Linda: Their agendas about wanting to be liked or needing someone to get something or proving that they are actually worthy would start to come out. And one of the things that I really like about this program and always felt makes it so strong, is that there is scaffolding. This is not a program you come into where you have undefined sessions. In other words, there is a completely clear defined path.There are scripts, there are tools, there are all these pieces that you know exactly what will happen. And so as we teach these life coaching skills, they’re allowed to be in the present moment so they can really start to hear their own agendas faster and with a little bit more precision, it’s like you can’t hide from yourself. So it’s kinda neat to start to teach that.
Nancy: Welcome to Your Permission Prescription. I’m Nancy Levin, founder of Levin Life Coach Academy, bestselling author, master life coach, and your host. I train life coaches, aspiring coaches, and anyone who wants to add coaching skills to their current career to elevate their life and their business. I’ve coached thousands of people to live life on their own terms, and now I coach, train, and certify other coaches to do the same.
If you are ready to give yourself permission to finally make yourself a priority and mobilize your vision, you’re in the right place. Let’s dive in.
Nancy: Welcome back to another episode of Your Permission Prescription and as we are doing right now, I’m going to take you through a little tour of Levin Life Coach Academy Module Two following up on our tour through module one last week.
And I am joined by my dear friend Linda Perry. Linda offers mindset coaching and business strategy for entrepreneurs, executives and creatives. She is the lead business trainer inside of Levin Life Coach Academy and I could not have created Levin Life Coach Academy without her. So I am very excited to invite Linda back to the podcast to have a conversation about what happens inside of module two in LLCA, which is all about essential life coaching skills and shifting out of the seat of the client, where we were in module one, into the seat of the coach and the beginning of the true embodiment of the coaching mindset.
Nancy: So welcome Linda.
Linda: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to start diving in because as you know, I love the kickoff of Module Two is where you and I get to hang out together and really start to dive in and it’s some of the most fun that, that we ever have. So I’m really excited to talk about this.
Nancy: Me too. So what Linda’s referring to is we begin Module Two with a weekend intensive, and it’s three days on Zoom, the entire cohort, being led by Linda and me through the essential life coaching skills that every coach needs to be able to master.
And these are the kind of skills that begin to seep into life. And I think that that’s an important point, that life coaching skills are actually life skills.
Linda: Yeah, they, they definitely are. I, think I thought I knew everything I needed to know like you talk about, I transitioned from lawyer to life coach, and when you and I were trained, and for people who don’t know this, Nancy and I have known each other since the days we trained as coaches and, and I think the seeds of Levin Life Coach Academy were probably placed back then. But the truth is, is like there’s what I, when we were trained even and when every time I go through it and we’re teaching, I think I know all these things, but things like listening,we all take for granted. So this, they are, they’re true life skills.
Nancy: Yeah. And you know, we talk a lot about active listening, listening to what is being said, what is not being said, and also picking up on nonverbal cues. All of this contributes to the data that we are collecting. And one of the ways I would say active listening has impacted my own life, personally, is I absolutely used to be that person who was not really listening to what was being said so that I could think about what I was going to say, so I could think about something brilliant to say or funny to say, or impactful to say. And the shift now to self-trust when we’re actively listening, what we’re also doing is building the muscle of self-trust. That when it is time for us to share, we will have at our fingertips what it is that we wanna share and the way we wanna share it.
Linda: Yeah. I always love watching the coaches as we start to teach this because like you, I mean, I was listening to come up with an answer.
Nancy: Right
Linda: Mine was just so I don’t look stupid
Nancy: Right
Linda: That was my, my core belief. But what’s really cool is when we start to teach this, there is, you watch the faces and you can see some of the recognition of how people thought they knew what listening was, but all of a sudden they’re starting to recognize, oh my gosh, I listen with the intent to answer, or I listen with some agenda, or I listen with some sort of belief that’s driving me. And it’s really interesting to teach because we coach via Zoom, everything that a coach might wanna look for in terms of what listening means.
And it’s something that, you know, after both of us have been coaching for a decade, that you really start to embody. And I think that’s something that we want to always teach, right, is that part of embodying the work begins with this really powerful tool of active listening.
