Academy for Coaching Parents

Communicate to Relish Success

by | Dec 5, 2018 | How to Become A Consultant

Communication is one of those essential life skills that you learn through trial and error. Do people hear you? Are you confident in telling your story? Are you aware of your ineffective communication, if any? 

Of all the skill sets necessary to be a success, communication ranks high. Think about it. Communication is the only way for us to share concepts, ideas, feelings or plans. It is how we tell others about ourselves. If you own a business, you communicate to attract the attention of new customers and support current customers. Communication is the currency of sales. Doesn’t that powerful thought makes you stop a moment?

If communication is related to financial success, then effective communication skills have a higher perceived value. Is one of your goals to be a financial success? A 1988 survey by D.B. Curtis indicated that the most valued skills in the “contemporary job market” are communication skills; this was based on the survey responses of 1,000 personnel managers.
Then how would you improve the way you talk to your customers, especially if you follow up on sales or speak with clients regularly. 

Following-up shows others that they matter to you when you return phone calls promptly and allow time to talk and share. If you get an e-mail inquiry or complaint, respond to it quickly. If you receive a text asking a question, answer it right away.

  • Your responses shape others’ opinions about your business or service.
  • Your responsiveness sparks a positive emotional connection.

How you respond shapes their opinions of you and the reputation of your business. When you have a good reputation, you’ll find more opportunities. You’ll attract more customers. You’ll get repeat business from the customers you have. You’ll see invitations to joint ventures.

In short, you’re the strength of your reputation will allow you to get closer to your financial goals. What helped build that good reputation? It was your excellent communication skills built around a program of prompt follow through.

 Success is achievable when you communicate efficiently and effectively. The seven primary communication skills include: 

  1. Listening
  2. Having empathy
  3. Showing respect
  4. Being open-minded
  5. Conveying confidence
  6. Providing feedback 
  7. Having congruent body language

 

 

 

(http://www.natcom.org/uploadedFiles/More_Scholarly_Resources/Chairs_Corner/Making_the_Case_for_and_Advancing_the_Discipline/PDF-ATD-JACA-Why_Communication_is_Important_%20Rationale_for_Centrality_of_the_Study_of_Communication.pdf)

5 Key Habits of Successful People

by | Nov 13, 2018 | Mindset and Money

Everyone has habits; both good and bad. These are behaviors undertaken every day automatically. Successful people intentionally create success habits that enable them to achieve the life they desire. They are prepared to invest their time in creating these habits as they understand that they will help them to reach their goal.

Creating new habits has to be an intentional process and generally takes 21 days for the new behavior to be assimilated into daily life and routines.

Successful people tend to adopt the same habits. These success habits become part of their daily lives and help to keep them successful as they understand that the journey to success is not final. It continually moves as they need to keep growing in terms of achievement.

An entrepreneur may set his goal of achieving success at selling services worth 5 figures in one year. However, once that goal has been achieved he will re-evaluate his definition of success and set another goal for the following year.

Generally, the following five habits will be key to gaining success and maintaining it.

1. Positive Mind-set: having a positive mind-set can be learned. It will require mental programming (changing your thinking patterns). There are various ways to create a positive mind-set including using positive affirmations, visualization, self-hypnosis or coaching.

One of the most crucial factors in succeeding in anything is to believe that you can achieve it.

2. Exercise and Healthy Eating: taking care of the body through exercise, diet and good sleep routines is another crucial component. Research has shown a strong mind-body connection. By taking care of your body you are preventing ill-health from causing you problems on your way to achieving your goal.

3. Prioritization: successful people plan and they prioritize. They decide what the essential elements or tasks are each day and act on those first. By knowing which tasks will help them achieve their goal they are continuing to act on the plan for success that they created.

Delegating inessential tasks ensures that they get completed but do not detract from your ultimate goal.

4. Goal Setting: identifying the end goal and creating a plan is another essential habit. Without a goal you won't know what you are aiming for. All successful people know what success means to them and plan how to achieve it.

5. Life-long Learning: whether it is reading, taking a course or listening to audio recordings, successful people understand that knowledge is power and a crucial aspect of helping them to achieve their goals. They stay up-to-date on relevant industry information, new trends and innovations. This is built into their daily routine.

These are just five of the key habits of successful people. By adopting these success habits into your daily routine you will be creating a stronger, healthier and more successful version of you.

How to Market Your Coaching or Consulting Practice

by | Oct 23, 2018 | Branding to Define Your Business

Here are several examples to help market your coaching or consulting practice. These examples will help you master your marketing skills while others will simply grow your network, with the potential for additional revenue-enhancing techniques.

Personal Marketing
Create an advanced and broad network.

• Do your homework – find an online network that meets your needs.
• Meet other top coaches and form an alliance.
• Help others as often as possible and ask for help yourself. 
• Become a person that others want to know.

