Everyone Needs a Coach

The Peter Principle states that we’re all susceptible to the inevitable fate of failing to meet the high expectations of our organizations and those expectations we put on ourselves. As we rise in all areas of our lives, we enter new territory that will require skills and/or experiences we may not possess. As Marshall Goldsmith so eloquently put it, “what got you here, won’t get you there.”

Aiming for the next rung of any ladder in our sights requires considering how we will condition ourselves for that journey. I’ve yet to hear any gold medal athlete brag that they trained themselves. Homage is always paid to the coach who was charged with laying down the work plan that would allow them to increase their skills and acknowledge and work around their weaknesses in order to achieve their best. Getting to gold medal status in our business and personal lives requires similar effort. A guided plan paired with constructive and instructive encouragement from a coach.

According to the International Coach Federation, the worldwide revenue produced by coaching is $1.5 billion (USD) per year and growing. It seems the word is out on the value coaching can bring to our personal and professional lives, so the next question is: How do you select the coach that has the right qualifications to get you from here to there? Here’s the thought process that could get you a win along with some personal insights from my recent selection of the coach pushing me through my wins.

It all boils down to relationships: Rapport is probably the most important factor to effective coaching. Next to the relationship with your significant other and certain family members, this is going to be the most intimate relationship in your life. If you can’t see yourself getting vulnerable with this person, think twice. Do your due diligence and interview more than one person. As you do, pay attention to the following in your initial contact and decision making phase. How are their interpersonal skills upon first contact? What does your gut instinct about this person tell you? How are their verbal and nonverbal cues matching up? Are they listening to you? Do you feel accepted in their presence? How vulnerable are they with you? Do you have similar value sets?

I didn’t even know I was looking for my coach Doc Barham. We were connected through social arbitrage by a mutual friend who thought we should know each other. After our first interaction, I remember thinking, I like the way he thinks. When he invited me to an initial discovery session a couple of months later, we very easily shared conversation and hit on common values, passion points, and mutual interests. By the end of the hour, I knew without a doubt that this was the guy to guide my journey.

Do your homework:Educating yourself on the nuances in coaching credentials, fees and styles will be important to your selection process and prepare you to make the best decision for your goal, budget, and time expectations.

Some sites that can help in your learning, research, and referral process are:

Peer Resources
International Coach Federation
CoachInc.com
Lifecoach.com

One added value I benefit from with Doc’s service is connection and collaboration with his other clients. In a recent roundtable we all answered the question; “How did you find Doc?” Our answers ranged from introduction, to television, to Yelp.

Ask the right questions: Your coach should be willing to answer your questions directly and openly and perhaps even open up a bit about themselves. Ask questions about their depth of experience, qualifications, skills, and procedures. Here are some examples of questions to consider: How many clients have you coached, and how many are currently active clients? Tell me about your specialty and how long you’ve been practicing that specialty? What qualifies you to help facilitate my situation? What’s the average time you work with your clients? What does a typical coaching session include? Do you belong to any professional organizations? What ethical code do you adhere to in your practice?

In my experience, if the coach is on their game, you won’t have to ask many of these questions. I received all of this information and more (proactively) in my first session with Doc, all in service of making me feel as comfortable as possible with his capabilities.

Select for experience that meets your needs: The type of experience you’ll need your coach to possess will depend on your desired outcome. Experience in your field may not be the most essential element to consider. If your goal is specific to an industry benchmark, you may need someone who has ascended to that height and is prepared to give you the roadmap. However, everyone who’s gotten to where you want to be won’t necessarily have the interpersonal and/or emotional skills to coach you successfully. Perhaps those individuals would serve you greater as mentors, Lifelines or as part of your learning faculty.

A great coach will encourage you to use and develop your personal skills and expand your network to pull in the resources you need to achieve. For example, one of the “aha moments” in my decision to hire Doc had to do with his breadth of hard and soft skill knowledge outside of my professional domain. Skills I knew would greatly complement those I already possessed and/or evolve them to new levels.

Here there or anywhere: Location fortunately is no longer a deciding factor to meet your coaching match. Skype works wonderfully for those moments when you feel you need face to face contact and technology has made it easier and more efficient than ever to not only conduct those hour or more sessions but also to keep in touch between sessions. Follow-up contact and/or additional content via text, instant message, or through social media channels should be viewed as a rich supplement to your learning process and added value to your coaches’ services.

You will have work to do continuously: Effective coaching is not a couch session where you get to verbalize all your challenges while someone tells you what you should consider and then sends you on your way. The goal and marker of a great coach is that you leave each session with new skills to apply to resolving your own problems. Yes, that means you have to put in the work to facilitate your own change. Their charge is to provide options, tools, and resources for you to base decisions on that will propel you in the direction you desire. When does the work end? It’s really up to you but, consider the beginning of this article. As you evolve, the need for new skills to navigate new terrain will arise.

It comforts me when Doc speaks fondly of the coaches he employs in his life journey. Knowing that he is still pursuing new levels of greatness not only means more long-term value for me, but encourages me to continue discovering new ways to get better at being me.

 

All About Success – Doc Barham, LA’s Secret Weapon of Personal Mastery and Transformation

They all know Doc Barham, Hollywood’s leading life coach – entrepreneurs, executives, artists, scholars, athletes, actors, and more; in business, entertainment, sports, medicine, and more; in Los Angeles, the United States, and around the world.

