The CoachAccountable Blog

We often hear questions like:

• I coach two different types of clients. How can I quickly filter by type?
• Where can I see extra client information, like a birthday or spouse’s name?
• Can I add ‘tags’ to clients?

The great news is that CoachAccountable already has several spots to put extra client details (and filter by those criteria).

1. Client Profile Extra

From your clients page, click the Settings icon for a given client.

Two of these clients already have information in their Profile Extra, automatically! (We’ll let you guess which two ;)

Select “Profile Extra” and write relevant details here.

Here’s how that looks back on the client list.

With that in place, you can search on the clients page and find all clients with that particular word/phrase in their Profile Extra settings. The title of an Offering also appears here if they signed up through one. You can thus search for people based on a program they signed up for. That makes it easy to see just the people who signed up for your Mastermind Group vs. your 6-week Challenge, for example.

2. Client Notes

On each client’s page, you’ll notice at the bottom left sections for Notes and Tasks. Put additional notes here – keep in mind, though, that you can’t search for this information from the client list.

3. A Private Whiteboard

You can also create a Whiteboard in a client’s account and make it private, so only you can see it. Use this as an editable repository of notes on the client. If you’ve already got several shared Whiteboards and want to keep this one separate, you can create a Folder for private Whiteboards.

Of course you can always put these notes into private Session Notes or private comments, too.

Bonus Client Organization Opportunity: Groups

While Groups aren’t necessarily a place for notes for individual clients, they do give you a great admin tool for organizing clients by type. You can put clients into a Group that they can’t see (as in, for admin-only purposes). You can message all the clients at the same time. So, let’s say you’re a health coach who works with 2 types of clients: A) an online-only group fitness program, and B) private in-person personal training clients. You’ve likely already got your A clients in a Group. But say you want to let your in-person clients know you’ll be traveling? Put them all into a Group (hidden from them), and you can message them all at the same time.

One other note about navigating through clients that belong to a given Group: if you go to a Group, then click on any client in the “Membership” listing in the left menu, you’ll find that the previous/next client links that appear are now just the members of the Group you just clicked from.  This is a very handy way to quickly surf through the client pages of only members of a specific Group!

If you’re tired of scrambling through papers looking for details on a client, keep it all organized in CoachAccountable. You get 30 days free, no commitment. Start now!

For some time, coaches have been able to change the client page arrangement. This helped customize and streamline the system; you could, for instance, turn off the Journal tab if you don’t have your clients do journaling. That gives the coachee one less thing to look at, one less thing to click on or get distracted by.

However, that had its limitations. Many coaches work with distinct groups of people, some of which journal every day and some of which never journal. Before, you as coach had to determine the page arrangement for all of your clients with a master setting.

Now, you can set this arrangement on a per-client basis.

Default Client Page Arrangement

Your default page arrangement will apply unless you customize the page arrangement for someone. Set this in Settings >> System >> Client Page Arrangement.

Turn on and off visibility for various tabs, drag them to reorder, and choose whether you’d like clients to see the invoices page. Click on each section for a brief description of what it does.

Page Arrangement for Other Coaches

As a Team Edition account owner, up at the top you’ll see a dropdown with the ability to set the default page arrangement for yourself, specific other coaches, or newly added coaches coming into your system.

Individual Client Page Arrangement

To change a single client’s page arrangement, go to Home and your clients page. Each client has a settings button in the lower right. Click that, and you’ll see Page Arrangement just above Delete/Deactivate.

You’ll have a couple options:

• Go with the organization-wide default (meaning the layout you just set up in Settings >> System >> Client Page Arrangement).
• Use this custom arrangement. Here you’ll have the same ability to turn visibility for various sections on or off, and drag to rearrange.

If you’ve got Team Edition, you’ll have a third option:

• Use whatever [clientFirstName]’s primary coach has set. The primary coach’s name is included here too, eliminating any guesswork.

Overall, this function will allow you to simplify a client’s first impression and prevent overwhelm or burnout with the system. As you build complexity with that coaching engagement, you can always turn items back on and introduce them in a controlled fashion.