Public Relations
Become locally or nationally known.

• Create a press kit.
• Offer a free session to high-profile clients.
• Get in the news or on TV – offer to comment on relevant issues.
• Send out consistent press releases.
• Become a known expert in your field.
• Appear on a talk or radio show.
• Write a column on a blog or in a newspaper.

Electronic Marketing
The Internet is the advanced form of spreading the news about your business.

• Create or develop a professional website.
• Get links from other sites to your site.
• Create daily, useful content on your website.
• Add meta tags for search engine spiders.
• Create a scheduled newsletter to share information.

Creating Credibility
Become respected in your field.

• Create a niche in the business by finding a specialty.
• Find an “edge” and become certified as a coach with credentialing.
• Speak with other coaches and offer to teach for them.
• Write a book or ebook and compose articles, blogs, etc.

Becoming an Expert
As a professional, take the time to become an expert at your craft.

• Develop better listening and diagnostic skills.
• Speak in simple terms with potential clients. Don't over-explain!
• Understand and master your coaching skills.
• Read books to enhance your skills and knowledge level
• Consider attending a coaching conference.

Sell Yourself
Learn how to sell your product or service and yourself.

• Create an elevator pitch - a one-sentence introduction.
• Know what you’re selling and why you’re selling it.
• Take time to serve every potential buyer.
• In sales, be absolutely fearless.
• Ask open-ended questions rather than yes or no.

Earning Referrals
By always delivering more than a promise, referrals can be endless.

• Know your strengths and understand your weaknesses.
• Identify your target audience and clients.
• Learn to pass on clients that do not align with your skills.
• Consider offering free introductory discovery calls.
• Do not be afraid to ask for referrals—casual or otherwise.

Delivering Products/Services
Know what you are selling and give everyone something to buy.

• Offer the chance for group coaching.
• License all of your programs and work.
• Offer or sell mp3 or audio tapes to potential clients.
• Take the time to launch a virtual university.

9 Parent Tips to Teach Children to Manage Stress

by | Oct 20, 2018 | Understanding Your Child

Traditionally, many school-aged children love school and look forward to start of a new school year. But for other children, it’s also a time of great stress. In fact, stress—those overwhelming feelings of doubt about ourselves or our ability to handle things—is as common in children as adults.

The greatest challenge to parents today is teaching children to manage stress effectively. Children may react to excess stress with behavior that seems immature, inappropriate, or even disturbing. One child exhibits anxiety and tears the night before going back to school. Another child speaks of new teacher and asks her parents questions while trying to imagine the teacher's personality. Another child enjoys shopping for school clothes and looks forward to seeing new friends. 

Stress can be terrifying to children who lack the emotional maturity or experience to understand and deal with it. The challenge for parents, teachers, and other caretakers include how to recognize signs of stress in children of different ages, how to know when stress threatens to overwhelm a child, and what to do about it.

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In Nurture Your Child’s Gift, I offer excellent suggestions to help parents cope with their children’s stress. A stressed-out condition can result from a specific cause or from life in general. Here are some examples:

  • At 17, Jen was a high school senior expecting to graduate with honors in the Spring. Just before Christmas, however, Jen’s father lost his job and the family had to move into the basement of a cousin’s house. Jen soon developed a severe allergy, then asthma. The illness cost her so much time from school that she required home-schooling to make up the difference.
  • Mark was only two when his parents divorced. Confused, Mark wandered the house, calling plaintively for his father, but weekends with Dad made him cry. Most weekends, Mark developed upset stomachs that were so bad he’d miss preschool on Mondays.

Age-Related Stressors

Toddlers need to feel safe and comfortable. Stress for preschool children can arise from a new face at home or at day care, the disappearance of a familiar face, visiting lots of new places at once, or abrupt changes in the family’s structure, relationships or daily routine.
During the grade-school years, children become concerned with pleasing people like teachers, parents, guardians and coaches. School life—even a change in assigned seating or having to take a test—brings higher levels of stress every year. And when it comes to peers, even the threat of diminished acceptance is terrifying. Sleep-overs, birthday parties, sporting events and music competitions can trigger stressful reactions.
Through middle school and beyond, the pressures kids feel from parents, teachers, peers, society at large, and from within increases. Children have to learn adapt to these pressures. Because they have grown in their intelligence, curiosity and knowledge of community, demands for their attention, time, energy and effort can often feel like a tug of war. As in the cases of Mark and Jen, it is not unusual for life-altering events to express themselves in illness. At the University of Missouri, for instance, researcher Mark Flinn found that a child’s risk of upper-respiratory infection increases by 200 percent for the seven days following a high-stress event. And parents like Miranda’s might confuse what they believe are normal behavior with an expression of anxiety. Children often display their tensions in small acts that have aggressive undertones.