Nancy: Yeah. And you know, you mentioned agendas and so one of the things that we’re also really sort of imprinting in our students is, coaching is not about giving advice. Coaching is about guiding our clients to their own inner wisdom. Coaching begins with the clients’ commitment to their own evolution. And as coaches, we are holding, supporting, guiding the clients, we are holding them accountable to their own commitment to themselves. And so one of the essential skills is really learning how to be agenda free, how to leave our own opinions at the door when we come in to coach.
Linda: One of the things that that reminds me of is when we started to think about this program and Nancy has continued to evolve, we talk about the scaffolding of coaching and how that can actually help with agendas. And when I really learned everything about marketing, I actually worked with a lot of coaches that came from other programs and they didn’t have that scaffolding. And so sneaky things like agendas would come in because they would want their clients to get something or they would be so in their head about where am I guiding someone, that their agendas about wanting to be liked or needing someone to get something or proving that they are actually worthy would start to come out.
And one of the things that I really like about this program and always felt makes it so strong is that there is scaffolding. This is not a program you come into where you have undefined sessions. In other words, there is a completely clear, defined path. There are scripts, there are tools, there are all these pieces that you know exactly what will happen. And so as we teach these life coaching skills, they’re allowed to be in the present moment so they can really start to hear their own agendas faster and with a little bit more precision. It’s like you can’t hide from yourself. So it’s kinda neat to start to teach that.
Nancy: Yes, I appreciate that so much. And you know, as you were saying, as we are immersed in the intensive weekend, which really kicks off module two, we are teaching the skills and we are also allowing for the students to have their own experience of how these skills start to show up in their lives. How they may not have been aware of the way that they listened or may not have been aware of how attached to an agenda, you know, as you were saying, of being liked or having a client get it. Or of course, you know, I wanna make sure that I am giving value and the only way I determine my value is that someone else tells me how great I am.
Linda: Yeah.
Nancy: And so part of it is, is also really teaching how the guidance aspect of coaching is brought about with questions, with powerful questions, with clarifying questions. And you know, one of the things I’ve, I’ve really noticed in this past cohort that had an a significant shift around moving from agenda to questions is anytime as a coach that you wanna start a sentence with, I pause and ask a question instead.
Linda: It’s such a great tool because” I” is where the trap is, it’s assumption.
Nancy: Yep.
Linda: It’s where we think we know the answers or we’re just trying to get something out of it for ourselves.
Nancy: Right.
Linda: It’s a powerful tool.
Nancy: Yeah. And so, you know, anytime that we feel the the impulse to start a sentence with, I just shift to a question that will allow your client to go deeper within. Because everything is predicated on guiding your client to your, to their own inner wisdom. So everything is coming back to what the client wants and how the client wants to move forward. And coaching in that way is really a partnership.
Linda: Yeah. And I think that’s really some of the things that we really try to emphasize during the skills weekend. I mean, we recognize people are not gonna have these skills automatically show up and if they’re gonna be able to then go run out and be coaches.
And this weekend is really designed to be that backbone and to talk about my favorite part of the weekend
Nancy: Yes
Linda: Which is
Nancy: Yes
Linda: We both love this so much. It is the examples portion. So one of the things that we really learned in our own coaching and working with coaches is that examples are critical to share certain concepts. So Reinvention Coaching has specific concepts that we work with clients on. For example, shadow beliefs, underlying commitments and disowned qualities. And each one of those can be sort of complex and so what we teach in the intensive is how to create an example that will allow your client to, number one, understand the concept more fully, and number two, really be able to get an experience of what that might look like in life.
And examples are some of the hardest things to actually master, but we spend, I don’t know, how long do we spend? Is it a full day, half day? It’s a day?
Nancy: It’s a day now.
Linda: Right, right.
Nancy: It’s a day now.
Linda: We spend a full day on really working through and workshopping examples because we know the power of that. And so it’s, it’s one of our favorite parts of this, of this whole weekend.
Nancy: Yeah. Because as you were saying, you know, the concepts are, you know, the concepts are meaty, they’re chewy. And what an example does, what a coach’s personal example does, is it illustrates the concept in real life. It grounds it in real, in a real person, in a real experience so that your client can connect via the example to their own answer.
And so this is why, and this has been for a few years now, we really have been focused with the students on the clarity of the way that these concepts come alive in their own lives.
Linda: Yeah. I love that term and how they come alive. And the best part is, is it’s not just teaching, we’re actually workshopping…
Nancy: Yeah.
