The Kind of DEEP Coaching That Actually Creates Lasting Change

Welcome to the Art and Skill of Coaching podcast. Will you learn the exact skills needed to become a confident and effective coach? I'm Justin Marcus, licensed therapist and certified life coach and in each episode I'll be sharing over a decade of education and experience to teach you exactly how to be a great coach. You'll learn proven strategies and technical skills to help you elevate your coaching practice and get your clients results. Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your coaching to the next level, this podcast is here to equip you with the tools, insights and strategies to transform your clients' lives. Get ready to master the art and skill of coaching. Welcome back to the Art and Skill of Coaching where I teach you how to coach. And today we're talking about deep coaching and the difference between good coaching that stays on the surface and focuses on behavior versus great coaching that actually goes deep and focuses on the identity. Who is the client becoming? Now what makes that type of coaching harder is that it's not linear. So yes, you want structure, you want direction, you want skills and at the same time we have to create space for the process and for the client journey to unfold. And this is the duality that's present in deep coaching. And it's actually the reason that we named our certification the art and skill of coaching because we teach both the hard and soft skills needed to be a great coach and actually coach deeply and address both the behavior and who the client's becoming. Also before we dive in, this type of coaching requires something of you as the coach. In addition to your skills, you also need to have a comfort with uncertainty. You need to have trust in the process. You need to have your own emotion regulation skills, build your discernment through an informed gut and have the ability to hold the vision and belief and faith and confidence in your client and in your coaching process. Even when things start to feel messy, start to unravel, start to feel unclear, hard or uncomfortable. So we're getting into it today and I'm going to try to make this as tangible as possible. But I want you to keep this in mind as we go through today's episode. Most clients do follow a semi-predictable pattern of growth like this is the version of the hero's journey that you might have heard in the coaching industry. They live their lives somewhat normally until something calls them towards more. That could be an internal or external circumstance. It could be a bigger small calling and usually what happens is people will initially resist that call to stay safe, aka comfortable, that unknown, even if it might be desired or they might be curious, it's just too overwhelming for them so they initially resist. Until that tension builds or those reminders become more frequent or intense, and eventually some people will say yes. There are some people that say no and that's fine, but if a client does say yes and starts that journey, they'll probably end up meeting a mentor along the way aka you and this is where that messy journey usually begins. And from here, there are two distinct paths to coach. You can coach on behavior and get a result, it is quicker, it is solution focused and it's good coaching. Or you can, you don't have to and not every client wants to, you can go deeper and coach on who they're being, which is what actually drives their behavior and therefore dictates their results. It is deeper, it's messier, it's more nuanced and it absolutely requires more skill, but it's more sustainable. So let's break this down. I like to call this behavioral versus being coaching. So behavioral coaching tends to focus on fixing the problems. It stays action oriented, it aims for surface level and quick results and there's this over reliance on what are we going to do about this, right? And this often happens when clients present with low awareness or low willingness or this sense of urgency for a result. Maybe the coach themselves has a done deep work and they don't trust the process and they just rely on this work harder and you'll get a better result. Maybe the coach feels responsible for client outcomes so they try to rush the process so that they can get results and manage their own discomfort. What happens more times than not is that coaches just don't have the skills. They don't have the tools, they don't have the knowledge to go deep and help clients actually rewire those identities, those belief systems, those really deeply ingrained behaviors or habits. It's still good coaching, but being coaching is a little bit different because we take this step deeper. We do all of that and we also start to work on the level of identity. What is their self concept? What is their inner operating system? What are their thought patterns? What are their emotional set points? What are their values? What are their beliefs? We work on this level to bring up and rework or disrupt or restructure any beliefs or patterns that are no longer serving the client. We talked about this on previous podcast episodes but we just don't want to cultivate awareness. That is so frustrating for clients who hire coaches where they're like, "I know this about myself and I know this is what I should do but help me because I'm not." That's why they're hiring you. It's important to take that awareness and actually embody those insights. An embodiment isn't just a buzz word on Instagram. It's when a client takes that understanding and they become it. They just don't think it. They act in alignment with it. They just don't feel it. That's who they are. They take those insights and they make them tangible through change-belief