Do you offer live workshops? Wonder how you could possibly use an online coaching software for in-person workshops? Wonder no more!

Dr. John Kenworthy of Leadership AdvantEdge, CoachAccountable’s customer #1, recently sent over some practical how-to (and WHY) advice on using CoachAccountable for live workshops. He also shared great perspectives on protecting intellectual property while using an online coaching platform.

We’ve edited this guest post for length and clarity – enjoy!

I’ve been using CoachAccountable for before- and after-workshop coaching follow-up.

Prompted by a recent enhancement to worksheets (the ease of adding images, video and audio), I thought, “Why not use CoachAccountable Worksheets throughout the workshop?”

Using CA for the whole programme, prework, workshop and follow-up would require some adjustments to the way the workshop ran, and a few tweaks in delivery but imagine the benefits.

Benefits of Using CoachAccountable for a Live Workshop

• Replace paper workbooks. Using CA saves me $200+ on printing and binding for each workshop, not to mention courier fees or luggage fees. It saves my shoulder when lugging workbooks half-way across the world.
• Resources actually get used. Workbooks go to the client’s office and sit there to gather dust and fill a shelf, but CoachAccountable caused ALL the clients to participate in full for the whole programme (it’s tough for them to do email whilst in the workshop).
• Easy to send out pre-work (readings, worksheets, actions) before the workshop and nag clients to do it
• Participants can take notes (in the worksheets) for each live module
• Participants can use CA worksheets to coach each other during (and after) the workshop
• Easily track during the workshop who is keeping up with the modules.
• Embed “slides” or even a live presentation in a worksheet so participants can follow (in the classroom or on the beach)
• Have a full record of their workshop – heck they can print out a Happenings Report should they request one.
• And then the follow-up: with actions they set, metrics, post workshop coaching, buddy coaching, results for the business and ROI for the programme paymasters, with evidence!
• Multinational corporations are happy with the level of security (they weren’t when I used my learning management system (LMS) instead)
• And the intellectual property? It’s all in a password-protected space for a single client and not so easy to reproduce en-masse.

It takes a little work to be ready. I’m sharing the key learnings I got from this experience so that you can avoid some of the mistakes I made along the way.

How to Set Up Your Live Workshop with CoachAccountable

Before the Workshop

• Add all clients into CoachAccountable ahead of time, and place them into a group (groups for breakouts too).
• Create a mini course on using CA. Have clients complete this course upon signup (before the live workshop).
• Send out prework as Worksheets. Files and download can accompany, but you want Worksheets to force a response to the file.
• Set up all workshop modules with form-based worksheets (an image of the key slide or better a TL:DR summary slide, (can also embed Google, Zoho, Office 365 or Prezi). A live Prezi in the Worksheet can be brilliant for live follow and space for notes below, but take note that mobile devices must use the Prezi app!
• Worksheets used in the workshop to be completed within one day – no reminders (except for Worksheets they might need to do after the workshop)
• Put modules into a Course split by days, making sure to number the modules (Worksheets) in their titles for best sorting in order of use.
• Schedule Course elements to deliver without any notifications. It’s best to time these elements for morning and afternoon delivery (or you risk overloading the client’s “what’s next” screen).

During the Workshop

• Take them through using the system live. Use your freebie client account and become a group member to show them what they will see.
• Get participants to book appointments for follow-up coaching before they leave.
• Get participants to set their own follow-up Actions and Metrics at the wrap of each day.
• Depending on their IT security – an embedded live Prezi in a worksheet works very well on a laptop (but beware what happens on mobile).
• When asking participants to buddy coach each other using a Worksheet before, during or after the workshop,
  1. Get them to write the “client” name (i.e. their buddy’s name) as the first field. Remind them to email a copy to the “client” or
  2. Get them to swap computers/smartphones so they fill it in on their own worksheet.

Advantages

Dr. John Kenworthy, footloose and fancy-free with no workbooks to carry around

No cost of printing out physical paper manuals/workbooks. No excess baggage when flying. No trees dying.

Can change content up to last possible second.

