International Association of Coaching Blog

The Myth and Reality of Nonprofit Work-Life Balance

2012-02-23T06:05:00-08:00

by Alex Carter

Nonprofit leaders are a different breed. Until very recently, few of them had management backgrounds or MBAs. They founded or joined organizations not to get ahead or make money, but to change the world. They willingly work longer hours for lower pay than their talents would bring in the private sector. And, very importantly, they frequently don't think of "work" as separate from "life".

When your work is your passion, the idea of "balance" has to be redefined.

This is particularly important in 2012, when the stress of nonprofit leadership is greater than ever. Leaders of smaller nonprofits are faced with reduced support and increasing demand for services. They are deciding how many staff to cut, determining which programs or activities can be postponed or cancelled, and working with their boards to fill funding gaps.

Given these realities, how can we help our nonprofit clients find balance? What skills and attitudes characterize nonprofit leaders who feel they have a good work-life balance?

For many of my clients, balance is not a scale, with equal weight placed on work and life. It's more like a pendulum. On any given day, or during any given week, the amount of time or energy spent on work or on life will vary. Mental health can be found at many points along the pendulum's path.

The best leaders don't leave balance to chance. They plan. Rather than mostly reacting to events, good nonprofit executives look ahead and are proactive. It's a key skill for keeping one's sanity. While they can't anticipate everything, they schedule regular planning sessions—daily, weekly and monthly.

For my clients, there are three important questions in the planning matrix:

First, how can you maximize time on things that feed your energy, and minimize what saps it? Energy boosters usually include the things that propelled nonprofit leaders into service in the first place—spending time with clients or developing a new program—but that often get lost in the day-to-day details. I encourage clients to plan to engage in more of those activities. As for the things that sap their energy, they can decide which of these can be delegated or deferred. Whatever can be done by someone else should be done by someone else.

Second, how can you ask for help? One of my clients has asked board members to attend meetings she cannot make. To make sure she keeps abreast of important issues, she has provided them with a simple form on which they can note important questions or decisions that came from the meeting. She has freed several hours per week with this step. As an added bonus, her board members feel more engaged in the work.

Sometimes, though, there is no substitute for a mental and physical break.

So the third planning question is when was the last time you took a vacation? I once worked with an executive director who hadn't taken significant time off in 10 years, and his health and happiness were suffering. We worked on a plan that prioritized a vacation. After some time away, he had renewed focus and passion for his work. He has since taken regular vacations, and insists his staff do the same.

How does the ideal of work-life balance play out in your clients' lives? What have you found works best for them?

Alex Carter, Your Nonprofit Coach, specializes in helping new Executive Directors become outstanding managers and leaders, while keeping their sanity. She can be reached through her web site, www.yournonprofitcoach.com.

Tools for Coaching Mastery

2012-02-23T06:00:00-08:00

This column is provided by an IAC Coaching Masteries^®-Licensed School or Mentor.

The Question Compass
by Aileen Gibb, MCC (IAC)

Where do your questions come from when you are coaching? Where do your questions take your client?

We know that masterful questions are the touchstone for great coaching. There are questions that your client won’t ask, can’t ask or resists asking for himself. There are questions that open up new awareness, questions that uncover ideas that otherwise stay in the background, questions that strengthen your client’s resolve and questions that take your client to an edge of learning and action that she would not otherwise have reached.

In the journey of the coaching conversation, you as coach act as the compass for your client. Your own inner compass is constantly orientating the conversation, informing what question to ask next. Like a real compass, a great coaching question doesn’t tell you when you will reach your destination, or what it will be like when you get there. It simply provides an orientation of where you are in the conversation and where you are headed next.

The first orientation of the Question Compass is whether your questions are taking your client forward or backwards. The majority of coaching questions are future-focussed. Your question creates forward momentum and takes your client to her next thought, insight or action step. It propels your client to a point he had not reached before, to a viewpoint he had not seen before or to a pathway she hasn’t walked before. The question compass always wants to orient your client to look forward, rather than be stuck in the past.

The second orientation of the Question Compass is whether your question is about content or process. Your inner compass as a coach needs to be very clear on this distinction. A content question takes you into the client’s story, wanting to know or understand more. A process question moves your client’s story forward and enables you to remain neutral as an unbiased and trusting guide for your client’s journey.