states of being behaviors and decisions. Now, when we coach at this level, clients will start to access new parts of themselves. Each part will have new beliefs, new emotions, new capacities, new goals, new behaviors. And although this is a good thing and this is what we want, here's a little caveat that I want you to be aware of when you are coaching deep. This process often requires clients to peel back the layers of their ego, which is just the self-created version of ourselves that we show the world. Now, don't believe the TikTok therapist's okay, the ego is not always bad. It is protective and we all have it. And basically what it is, it is our conditioned self that has helped us survive or belong, which are psychologically needed. We don't want to disrupt that because then a client will destabilize. So you want to be tactful and mindful of what this process is actually asking a client to do. And so what deep coaching sounds like in terms of coaching questions is, is who are you beneath that role, that title, that behavior, that habits? Who are you becoming in pursuit of this goal? What are you ready to release? What's outdated? What do you believe that is no longer true or lacks evidence? How can you start to operate an alignment with your values and your true self versus this ego or this socially accepted version of yourself? And even though that can feel really exciting and empowering, it is simultaneously threatening as well. You want to think about it because on some level what the client is doing is they are abandoning a version of themselves or abandoning behaviors that have quote unquote worked. And psychologically speaking at a very primitive level, that is terrifying. Even when people sign up and pay for coaching. And another thing that's important to acknowledge here is that when we start to grow on this level and shift not just what we're doing, but who we're being, there are going to be people in places and environments and systems in our life that are used to us a certain way or get value of us staying the same. And so that resistance is also going to be happening simultaneously as the grief and loss and disorientation that shows up when we start to work past the ego and do this really deep work. And that's what makes it messy and why most coaches avoid it and why most clients avoid it in general. But it's important that you know how to work through it because there are proven frameworks and strategies and tools that is a coach you can learn. Now I actually teach this depth inside of the art and skill of coaching and all of our graduates know how to coach deep. But let me give you some questions that will immediately help your coaching be deeper and help your clients start to work on this level of being not just behavior. So some questions might be who am I? I know that that is a really basic question, but it's big and it's vague, which is better because it forces the clients to contemplate versus just answer. If I ask them what's 2 plus 2 they're going to say 4 they don't have to think about that. They're just regurgitating memorized information versus when I ask them who came up with the number 2. What's the meaning of math? What's the value of math? How do we know 2 plus 2 actually equals 4? What is the value of 4? These are really odd questions, but it really helps the clients go past what they quote no and actually contemplate and analyze and reflect. Other questions might be what do I value? What beliefs am I operating from and are they true? What's ending within me? What am I afraid to let go of? What would happen if I actually released this? Good and bad. Where am I living at a survival? These questions are not about fixing behavior or doing more or working harder to get a result. They're about reshaping someone's identity. So let's look at a case example here to really bring this point home. Let's say you're working with a working mother who wants to manage stress and kind of reduce some of that mom guilt she feels as being a working mom. So behavioral coaching might focus on time management, emboundries and delegation and self-care and asking for support or help in the home or being more present with her children. These are all super important things. But being coaching goes deeper in addition to everything we just addressed and maybe we ask questions also along the lines of what kind of mother do you want to be in why? Where does this guilt come from? Where do you feel like you're falling short? Where did you learn that? Is that true? What are you modeling for your children here? What fear has been the over functioning? When did that behavior start? And is it actually adaptive here? What identity are you ready to release? What identity do you want to start to actually live an alignment with? Because when identity shifts, behavior follows naturally. I'm going to say that again. When identity shifts, behavior follows naturally, which is what makes this type of coaching more sustainable. But as you can see, it also requires skill and art. It requires structure and flow, direction and surrender, your head and your heart. But when done well, it creates lasting transformations, not just temporary relief. Again, this is the type of training we do inside of the art and skill of coaching. It is psychologically grounded. It is science-based. It's trauma-informed and enrollment for our spring cohort starts soon. and even early enrollment opportunities and early bird specials. But I appreciate you for tuning into this podcast. If this episode supported you in any way, please show us some love. Leave us a five star review, share this podcast, and don't forget to hit subscribe so that you never miss another episode to help you master the art and skill of coaching.