Fantastic for a “flipped classroom” educational style, with included pre- and post-coaching work – distinguishes the trainer (YOU) from the masses of other coaches.

Protects IP and makes it really difficult for those occasional valueless companies who try to steal your work (it’s actually far easier for them to steal and photocopy your physical workbooks, a situation I’ve run into in the past).

Makes sure every participant is accounted for (better still, paid for). Must have login to participate.

Easy to “nag” about prework. Easy to make sure follow up, learning in action, and actions are done. Ensures results for the participants and organisation. Provides evidence of results and, if you set the metrics right, ROI.

Potential Issues

The clients’ IT security. Check, double and triple check that what you think they can see is indeed what they see behind their firewall and on their systems. Remember this applies to CoachAccountable itself, and anything you might embed that is not on CA’s servers. If needed, get IT to make an exception for the CA domain (and give them John Larson’s contact so they can be assured of the security CA has in place).

The client insists on paper workbooks. I have one of these clients and have now told them I will not be using paper again. They informed me that I would have to provide them with iPads or tablets to do the workshop, in that case. I politely suggested that is not going to happen. For now, I’ll let them work with my competitors until they realise that they don’t get results and come back to me.

Embedding from another platform. PDF embeds (using Scribd) works for now. Google Slides (will not work in China), Zoho slides (does work in China). Prezi and Live Prezi work. Have a backup plan handy: images of your “slides”.

Notifications. When setting up worksheets for a live workshop, you do not want automatic notices going out. Also, make sure to minimise your own notifications when they submit anything for the duration of your workshop (or your inbox will be full to fullness). (Related: On Not Overwhelming Your Clients)

All in All

Way easier and better than using an LMS, PDFs, Mentimeter (and similar).

Takes a bit of patient setup, but my client was impressed, and the participants ALL participated in full for the whole programme.

One of the great things about working at CoachAccountable is that we each have built-in coaching at our jobs. To that end we’ve each got a client account under the other’s coach account (meaning John is a client of Morgan, and Morgan is a client of John). As you might imagine, that comes with a lot of material; specifically, we’ve got roughly billions of Whiteboards for collaboration (company culture, easy-access links to our reviews on Capterra and Google, etc.). That means I often need to search for a particular Whiteboard.

And here’s Sho to show us a new idea!

When Shorombo Mooij, a life and health coach from Holland, suggested folders for Whiteboards, I heartily agreed and added the task to our weekly Morgan’s the Boss session. Thanks to John’s quick work, Whiteboard folders now exist!

Here’s how to use them.

In the same way you organize Files in your Library or a client’s Files area, add a folder to your Whiteboards by clicking +Folder.

Choose the name for your folder and create it. Then, just drag and drop files onto it and they’ll be placed inside the folder.

Click the folder to see what’s inside. From here you can also create subfolders. If you want to move a file back out of the folder, just drag it onto “Up.” You’ll notice that underneath the “+ Whiteboard” button there’s a handy access to see the folder structure while you’re in it.

This actually is one of my favorite ads – it’s by the people who did the commercials for Squatty Potty and Poopourri.

To remove a folder, simply remove everything inside it, then refresh.

Thanks, Sho, for the inspiration and suggestion.

Enjoy!

Lynton’s been a power user of CoachAccountable since early 2016, using it to deliver courses to hundreds of his clients.

He’s out of the UK; we’d never talked on the phone, let alone met.  But we’ve had plenty of exchanges: on account of his geography (namely 7 hours ahead) and power user status (namely giving lots of CA Courses to clients in varied time zones) he stumbled upon a few niche bugs in how CA handled the timing of delivering course materials, allowing me to fix them and helping to build a more perfect CA.

Lynton reached out to me last month, letting me know he was going to be traveling for a while and asking me if he could export his files/setup so that he could pickup with it when ready to resume.

As you might guess I was happy to do the solid of simply pausing his account.  When he mentioned he was RV’ing through the states I offered a standing invite for a beer (or the like) if he ever passed through Denver.

Turns out he and his partner were flying right in to Denver to pick up the RV… what a lovely coincidence!  A few emails more and we were on for a gathering at Growler USA, a nice haunt right in my neighborhood.