How You Can Help

  1. There are many ways parents can help their children deal with stress and stressful situations.
  2. Don’t try to fix everything for the child, and avoid offering advice. Sometimes just listening so that your child feels truly heard may be enough to relieve the stress.
  3. As you listen, ask questions that encourage your child to think a situation through. “What’s the next step?” or “How would you handle that?” are good questions. Ask a lot of “what-if” questions, too.
  4. Help children listen to themselves. Nurture Your Child’s Gift suggests quiet-time techniques for children to listen to nature sounds like rain or waves upon the beach, to their own heartbeat, or to recordings of whales, dolphins or birds.
  5. Encourage children to spend time listening to their thoughts. When they feel free to speak their own thoughts aloud about a situation, things suddenly become clear.
  6. Nurture Your Child’s Gift details a diaphragmatic breathing exercise for kids and parents. Shallow breathing is associated with the production of cortisol, the stress hormone. Deeper, effective breathing produces feelings of relaxation and calm.
  7. Use soothing and rhythmic music, even simple drumming, to help your child relieve muscle tension. It works!
  8. Don’t overlook exercise for releasing stress and tension. It works for your child just as it does for you. Have children walk the dog, get on the treadmill or stretch through easy yoga movements for children.  Any movement they enjoy will help ease stress away.
  9. Parents can do much to alleviate stress in their children’s lives. Effectively dealing with your own stress is the first step. Showing your kids how to release their stress comes next.

 

Copyright © Caron B. Goode.

Parent Coaching Skills for Transformation

by | Oct 17, 2018 | Learn about Coaching

What if your calling to support parents and children were your career? The value ACPI provides extends far beyond the monetary aspects of the parent coaching skills training and the profession. Being a parent coach is exciting and inspiring, but how exactly does it add value to you, the coach?

Being a Parenting Coach is one path to freedom of time and better-earning power if you are committed to success as a helping professional. This option strengthens your character and fulfills your motivation and moral and social values. Learning coaching skills and ethics offers rewarding experiences. Or, learning consultant planning sharpens your mind and lights the fire of curiosity again.

As Richard Branson states, you just have to say yes to a novel opportunity.

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”
― Richard Branson

Learning parent coaching skills can be life-changing, and not just for the families with whom you interact, but also for yourself. You might feel that parent coaching is your calling, so you help others in your parenting and friendship circles. When your satisfaction grows, the calling pulls you even further into the possibility of working at home for yourself. Think of the possibilities!

[tweetshareinline tweet="The wonder of being pulled toward your journey is unparalleled. The idea of coaching stays in your mind and you mull it over." username="parent_coach"]

Learning Enhances Earning Power

A good teacher or mentor is a life-long learner. Learning adds value to

  • How you feel emotionally
  • What you do
  • How you respond to others
  • IHow you increase your confidence and personal esteem

Your temperament and values motivate you to seek opportunities to use your natural skills like listening. You are a helper like a coach, a counselor, a teacher, a nurturer. You look for new challenges like coaching that broaden your knowledge and expand your skill set. By temperament, you are often called to teach, share, support, negotiate, and help.

Bringing your natural temperament traits into a profession like coaching engages your heart, which any job must do. If your heart is not engaged, you lose interest. If you are not seeing progress and achievements in your sphere of life, then consider parent coaching.

 

The Sense of Giving Back

The most satisfying act for a nurturer is knowing you have contributed to society in an effective way. Even better is knowing that the changes you have made have a long-term effect. By helping families and parents to strengthen their bonds, you offer them better connection and communication skills which can become their best habits.

You are assisting parents in raising their children as emotionally healthy individuals with ethical and moral values. There can’t be anything more satisfying and rewarding than knowing you help influence three generations of parents and children. However, the coaching skills are very different from giving advice.

The Client-Coach Relationship

  • As a mentor and coach, you know your clients on a personal, intimate level. They will share their emotional struggles and problems with you.
  • You are wired to be an empathetic listener who can understand and feel what the client is experiencing.
  • This requires developing a strong emotional bond with the customers.
  • You learn to build a relationship to help your clients heal, grow, and refine their focus and actions. This is missing in self-help parenting books and resources. That is what gives coaches an edge.

Taking Multiple Roles as a Consultant, Coach, or Mentor

As a parent coach, you are not just a counselor; you are a mentor who listens, teaches, educates, supports and transforms. Parent coaching skills can be defined as a set of excellent listening, coaching, and counseling skills. It is a universal skill set that will help you throughout your professional and personal endeavors in every walk of life.

However, you need to acquire the skills set required to become a good parent coach and reap the real value of being a mentor. You can start now by enrolling in Academy for Coaching Parents.

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