You could be the greatest coach in the world (the Michael Jordan/Babe Ruth/Wayne Gretzky of coaching) but if your client doesn’t want to change nothing will happen ...

Let me expand on this:

Back in my early days of coaching, I was convinced that I could help anyone.

It didn't matter who the client was or how motivated they were, I could help them.

If a client's motivation level was less than I'd like, I had a solution: I would pour more of my energy and motivation into our coaching relationship to make up for it. So if they were only at 75%, I'd go up to 125% and it would all even out.

In theory I thought it could work, but it didn't.

This arrangement was the equivalent of slinging the client over my shoulder and dragging them across the finish line. It left me drained, and did little to help the client because they didn't really want to change.

I may have thought I was doing the client a favour, but I was hurting both them and myself.

In the years after that, my patience for unmotivated clients dwindled, and I'm now very careful who I work with.

If something gets my Spidey Senses tingling, I'll pass on working with that person. I always remind myself of the times that I worked with someone who wasn't 100% into it, and that allows me to move on without regret.

A lot of coaches hang onto working with unmotivated clients, hoping to swing them around. They do this because they truly want to help them, or because they lack other potential clients to work with.

 

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Marc Mawhinney