging for it because it's just included with the initial certification tuition. Apparently, it's an unusual thing. From a money making perspective, yes, I get it. I could be charging everyone to stay in once they reach a certain number of months, or when they reach the completion of their certification. But I decided not to because lord knows I love making money. I love it so much. I also so highly value connection and goodwill.

Connection and goodwill are both values that I realized early in my coaching business were nonnegotiable. I actually call them north star values because I make sure to design every aspect of my business, from the big decisions like how I structured my certification trainings and offers, to the small daily decisions like how we handle any type of situation that comes up with a client or student.

So this is one place where I can immerse myself in talking about the art and the skill of coaching, where I can answer all of their questions, and I can support my students and graduates in designing their coaching business to give them the maximum money, time, and energy freedom. Which leads me to today's topic, which is all around one of the most important elements that will elevate your coaching, or not depending on if you embrace what I'm about to share.

So what happened for me was early in my coaching business, I noticed that after every session, and often inside a coaching session, I was feeling really insecure. I was really hard on myself, telling myself I could have done more, I could have asked better questions, I could have coached harder. I was taking on responsibility for my client’s feelings and their state of being, which I just covered in a recent episode, episode number 19, which I'll link to in the show notes. Or you can go to themoneycoachschoolpodcast.com/19.

So here I am having this dual experience of, on the one hand, absolutely loving coaching. I mean totally, truly loving coaching, which I still love to this day. On the other hand, being so hard on myself, so caught up in perfectionism and self-criticism that it was emotionally painful. I would catch myself saying things at the end of the session to the client like did you get what you needed? Which on the surface sounds helpful, but it was really coming from a place of insecurity. It was asking my client, in essence, to validate me as their coach.

Every time those words came out of my mouth, did you get what you needed, I would cringe inside. The energy from the client, yeah, it was a little weird too. It's like they too felt that they were being asked to give me a positive review on the spot. It definitely did not keep the coaching space clean.

So what completely changed that experience for me and massively up leveled my coaching wasn't any particular light bulb moment that I remember. I think what it sprang from was really staying connected to my money word of the year. That was the catalyst for the realization that I'm about to share with you.

By the way, if you've not yet chosen your money word of the year, you have absolutely have to check out my money word of the year free training. I'll link to it in the show notes. Even if you have chosen your money word of the year, definitely check out the checklist that you can download to support you in using your money word of the year in so many powerful, impactful ways in your business.

All right, so the realization. It was that I was expecting my needs to be met by my client. Even worse, to have those needs met inside of each and every coaching session. What I discovered is that if you're trying to get your needs met through your clients and through your coaching sessions, then you are going to be in trouble.

I discovered the hard way that trying to get your needs met through your coaching clients and inside of your coaching sessions can make for very unhealthy relationships with clients. It causes neediness, which feels awful, right? It causes projection. It can create codependence, yuck. It definitely fosters people pleasing, yuck, yuck. It can cause you to hold back and not challenge your client.

So all of these things that have no place in creating a powerful, fully actualized, clean coaching space and coaching relationship with your clients. Basically, trying to get your needs met in the coaching session is the opposite of embodying passionate detachment, which is one of the core philosophies I teach inside of certification.

It is the secret to creating transformational results with your clients. It's the secret to never experiencing burnout in your business or overly taking responsibility for your clients. You want to be showing up for your clients with empathy and intuition and a clear sense of you being in your coaching strengths powerful and relaxed.

So having that realization that I was mucking up the coaching space trying to get my needs met, that was a real eye opening moment. Now, you may be asking okay, Kendall, how do I prevent from making that same mistake myself? So the how to is actually really simple. Two steps.

Step one is you have to identify which needs are most important to you at this time in this season of your life because these things will change as you grow and develop as a human being, right. So here's a list of 10 needs. I want you just to notice, as I list them out, which one or two feel like the ones you are most wanting to get met.

Starting with the need to be liked, the need to be right, the need to be helpful, the need to be wanted, the need to be needed, the need to be significant, the need to be approved of, the need to take everything personally, the need to be angry or resentful, and the need to always be doing.

So for me in the beginning at that time when this was happening, it was definitely the need to be needed and the need to be approved of. What this was covering up, I'll be honest with you, was insecurity and also a core desire for safety. Now, whatever one or two needs are most common for you, please don't judge yourself. You're human. As humans, we have needs. I'm not saying you can't have needs. That would be ridiculous.

What I am saying is that you want to recognize and appreciate the core one or two needs that have been unconscious drivers for you. So that instead of unconsciously trying to get those needs met from your clients or from what happens in each coaching session, you can make a different choice.

Which leads me to step number two. Consciously get your needs met outside of your coaching sessions, and do not place that responsibility onto your client. That is not their role in your life. So, for example, my need to be needed was making me miserable. Actually, it was creating needy clients. Clients who were demanding, who were never satisfied with the coaching. It's like no amount of coaching or breakthroughs ever could measure up to what they expected.

When I realized my need to be needed was running my coaching in a really unhealthy way, I changed my focus. I decided to do the internal work to start releasing the strength that that need had on me, the power, the grip that it had on me. I switched my focus to creating clear boundaries in my business. I started holding the experts dictation that my clients were self-empowered. That I valued independence, and I valued my clients and learning how to be self-led.