Linda: People’s examples with them so that they can walk away with, you know, the structure and how to actually create them. And what I’ve found is, is that it builds confidence because there’s so many moving pieces as a coach that when you’re first starting out, you’re worrying am I getting it right and, and can I actually do this? And how do I make this script my own? And there’s all these moving pieces so that having this workshop and examples ready to go, I think builds the confidence they need to sort of move through that next piece of the module.
Nancy: Yeah. And I keep, you know, I keep coming back to, I believe that the confidence comes when we are skilled and prepared, you know, and so this is really the skill piece of that. And the preparation part comes in modules three and four, which of course I will address in the next coming weeks.
One of the other skills, which I know is one of our favorites too, is good old boundaries.
Linda: Can’t have a conversation about skills without boundaries.
Nancy: Correct. And as you know, obviously our own personal boundaries are essential, but as a coach we really do a deep dive fairly early on, you know, in the training, around what are your boundaries as a coach? And what this can look like in terms of days of the week you’re available, hours of the day you’re available, what kind of communication you’re available for or not available for. And to start right out there to get in a really good habit from the get go, because, I’ll speak for myself, I did not have good boundaries as a coach when I started coaching. I coached from morning till night, I coached, you know, without breaks to pee. I, you know, back to back.
Linda: Yeah.
Nancy: You know, all of this. And part of this is also really paying attention to our own needs. How much space do I need between clients? How do I best prepare for a client and how do I leave a session with that client behind? So we spend a lot of time working with sort of pre and post session practices. We also talk a lot about good self-care as a coach and self-connection practices as a coach.
Linda: Yeah. And I think one of the essential things that we really get across as boundaries are really about the ways you keep yourself in. And so by setting those habits early on, it’s really fun to see later on as we go through the certification process and we talk about boundaries, it is one of those areas that even new coaches are very clear on. Yeah, no, I know why when I wanna work. And is this is part of our own evolution.
So what what you don’t get here is, is like Nancy and I are pretty seamless in the way we teach this, and we actually pretty much know what the other person’s thinking at this point in time on our calls. But I think both of us come from a place where we really wanted to create a better way for this. And so we really understood our own lack of boundaries. I mean, I was somebody who woke up in the morning, checked my emails and worked till 10 at night and, and I really shifted that. And it’s not about anyone else other than ourselves and so we really emphasize that because here’s the thing, this work is about impacting others and if we can really train coaches to have that understanding earlier on in their own process, we know that they can then go out and actually build a business that can sustain and build the impact that they want and that LLCA is trying to create.
Nancy: I couldn’t have said any of that better myself.
Linda: Yeah. See, I mean that’s really how we, we end up thinking back and forth.
Nancy: I know. I mean, this is why we are a great team, why we love teaching together and also I think it’s so important for the students to have the experience of me, of you and the mentors in the program as well, who are also coaching. So they get, you know, the students really get the flavors of each of us as we move through this particular module.
Linda: Yeah. And I, I think that we build each one of us on each other. And so it’s, it’s something that I think both of us have learned to rely on is, is there is a whole group holding.
Nancy: Yeah.
Linda: The entire student body. And I think that’s been really neat.
Nancy: And One of the things that I mentioned back in the episode last week about Module One, and it stays very true throughout Module Two, we are doing all of the training in real time. So this is not prerecorded, this is not prepackaged, this is me and Linda with you the whole weekend live on Zoom.
And you have an opportunity to ask questions, to get coached, to share your experience, to, you know, bring your, bring the fullness of who you are to this program always. And I also, inside of Module 2 am offering office hours, just like I mentioned in module one, you also have your small group sessions with your mentor and so, and we’re tracking you via your weekly reflections, your homework, if you will.
So there is not an opportunity to feel behind because it’s all happening in real time together.
Linda: Makes me just love this program even more again.
Nancy: I know. I know.
So that’s a little bit of our behind the scenes tour of what happens inside of module two, inside of Levin Life Coach Academy. And I’ll be back again next week with the inside scoop on module three.
Thanks Linda.
Linda: Thanks for having me.
Thanks so much for joining me today on Your Permission Prescription. For even more, I invite you to head on over to nancylevin.com and sign up for my newsletter, The Practice, and follow me on social media.
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