Um, yeah, he’s bigger than that.

The name of Lynton’s program is Make me Unbreakable.  When I stepped into the pub and surveyed the clientele it was clear at a glace that “oh yeah, THIS is the guy we should be hiring to make us unbreakable”.

(I ribbed him later that his avatar photo in CA, just him in a hoodie and kinda positioned small in the frame, didn’t quite do justice to his stature :).

As I crossed the room Lynton stood to give me a warm welcome and a man hug.

As is practially always the case, I got such joy and perspective out of hearing, firsthand, from a coach what it’s like in their world (and how CA intersects with it).  We got to talking and it was a treat.

“For a fitness program, 40-45% retention past 6 months is common.  With CA it was like 85-90%.  I had customers staying on for two years and more.”

Wow, for real?  If it wasn’t already in line with his evident super-friendly nature, that fact alone might explain the jovial man hug.  He continued, “I used to send out texts every Sunday, asking after ‘how are you doing with this, how are you doing with that?  How’s your meditation?’  10-20 clients, took a lot of time.  Now the computer does all the work, and I’ve got way more clients.”

Lynton described a bit about what it was like to design those courses that had the computer doing all the work.  “Took a while to get it just right, building the course.  Spent 50 hours on the first version, tried it on myself, found it didn’t work.  Then spent 5 hours on a new version and THAT worked brilliantly.”

I said good on you for having the persistence to really get it right and reap the reward!  I could see why he wanted to keep that data intact.

Bringing us to the current moment, Lynton summarized: “Now taking 6 months off, maybe more, to travel.  Excited to get new ideas, pick up with CA later and make a new and better program.  Excited to see what’s new in CA when I do!”

The plan for Lynton and his lady friend is to RV around for a month, then travel about for one more here in the states, then Mexico, Cuba. “Who knows after that.  Looking to bounce around in Canada next February, exploring towns, may settle down in one.  Looking for somewhere else in the world, UK is so small.  With CA I can have clients anywhere in the world.”

I was so delighted and inspired to hear as much (and NOT because of the “enabled-by-CA” part, though that’s nice).  They’re basically doing a world tour and poised to go wherever the journey takes them.  This of course is near and dear to my heart, as CoachAccountable itself was gotten off the ground during my world tour with my wife in 2012/2013 (I launched it from my kitchen table in Cusco, Peru!).

We swapped stories of travel: countries to go to, cities to explore, meals to be had.  It was my honor to inspire and be inspired–it’s always super life giving to see someone ACTUALLY DO IT (whatever that big dream “IT” may be).

Guess which is which! (Hint: Lynton is the one you’d wanna take fitness advice from.)

Thanks Lynton for the beer (he insisted on buying :), and moreover for the conversation.  I wish you an amazing trip and we’ll cook up some new goodies in CA for you to check out whenever you’re ready to pickup with your coaching practice, from wherever in the world you decide to settle!

This is a story about where we are headed: a day in the life of you.

You wake up at the leisurely hour of 8:45.  Not to an alarm, but to your body’s more natural rhythms.  As a rule you don’t schedule yourself for any calls before 10am and, flush with clients as you are, everyone you work with is happy to oblige that rule.

You do a quick check of your email.  A few items pop out at you.

Dave marked his action complete, “Have conversation with my boss about a raise”, and commented that it went really well, with a $5,000 boost to his salary effective next paycheck.  You take a moment to reply with a word of congrats and acknowledgement.

While you were sleeping two more people signed up for your 6-week program on how to confidently advance your career.  Money in the bank.  At $79 a pop it won’t make you rich, but with the materials you lovingly crafted 8 months ago set to drip to those new participants automatically it won’t entail any extra work either, and you know that based on your past conversion rates it’s likely that one of them will opt to become a one-on-one client before the program ends.

One other person booked themselves for a complimentary session, scheduled for next Tuesday at 11 and it’s already in your calendar.  Based on the answers in her intake form it looks like she’s a good fit, too.

No new signups for the subscription-based mastermind group, but that’s okay: with 16 members already in there it’s getting a little full, and you’re not keen to split it into two just yet.

