Ep #23: Innovating What Coaching Accountability Looks Like

If you've ever heard that you're supposed to, quote, hold a client accountable, and you felt this dread in the pit of your stomach, I'm with you on that. Traditional old school accountability coaching, it's heavy, it's masculine, and it's often very parental in its energy. It has nothing to do with the kind of coaching that you want to be offering.

You definitely do not want to be the one carrying the responsibility for your clients, but you do want to see them take action. Of course, you want them to achieve all of these incredible results that you know in your heart they're capable of.

I'm Kendall. In today's episode, I'm sharing with you a fresh, innovative take on accountability, why you want to let it go, and what you want to include in your coaching instead so that clients do get results, and the dynamic between you and your clients feels clean. I'm also going to share with you four key skills you need as a coach so that you can take a powerful stand for your client’s success without feeling energetically burdened in any way. 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. Here we are together. I am delighted to be here sharing space with you. I have been so super focused here behind the scenes putting out my new free download, 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client. If you've not downloaded this yet, oh my gosh, I so want to get this into your hands. I will put a link for it in the show notes.

Plus, we've been really busy getting ready for a brand new free workshop starting next week, as of the time of recording this podcast, it's titled Coach Edge: The 1% Shift That Opens The Door to You Coaching Women Entrepreneurs. If you're in my community, you're already included in the workshop, and you already have received the workshop access information.

If you're not in my community, just go ahead and download that 31 Questions free download, and you will be in my community.

We are doing so many new things this first quarter of the year, new free downloads, new workshops, new ways of approaching my marketing, new trainings that I've already created like the mastering many conversations, which yes, I will link to in the show notes.

Now all of these new fun ways to bring the very best coach training to you, whether it's for free, or it's in one of my coach training certifications. Everything I create is in service to my vision of giving women like you genuine money power. When I look at all of the projects that we've already completed and just the first seven weeks of the new year, what I'm struck by is how it's not accountability that created these, its intention.

That's the inspiration behind what we're talking about in today's episode. We're talking today about accountability because I see so many coaches get this wrong. Getting it wrong leads to creating a really messed up dynamic between you and your clients. It creates energetic heaviness, which can unconsciously prevent you from stepping fully into expanding your business, and getting accountability wrong will definitely keep you from elevating your coaching into that light, effortless, lovely, connected feeling that you want.

Now in full transparency, I can share that, as a client, I often love accountability. I love knowing exactly what I've declared I'm going to do. I love having a witness for my progress. I love celebrating micro milestones every step of the way. But as a coach, I do not love accountability at all.

I don't want to feel like a nag. I don't want to feel like a parent. I am not my client’s keeper. I don't want to set up a dynamic where my client feels that they need to check in with me. I don't want my clients to feel like they have to be accountable to me. That's a form of pedestaling, which is a different topic for a different day. Let's just say that I don't want my client to put me on a pedestal because that is going to ultimately backfire. Traditional old school accountability coaching does just that.

So given that I have this love/hate relationship with accountability, and given that I teach women how to be incredible, powerful, masterful coaches, of course, I had to create a different approach to accountability. I created a different strategy for how to coach my clients to take the steps that they need to take without putting me in the position of being the guardian of their actions. I am not the guardian of their actions. They are. I am here to hold them as powerful no matter what. I am the champion of their vision, which means I'm holding their vision front and center for them. I'm coaching them on achieving it.

So let's dive in and take a closer look at number one, what accountability actually is, number two, accountability and your role as a coach for women entrepreneurs. Then I'm going to give you four specific skills that you need as a coach in order to create results with clients without being sucked into the messy dynamic of accountability.

All right, number one, what accountability is. This is actually really simple. Accountability is the acceptance of responsibility, and that, my beautiful soul, is for your client to do, not you. Ownership of achieving results is always with the client. That's why your role is not to, quote, hold someone accountable. That's parental. They're not giving their power away to you as their coach or to anyone else. They are owning their power by honoring their word to themselves.

Because without that, there's going to be incompletion. Energetically, incompletion creates a lack of self-trust and overwhelm. So when done well, accountability works because your client feels that self-worth and self-trust. They feel ownership of their experience, they feel empowered, and they get things done towards that vision they have for themselves and what they want.

Okay, so accountability is the acceptance of responsibility. That's your client role, which means number two, your role in the accountability equation. So if you look under the surface at what accountability is, which is what I did. I looked under the surface and said what is this really about?

What I discovered is that really, it's someone desiring a witness to them being on their path of achieving what they want. It's someone being a witness to what the client is thinking, taking action on, and believing about that result that they want. You are their witness. You are the one who holds their vision clearly for them because they will forget it, or they will start to think that they can't achieve it.

Specifically, you are witness for what they choose to do. You are witness for what they are thinking. In other words, their beliefs. You are a witness for where they are getting pulled off course. You are a witness for where they may be doubting themselves or losing faith. You are a witness for how far they've come. You are a witness for the micro-milestones they've achieved. You are a witness for when they cross the finish line.

As a witness, your client stays focused. They don't quit on themselves. They celebrate all of those micro-victories along their path towards achieving their goal.

So you're asking your clients to do things that are new for them. That's the basis of coaching, right. That takes time and consistency. It's so easy for a client to slip out of doing it, especially when it feels hard or it feels difficult or maybe even a little boring, right? It's easy for a client who is right in the middle of their path towards the result to have their stuff come up and to forget how incredible and capable they are. Your role as a coach is to coach them through that.