These two orientations provide us with the four main cardinal points of our Question Compass: future—past—process—content. We might call these the North, South, East and West of coaching. When you can see and recognise these four points, you can get an orientation for the coaching conversation and become masterly with your questions.

Like a true compass, you can then add in further points by which to navigate the coaching conversation, giving more subtle distinctions to your question that inspire a shift for your client.

The ancient wisdom of the medicine wheel adds a layer that orients your client to what he is Feeling, Thinking, Doing or Creating. Once you discern that your client is oriented to a particular viewpoint (by listening closely to your client’s language, patterns and behaviour), you can structure your coaching question to enable your client to look at her goal from another perspective.

If you hear your client saying "I think," you can ask a question which helps him explore the feelings he may not be paying attention to.

If you hear your client expressing a lot of emotion, e.g., "I feel…" "I hate that..." or "I love to..." a question that grounds her in action can be really productive.

If your client is a busy "do-er" and always on the go, a question from the thinking point of the compass can enable her to stop and reflect on what’s really important.

And your highly creative client with all the big ideas and desire to change the world will be grateful for a question that invites him to move his ideas into specific actions and do something to make it happen.

Once you have oriented yourself to your client’s main compass points i.e., the perspective he or she usually takes, you can bring in questions from all the other points of the compass to enable a full exploration of the possible directions available for your client to choose a way forward.

The Question Compass is a great way of paying attention to your own orientation as a coach. If your own pattern is to get emotionally involved in the conversation, you can expand your mastery by using more thinking or action-based questions. If your natural disposition is to worry about small details, you can expand your own horizons, as well as those of your client, by asking more creative and expansive questions.

In this way the Question Compass serves as a tool to fuel your own growth as well as a force for change in your clients.

Using the Question Compass will enrich your awareness of where each of your questions comes from and will strengthen the power of your questions to take your clients to landscapes they haven’t travelled before.

Aileen Gibb, MCC (IAC), www.inspiredfuture.org, connects people to their inspired future by using pure coaching in life and leadership. As Faculty Lead at the Dream Organisation, she is the world’s first Licensed Practitioner of The Archegyre, a powerful new diagnostic tool that makes sense of what drives human endeavor and success.

7 Strategies for Finding and Engaging Qualified Prospects Online

2012-02-16T06:00:00-08:00

by Kathy Mallary

The more connected you are with qualified prospects, the more likely you are to win ideal clients. If that's true, why is it that so many coaches struggle to find and connect with their target market?

You either believe that your target market is leaving a trail that leads you to them, or you believe you need to create a trail that leads them to you. The first way is by far the easier, quicker and more profitable of the two.

Here are seven strategies that can help you pick up the trail of your best prospects and win more ideal clients:

Look for the 3 C's—concentrations, conversations and congregations. People in your target market share certain interests, and people who have common interests tend to gravitate towards each other and talk about the thing they're interested in. So your first task is to find these clumps of people who are talking about certain topics.
Use keywords related to your target market to search the three general areas where people tend to '"'clump" together:
• Online forums and virtual communities
• Groups on social networks, whether focused on business or personal interests (or both)
• Industry and professional associations, which often have forums or networking events for members
Follow the leaders. Do a Google/Internet search for the more prominent thought leaders in your niche and pay attention to where they're showing up and participating, both online and offline (for example, public speaking events). Then follow them right into those nooks and crannies.
Watch and listen before you jump into the conversation. Once you've identified a community or group, don't just barge in and start talking. Take time to look at the history of the conversation and follow a couple of active threads to see what folks are interested in. Then watch for opportunities to introduce yourself and contribute; offer encouragement and resources, move the conversation forward, share your perspective in a positive way, etc.
Do NOT try to sell anything to the group, even if the community guidelines allow it. The people you meet online are not yet qualified to receive an offer from you—they haven't even taken the first step into your sales funnel (i.e., they haven't joined your mailing list). When you focus instead on building trust and relationship, your list will grow as if by magic.
When you find a good group, don't be shy about asking about the other groups and communities people belong to. This is like following a vein deeper into the gold mine.
Be both consistent and persistent. Put a structure in place so that you are searching for and participating in online communities on a regular basis. Don't stop after you find the first few places, or you'll get left behind as the market evolves. I have recurring tasks set up in Outlook that remind me to research and check in at various groups and forums. I invest time in research once a month and post/participate in forums and social networks every few days (more frequently on the more active groups.)