You enjoy a leisurely breakfast and get ready for your day.

At your desk you glean through the happenings report of what’s new with your clients since yesterday.  Back when it was just you and a notebook you couldn’t have imagined keeping up with more than a dozen, but now you’re expertly juggling 23, nearly twice that amount, and with way less stress.  Ah, Alice rated herself a 9 yesterday on overall life happiness, a first since you started working together 4 weeks ago.  She comments that everything is really coming together thanks to the work she’s doing with you.  You click to post a quick comment back giving her credit for the things she’s really risen to.

You enjoy this little window into how your clients are doing during the time off between your sessions: clients feel the love of that extra attention and encouragement you give them now and again, and they appreciate you for it.

Just then, your phone buzzes: you’ve got a call with Gerald in 10 minutes.

You close out the happenings report and load up Gerald’s record.  He’s got a few of his action items marked off, but those around his presentation are showing as incomplete and late.  A review of the session notes from last time reminds you he was feeling a little anxious about that.  No problem, you’ll be able to hit the ground running, getting to what’s behind that in no time.  Otherwise his Metrics look good and, based on the pre-session Worksheet he filled out yesterday, he seems excited to speak with you.

Your phone buzzes again: you’ve got a call with Gerald in 1 minute.  Happily his phone number is right there in that text reminder—you finish collecting your thoughts and give Gerald a call right on time as always.

He’s happy to hear from you and you dive right in.

By the end he’s recommitted to the plan and has set more realistic deadlines for those steps you distinguished together.  You take five minutes and type up the key takeaways, and email them off with a few clicks.

You notice that was your 8^th call with him out of his package of 12, and his next installment payment will be automatically run tomorrow.  You make a note to check in with him on his next call about his happiness with the engagement overall, setting the stage for continuing on if he’s in a fitting place to do so.

Next up you’ve got an 11:30 call with Shannon.  Ah, Shannon.  She was rather frazzled when you started work with her 6 months ago, but has since gotten a raise and then a promotion (also which entailed a raise).  She’s risen to the potential she always had and you guided her to the mindsets, habits and actions that got her where she wanted to be.

This is her last call with you; she’s good to go and knows it, won’t be re-upping for another package.  You couldn’t be happier.  When you started she was rating her weekly workplace satisfaction at 3s and 4s, now 8s and 9s are the norm.  Her salary and position are similarly improved.  She said she’d be happy to be a case study for your website.  With her permission, of course, you figure it would be great to embed one or two of her Metrics right there on the site—nothing tells a story quite like real results do.

The call is great: acknowledgement and completion are present in spades.  Afterwards with a few clicks you download her complete record.  You email it to her as sort of a parting gift, a nice little souvenir of the time you spent working together AND a treasure trove of the insights that she got out of working with you.  You then deactivate her account, knowing that if she ever wants to work with you again you can pick right up where you left off.

You then go with a friend at a café you’ve been meaning to try out, and enjoy a meandering lunch while talking about job satisfaction.  You take your time because, by and large, you’re done for the day.  Your client load and schedule of bi-weekly sessions (plus that mastermind group that meets weekly) means you’ve got about 2 or 3 calls scheduled per day, so this is not uncommon.  After lunch you go to the park to lie under a tree and read a book.

Later in the afternoon you feel a creative spark, so you resume work on your new course, “Overcoming the Imposter Syndrome”.  You feel it’s a light topic but with broad appeal, and one which you can speak to from your own experience and expertise.  You’re putting together some nice worksheet assignments and a regiment of action items you know to help.  You’ve even been dabbling with firing up the webcam on your laptop to record a few video riffs and make them a part of the course, because it’s a fun way to connect and let those who might like to work with you get better acquainted with what you’d be like to work with.

There’s no hurry, but you’ll probably wrap up work on this course next week or the week after that.  After testing it by going through it yourself and with a few friends, you’ll make it available for purchase on your website.  Maybe $39 for this one—it doesn’t have to be much, you just want to put something cool out there and this is a nice way for prospects to get interested in working with you one-on-one.