The biggest shift was I stopped valuing being needed. Like I just said, you know what? That's not important to me anymore. Even though at the moment it still felt really important. I started saying to myself no, I'm no longer available for that. Instead, I started valuing being a leader. I became acutely aware when I started feeling insecure, and in those moments would quietly, to myself, remind my brain that I was on a path forward of fostering clients who are independent thinkers and action takers.

What shifted over time, with practice, was I came to my coaching sessions already feeling fulfilled. I didn't come to a session as an empty cup, expecting my client to provide that fulfillment for me. So fast forward to today, I've now coached thousands and thousands of people through all of my coach certifications, my live online master classes, in workshops, retreats, and in group coaching programs.

Regardless of client results, I find coaching incredibly fulfilling no matter what. I show up for coaching feeling whole as a coach, no matter what might be going on in my personal life, because I'm showing up with passionate detachment. I'm showing up with intense curiosity about my client. I'm showing up with beliefs about my client and about myself as a coach that are not based on neediness. They're based on connection. Connection with spirit, connection with God, connection to my intuition, and an unwavering belief that I am an incredible coach.

So let me circle back for a moment to you getting your needs met. You definitely want to consciously look for specific ways to have your needs fulfilled outside of your coaching with clients and even outside of your business as a whole. Now, it's not that your business doesn't give you fulfillment or satisfaction or joy. It's that you're not expecting your business to do that for you. The more you have your needs met outside of your business, the more you're going to love your business as this incredible thing of beauty that you're creating.

So what is one way to get that need you chose earlier in this episode met outside of the coaching session? This is a moment to be really specific and clear. What I found was that the more specific I was about how I would get my needs met, the more powerfully aligned I began to feel in my life. The more my needs stopped being an unconscious driver, often driving me in an unhelpful direction, let's be honest. Instead, the more conscious and at ease and at peace and at choice and how to get those needs met.

So I want to go into our wrap up here, giving you five quick tips for keeping your needs out of your coaching sessions because that's not where they belong. Tip number one, we've already talked about this, but I want to give you a couple of self-coaching questions in addition. So tip number one, don't try to get a need met in the coaching session by the client. It's not your clients responsibility to take care of you or to make sure your needs are fulfilled. It's not about you. It's about them.

I've been saying this almost since day, one of my business 22, 23 years ago. It's not about you. It's about them. Pour your energy and attention and intention into your client and be fully in service to your client. The self-coaching question that you can ask is was I fully in service to my client today? Yes or no? All right.

Okay, tip number two, do self-coaching after the session. You can evaluate your coaching sessions using the feedback model than I am famous for. I created this, I don't know, like 15/18 years ago. It's so incredibly simple. You ask yourself two questions. You ask first what is one thing that you did well? Like really acknowledge what's one thing that you did so, so well inside that coaching session?

The other question is what is one thing you will do differently the next time? That's it. Those two simple questions. This is going to keep you out of looking to your client for approval. You are in control of your self-esteem. Your client is not in charge of that. You are.

All right, tip number three. Debrief with a colleague or a coaching buddy. So inside of certification, everybody buddies up so they have somebody, they often have more than one buddy because they're free to have as many as they want. So they buddy up to share coaching, swap coaching, get feedback.

It's really helpful to debrief your coaching with a buddy, letting your buddy know what you did well, what you would do differently the next time, but you can also share where you may have gotten triggered by your client or where you got caught in a client’s story, and sharing the coaching skill that you are wanting to practice and how that went. So you can ask yourself what can I celebrate about that session? What skill did I learn or practice?

All right, tip number four, keep working on the skill of coaching. Inside of certification, I asked students to choose one specific skill from either the courageous coaching method that they're learning, which is my coaching framework, or from the done for you content that they're learning how to deliver.

So my coaching questions for you are where can you challenge yourself in your coaching this week? Where can you challenge your clients this week? This is how you're going to get masterful at coaching. You're going to collapse time around gaining that mastery meaning that it accelerates. You achieve mastery faster.

All right, tip number five, last tip. Focus on the core principle that the client always gets what they came for regardless of timing or the presence of immediate evidence. All right, let me say that, again. This is so incredibly important. The client always gets what they came for regardless of timing or the presence of immediate evidence. I could do a whole podcast episode on this. Maybe I will.

So what this means is that the client always gets what they came for whether it happens inside that particular session, or it happens for them later. Because coaching is generative, meaning things you coach on today with a client may take some time to percolate. I mean, people can have an epiphany and a radical transformation in an instant. But most of the time, that's not the case. Most of the time great coaching happens inside the session, and the transformation starts to percolate. That's why I say it's generative. It grows over time, but it does happen.

So it may not always be apparent to you in the moment of the coaching session. That's okay. This is where you can release the need for that approval or validation and trust that your client will get what they came for no matter what. All right, super. I hope this episode was eye opening for you. Be sure to check out my money word of the year downloadable checklist. It’s linked in the show notes.

Thank you for connecting with me here. I am so excited for us to share space again next week in our next episode. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you follow so you never miss an episode. Also, I would so love and appreciate if you would leave a 5-star review. Your review supports women just like you in discovering all of the juicy tips and insights I’m sharing here on how to coach women on money.

And if you want to learn how to excel at coaching women on money, definitely go to KendallSummerHawk.com and check out the wealth of money coach trainings that we have for you. Thanks so much for being part of this money coaching movement and for tuning into the show every week.