No one wants to babysit clients, and you definitely do not want clients who need constant hand holding, but follow through, it doesn't happen by chance. It happens when you are that powerful witness for your client. Your role is not to believe their doubts, not to believe that they should quit on themselves, not to believe the narratives that are inevitably going to come up for them. You're a coach. You stand for your client success. I go back to my core paradigm that is the foundation of all the work that I do. It's that you are there to hold them as powerful no matter what.

So, for example, let's say you're coaching women entrepreneurs, which is the best niche on the entire planet, and what my certifications trainings focus on giving you the skills to do. So yes, I'm a little biased. So you're coaching a woman entrepreneur, and you have these amazing coaching sessions. Your clients are lit up. They're super thankful, but they don't do the work. They don't follow through. They let things get in their way.

Then you think it’s you who failed them. Trust me, you did not fail them. What most likely happened is that you've missed having an effective, simple way to create that accountability without feeling like a nag, without feeling like a parent, without feeling like you're, quote, checking up on someone and without the energy between you and your client getting weird.

So let's go into three basic skills you need as a coach in order to be a powerful witness for a client achieving their goals. Skill number one, holding vision. This includes seeing what's possible for your client beyond what they see for themselves. Honestly, this is one of the most exciting and fulfilling reasons why you coach, right? I mean, this is the piece of coaching I absolutely adore. Holding vision can also mean holding their vision for them when they've let it lapse a bit because they're right in the middle of it, and it can be hard to see it for themselves. They just lose sight. That's all.

Skill number two, I talk about this all the time, passionate detachment. This is caring deeply about your clients, that's the passionate part, and giving them the space to grow and the space to create results in a way that's ultimately best for them. That's the detachment part. So passionate detachment is about you not overly taking responsibility for a client. Remember that you own your coaching, they own their results.

All right, skill number three, using a coaching methodology so that you stay coaching and not slip into parenting or nagging or whatever. The method that I teach, the methodology I teach, inside of certification is my courageous coaching method.

Now, let me give you an example because I know you love examples. With old school style accountability, you'll likely end up asking these flat, boring parental kinds of questions like what did you get done this week towards your goal? Oh, my God. That's just a sad question to ask. So instead, you want to presence their vision, presence their goal, then ask questions that helps cement their self-concept and beliefs about their ability to reach that goal.

So for example, let's say I'm coaching a woman entrepreneur, and let's say we're coaching on boundaries and clearing up money leaks in her business. So instead of just asking her what she got done, which is not what I'm going to ask. I'm going to say to her something like I know your vision for your business is that you feel really good about the boundaries that you've created for handling client issues.

That your key goal towards that vision is to clean up the boundaries with three specific clients so that you're creating all that space you want, and so that your business feels easier to run. So tell me all about what boundaries you created with these three clients? How are you feeling about that now?

Now, this is a much more open ended way of asking how’d it go. If my client tells me she didn't even have a conversation with any of her three problem clients, then we're going to coach on that but not from a place of why not. Instead, I'm going to coach from a place of her self-concept that yes, she is someone who can have those tough conversations because that's part of her achieving her vision.

That leads me to skill number four, aligning a client's actions with their vision. So this is instead of asking what they want to be accountable for. So I don't ask what do you want to be accountable for, which I used to ask in the early days of my coaching. Every time that question crossed my lips, I felt awful. It felt so parental. I had this very overseeing type of energy to it. I just would think why am I asking this question? This question is awful. That's part of why I changed my methodology here.

So I'm going to coach my client to create action steps and then reflect those actions back to them. So, for example, let's take that client example from a moment ago. We would have been coaching on why creating clear boundaries is important to her. Then I'm going to link her reasons to herself concept by reflecting back to her. The structure for how I reflect that back is going to sound like this. As someone who has clear boundaries with her clients.

So in this example, it would be as someone who has clear boundaries with her clients, are there any clients that you have right now that you don't have those clear boundaries with? My client is going to tell me she has that issue, of course, and then I can easily and elegantly coach her as an action step what she wants to do to clear up those boundaries. It's simple, it's easy, it's elegant coaching that leaves the client feeling powerful, aligned, and brave.

Learning how to create accountability from the perspective of witnessing, not parenting, is just one of the dozens and dozens of coaching skills that you learn inside of certification.

So to wrap up, you need to know how to coach your client to align their actions with their vision and goals. This is you creating accountability with your client, not for your client. If you're ever feeling energetically heavy or it's caretaking, or parental when checking in with a client, that is a sure sign that you've slipped into old school accountability coaching, which is not what women in today's climate want. It is not what elevates you or elevates your coaching.

Think of yourself as a witness. Stay in passionate detachment and coach on aligning your client’s actions with their vision. Then, guess what, accountability, it will take care of itself.

Now if you're looking for inspiration, be sure to check out that new free download that I have for you 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client, and I've gone ahead and put a link for it in the show notes. Inside this download, it is not just a random list of questions. I actually outlined for you four distinct styles of coaching questions and why each works exceptionally well to create all that transformation you desire for your clients.

All right. As always, I am so honored to share space with you here inside this episode. If you feel inspired to leave a five star review, that would mean the world to me. All right, thank you, my beautiful coach. Have a fantastic week as a coach, and I will see you 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.