His clients are leaders at Fortune 500 companies, the Oprah Winfrey Network, Oprah.com, Zappos.com, NASA, the NBA, the NFL, and more. In fact, in light of his reach and notoriety, “life coach” hardly covers everything Doc Barham offers and achieves with his clients.

To those who know him and his gifts, Doc Barham is a consultant and a transformation expert, as well as a speaker and author. Best of all, his talents and gifts are available to anyone who wants to better their life and reach the next level.

The term “life coach” has become more common in everyday conversation, but it doesn’t begin to cover what Doc Barham offers. Instead, he specializes in transformational coaching — that is, a process for getting you from where you are to where you want to be, whether personally, professionally, or romantically.

An Interview with Doc Barham by the American Health Journal

Master of All Trades

Doc Barham’s mission is to let his clients learn to adapt to challenging situations, and from there, they can thrive. At its simplest, with transformational coaching, clients learn how to deal with stress, taking the bad variety that impacts you negatively and turning it into a rejuvenating force. Of course, Doc Barham can expand on this principle in a personal session, but it’s a start. The results speak for themselves, as the long list of advocates who’ve sought Doc Barham’s expertise can attest.

Clients benefit from Doc Barham’s extensive training and experience in corporate, entertainment, and private industry. Entertainers and those in the public eye will appreciate Doc Barham’s early days as a standup comedian and stage hypnotist. Along the way, he pursued further education in scores of workshops and seminars in personal growth and development, picking up certifications in a dozen therapeutic modalities. Doc Barham combined these threads — the hours logged as a public speaker/entertainer and his private quest for spiritual advancement — and started a new career, working with executives and enterprises on how to reach their goals.

Today, Doc Barham is a Certified Master Coach, Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, BCIA-certified Neurofeedback and Biofeedback clinician, Reiki Master, and Chi Gong practitioner. He is also certified as a trainer for both The Institute of Heartmath and The Monroe Institute.

He is an in-demand and award-winning speaker, as well as a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines, both in print and on the Internet. He’s also a frequent guest on TV shows, including Extra TV’s Lifechangers, Spike TV’s 1000 Ways to Die, and AP’s Hollywood Trends Report, and he will soon be seen as a series regular on an upcoming reality television show.

How His Expertise Can Help Transform Your Life to be Optimal

Doc Barham’s mission is to let his clients learn to adapt to challenging situations, and from there, they can thrive. At its simplest, with transformational coaching, clients learn how to deal with stress, taking the bad variety that impacts you negatively and turning it into a rejuvenating force.

Of course, Doc Barham can expand on this principle in a personal session, but it’s a start. The results speak for themselves, as the long list of advocates who’ve sought Doc Barham’s expertise can attest.

Clients benefit from Doc Barham’s extensive training and experience in corporate, entertainment, and private industry. Entertainers and those in the public eye will appreciate Doc Barham’s early days as a standup comedian and stage hypnotist.

Well-rounded Excellence and Experience

Along the way, he pursued further education in scores of workshops and seminars in personal growth and development, picking up certifications in a dozen therapeutic modalities. Doc Barham combined these threads — the hours logged as a public speaker/entertainer and his private quest for spiritual advancement — and started a new career, working with executives and enterprises on how to reach their goals.

Manage Your Mind and Emotions For Better Health

Doc Barham’s work yields more than mental gains — the body can benefit as well. The stress relief that comes from a transformational coaching and a settled mind helps reduces your systems’ inflammatory response. In fact, inflammation is often considered a major culprit in ill health and a drain on your physical ability — “inflammaging,” as it’s sometimes called. Athletes have discovered this mind-body relationship, and they’ve flocked to Doc Barham to reap the rewards.

Speaking of athletes, NBA All-Star Elton Brand says, “I’m so excited about the sessions and the information Doc has shared with me. I’ve practiced both on and off the court and the results are already amazing!” Johnny G, who invented spinning and an ultradistance athlete and martial artist to boot, states, “I recommend Doc Barham’s Transformational Coaching to anyone wishing to improve their life. Doc has been an inspiration to me just as I know he will be to you, too.”

In the business world, Robert Tercek, former president of digital media at Oprah.com and OWN, says, “Doc has been my personal professional career coach for several years, and he has helped me achieve great results. I give him my highest recommendation.”

Former global director/VP at the Coca-Cola Company Paul Taylor puts it succinctly: “Doc is the guy you want by your side to navigate the journey to unleashing your highest potential.”

As befits a man sometimes known as Coach Hollywood, Doc Barham is a trusted advisor to popular entertainers. Actress/model Nicole Lenz says, “[Doc Barham] coached me in a direction to where I was on the right path and my life had meaning again. I was able to see what I was supposed to be doing and it is such a bigger picture than anything I’ve ever imagined.”

Philip Dow Poteat, aka Atlas from “American Gladiator,” as well as an actor in his own right, says, “As I continue working with Doc, I feel I can work toward anything I put my mind to. The tools I take out of our sessions I can use everyday. I consider Doc not just a coach but a friend.”

All this and more is possible when working with Doc Barham, but it’s hardly limited to celebrities and the corner office. In fact, transformational coaching is available to anyone who wants to get in touch with their better selves. Harness the wisdom and inspiration of this world-renowned speaker, author, consultant, and trainer with a personal consultation. You only have everything to gain.

To learn more go to www.docbarham.net