You can spend precious time and resources hoping that clients find you one by one, or you can be proactive and find a trail that leads you straight back to where tens, hundreds or even thousands of qualified prospects are buzzing about the very things that you love to help them with.

Happy hunting!

Kathy Mallary is a business development specialist who helps coaches get into high gear with both clients and cash flow so they can make a bigger difference and healthier profits. Get free resources for innovative coaching business models that expand capacity and add to the bottom line at www.spiritspring.com.

Lessons from the Certifiers

2012-02-09T06:00:00-08:00

The New IAC Certification Credentials
by Natalie Tucker Miller, IAC-CC

Question: In the last President's Message, it was mentioned that there is another level of certification. My recordings did not pass the first time I submit for certification. Will this new level be retroactive, and how will I know if my sessions passed?

Answer: First, I'd like to publicly honor all the coaches who have taken the bold step of sitting for Step Two of the certification exam, regardless of your outcome. We recognize the commitment to coaching excellence it takes to get that far in the process. And as you know, it's a level that takes many hours of practice to complete.

There has never been a question that IAC-certified coaches possess a high level of mastery and this truth is reflected in the expanded nomenclature the IAC has just introduced. IAC-certified coaches are now referred to as what we've always known they were: Master Certified Coaches, or MCC (IAC).

The adoption of the IAC Coaching Masteries^® provided the certifiers with expanded definitions of coaching behaviors, as well as measures that allow us to more clearly define different levels of coaching skill. In our internal review processes over the past few years, we've been able to identify those with a skilled level of coaching, even if they did not meet our master-level criteria.

Members, log in to learn more.

To join the IAC, click here.

Do you have a question that you’d like to ask the certifiers? Submit your questions here: http://certifiedcoachblog.typepad.com/blog/ask-the-certifiers.html.

Natalie Tucker Miller, IAC-CC, is the Lead Certifier and a certifying examiner at the IAC, as well as Past-President. Natalie is founder of Ageless-Sages.com Publishing (www.ageless-sages.com), and creator of the literary genre, Picture Books for Elders™.

Please send your questions on the IAC Coaching Masteries^® and the certification process to certification@certifiedcoach.org.

From the Editor

2012-02-02T08:55:57-08:00

Linda

Welcome to the February 2012 issue of the IAC VOICE!

In her February President's Message, Susan R. Meyer announces some exciting new changes to the IAC certification designations, as well as an opportunity for coaches in training.

There is a reminder below about your ReciproCoach benefit—coaching, mentoring and supervision that is all included in the cost of your IAC membership. It's an incredible opportunity and one that reinforces the IAC's commitment to professional development.

There really are so many benefits to IAC membership. Have you ever wondered about how you could give back? Tatiana Abend has some surprising ideas for you.

In the Inside Scoop, you can listen in on what the IAC Certifiers are listening for when they evaluate applicants for IAC certification.

We bid a farewell to the Living the Masteries column, and thank Alison Davis wholeheartedly for all of the gems she has provided. She closes out the series with her own look at Mastery #9 and how she is using it to bring her 2012 vision to life.

Our business-building article this month is about how to optimize your LinkedIn profile to attract new coaching clients. First-time contributor Louisa Chan is a certified coach and social media specialist from Synergy Marketing Pro in Malaysia.

Our coaching feature article is an interview with IAC Board of Governors member Uta Guse, who shares about her experience with the Learning Agreement proposal process.

Submission guidelines for the VOICE are available on the website. Submissions are welcome anytime through the month.

Please contact me with your article ideas and your feedback about this issue. Enjoy!

Warm wishes,
Linda

Linda Dessau, CPCC
Editor, IAC^® VOICE
Email: voice@certifiedcoach.org
www.contentmasteryguide.com

P.S. Are you on Twitter? You can follow the IAC at http://twitter.com/IACCoachMastery. There is also a list of VOICE authors, columnists and IAC BOG members at http://twitter.com/lindadessau/iac-voice-contributors.