Hiring A Coach: Mind These Red Flags
Today we continue our series on ensuring you hire the right business coach for your business.
As I’ve mentioned before, the quality of the coach you invest in will determine the future and success of your business. Because coaching is an unregulated industry, anyone can hang a shingle and call themselves a coach. I’m here to help you identify and hire a quality coach.
The video is right below, and if you’re short on time, I’ve included the full transcript further down the page.
Here are the red flags to look out for
I did it – now I’ll teach you how – that’s not coaching. That’s teaching. While we can get valuable tips from others’ success, your path to success will look much different than the next person’s because you have a distinct personality, way of operating, and your business may also be completely different.
If they try to pressure you into buying on the sales call – that can be very manipulative. And it would make me question their ethics and business practices.
No certification. There’s an art to coaching that one only truly understands if you’ve gone through a coach training program. It’s more than just asking insightful, powerful questions. Ensure your coach has a certification or has gone through a coaching program.
When your coach can’t remember conversations or is not keeping you focused, this can signify that the coach is working with too many people. Be sure to ask your coach how many people they take on per year.
I hope this will help you find the best coach for you!
Video transcript
Hello there everyone and welcome to this Live where I'm going to be discussing the red flags that you want to look out for when hiring a coach.
So if you're brand new to me, welcome. My name is Hanneke (Ha-nuh-kah), I am a two-time award-winning entrepreneur and a best-selling author of the book The Up Level Project.
These days, I help multiple six to seven-figure business owners to scale their business so that they can increase their profits and create more freedom, and also create team satisfaction. So basically today, what we're going to be discussing is the red flags that you want to look out for when hiring a coach.
If you’re brand new to the series, I invite you to go and look also at the other Lives and articles that I wrote in the series. Some of them are named ‘the questions that you can ask when hiring a coach’ and then also, there is one on ‘What to do before you even get on a call with coach’ and a couple of others. So you can go and check them out, just click the link in the comments. [This refers to comments on YouTube rather than here on the blog.]
Red Flag 1
If you are looking for a coach, I do currently have two slots available in my private coaching practice. So if you're interested, go ahead and come and find me.
Okay, so let's move on to those three flags that you want to look out for.
So number one, whenever you see someone who is saying "I did it and now I'm going to teach you how to do it as well", we can learn so much from other people's successes, how they got to where they are. We can get inspiration from them, however, our road to success will look very different to what someone else's road to success looks like.
So trying to duplicate and just follow verbatim what someone else is saying they are going to teach you to do number one, that's not coaching, it is teaching, and number two, they are a completely different person. They have a completely different personality, their business will work totally different from yours because of that difference in personality.
So, be a little bit on the lookout when you see people who are like "I did it and now I'm gonna teach you how to build a business exactly the same". It's also going to not let you stand out in the market, it's not to make you give you a differentiation between [you and] someone else. It can lead to you building this cookie-cutter business which none of us wants.
Red Flag 2
So the next red flag that you want to look out for is if you're on a sales call with a coach or a prospective coach and they are pressuring you and using pressuring tactics to make you make a decision on the call with them. Like "you have to join now" or whatever they may be doing to try and force you to make a decision on the call.
Now the reason why you want to look out for that is that is a little bit of a manipulation tactic and it would completely make me question this person's business ethics. And so specifically if you are hiring a coach to come and help you to grow your business and this is the foot that they're getting off on then that would really make me question their business ethics as well.
So this comes down to hiring people who are aligned with your business values and how you like to operate. The other thing is also if a coach is pressuring you to make a decision and pressuring you into working with them, then that means that that person doesn't understand or that that coach doesn't understand that a lot of people have very different personalities.
So some of us are action takers and quick starts. I'm a very quick start so I jump right in, I make decisions fast. Other people make decisions differently and they need a moment to go "Hmm, is this what I want to do?" and to check in with themselves and so, a really good coach will honor that for you during the sales conversation.
Red Flag 3
The other thing that I would also look out for is if the coach that you are interviewing has no coaching certification. But they are using the excuse, or I don't even want to call it an excuse, but they're using the language of, "Well, I've received years and years and years of coaching so I have a lot of experience in the coaching world because I received so much coaching."
So, there is an art form to coaching, and as someone who received years and years and years of coaching before she went through a coaching certification, I can tell you that there was this definite shift that happened for me where I finally understood the art of coaching.
There is a little bit of, I want to call it a formula because that is not what it is, but there's definitely an art form to it that you only understand once you've gone through a coaching certification.
So, if the coach does not have a coaching certification and specifically if they're coming in to help you in business, then I would question that a little bit. That would be a red flag for me for sure.
Red flag 4
Now, the other thing if you're working with a coach already, this one's sort of more once you've already hired the coach or you're working with a coach already. If your coach is showing up to the conversations and they are either flustered or they can't remember the conversations that you've had in the past, you find yourself saying the same thing to them and they are not recalling that you've already had this discussion, then that can show or point to the fact that the coach that you're currently working with is overworked, they're burnt out, or they're seeing too many clients.
And specifically, again, when you're hiring any coach, but when it comes to business, it's such an intimate space that you're allowing them to come into because you're literally handing your keys to your business over to this person, and so it would be quite alarming if they cannot remember what they're telling you because the decisions that you make based on the conversations that you're having will have a huge impact on the future of your business.
So, definitely make sure that you're working with someone who is showing up centered, who has a tracking system in place, and who can remember the conversations that you have had. All right, so just a quick little recap of the three or four flags. The four red flags you want to look out for when hiring your coach:
Number one, if it's someone that's saying, "I did it, now I'm going to show you how," that is not coaching, that is teaching. And I plan on doing something on the difference between coaching, teaching, and consulting next week, so stay tuned for that.
And if they're pressuring you on a sales call to make a decision in this moment, "You have to work with me now," or that would be a red flag on the ethics of this coach.
Number three, do they have a coaching certification? If not, years of experience of being coached is not the same as a certification, and it's definitely going to influence the caliber and quality of coaching that you will receive.
Then number four, when your coach is showing up to your coaching conversations and they cannot remember what your conversation of last time was or they can't help you to stay focused, then it's probably time for you to find a new coach.
All right, so I hope this was super helpful for you. Again, if you want to learn more about how to hire the perfect coach for you, then I would recommend that you go ahead and click through to the show notes and check out all the other articles about questions to ask, what to look out for when you're hiring a coach.
And if you are currently looking to start working with a coach, I do have two slots available in my private coaching practice for multiple six to seven-figure entrepreneurs who are looking to expand their business, scale in a sustainable way, and want to increase their profits, their freedom, and their team satisfaction.
All right, thank you so much for being here, and I'll catch you next time.
How can we work together?
If you liked what you read here, and you’re curious to learn more about business coaching, you might also like this other article I wrote: How can a business coach help me?
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Read my bestselling book, The Up Level Project
Join my group accountability program: Business Growth Achievers
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