Before you know it your phone is buzzing with a reminder from your personal calendar: you’ve got plans tonight, dinner and drinks with friends, and you’re gonna be late if you don’t get yourself out the door.  You lost track of time in the creative flow; it’s cool, that can happen in a medium with which you can take your time to be put your best work forward that will be enjoyed again and again by many.  You’ll pick up with it tomorrow.

At dinner you buy an appetizer or two for the table, and remember with a smile how you would never do that in your leaner times as a freshly minted coach, before you knew how to attract a steady stream of clients.

Now you enjoy your time out with friends with a feeling of peace, a feeling that you’ve made it.  You retire at the end of the day satisfied, and excited to do it again tomorrow, to play the game of being a prosperous, difference-making coach.

About a year ago we released direct sync functionality with Google Calendar.  When we did I figured requests would start rolling in for a more direct sync with other calendar systems, but to my surprise (and kinda delight, I guess!) having just Google Calendar seemed to cover the needs of the vast majority of CA users, so I was content to leave it at that and focus on other projects.

But last month I got a nice bit of perspective in a conversation with Martin in Australia.  I may not have it word for word, but it was something to the effect of “There are two types of software out there: those that integrate fully with Microsoft products, and those we don’t use”.

What a succinct and compelling case for adding such support to CoachAccountable.

Two productive weeks later CoachAccountable now supports full synchronization with Outlook calendars.

To set this up as a coach, go to Settings >> Appointment Config >> Calendar Sync.

Google Calendar or Outlook? Either way you’re a few clicks away from full synchronization.

Clicking the “Sync with Outlook!” button takes you to the login screen with your Microsoft account.  Once logged in, you’re presented with the ask to give CoachAccountable permission to sync with your calendar:

Two permissions: (1) access that lasts more than an hour and (2) access to your calendar.

Assuming you click “Yes”, you’ll be bounced back to CoachAccountable for the final step: choosing which (if any) calendar you’d like CA to publish your coaching appointments to, and which calendar CA should read from to determine your precise availability.

Easy choices: which calendar should CA publish too, which calendars should CA read from.

And that’s it!  With just a few clicks you can be fully synced with your Outlook calendar in under a minute, and this includes accounts with Outlook.com, Office 365, and Outlook Exchange.

Don’t forget your clients!

This one-time setup to sync with your calendar is easy and useful for you as coach, AND is similarly available to your coaching clients.  They’ll find the same controls to sync with their calendar system of choice (Google or Outlook) in their My Account page, so let them know this is available as a quick one-time setup.

Their setup is a little easier: just choose which calendar to publish to.

And you might go one step further to actually sell them on doing this.  Because when they do it, their appointments with you will automatically appear in their calendar.  It’s a great way to make the process of working with you even more frictionless, and easier to fit into their busy lives.  (This one is so good that it might well be a worthy Action item for you to make part of the standard getting started routine for new clients!)

Enjoy!

I got a simple but illustrative question the other day:

Hi John,

I referred my friend Garrett to CoachAccountable and we’re debating on the pros and cons of two single user accounts vs a team account.

Could you help us understand the differences?

I call this an illustrative question because this is a nice lens by which to contrast Team with Basic account.  Here’s the answer I gave that sums it up tidily:

The answer ultimately comes down to if you guys plan to/would benefit from being able to collaborate more tightly.

A pair of single accounts are two completely separate silos: no sharing of clients, no sharing of resources (like templates, files or courses), no visibility/oversight/collaboration of one coach into the work of the other.

Team Edition, by contrast, allows all of these things.  Rather than complete separation, you can work jointly in coaching a given client or group of clients.

Team Edition offers these things but is generally more expensive for a given client count. If you’ll be working largely independently, a pair of single accounts should do fine.

I hope that helps!

Last week we had the pleasure of being an exhibitor at the 3rd annual St. Thomas Executive Coaching in Organizations Conference.

DeAnne Aussem gave a great opening keynote.  Among many gems covered was the topic of relevance as a coach: how well you and your coaching offering stack up as being worthwhile.

For me in the audience it was a wonderful window into a challenge area that coaches face, and as she presented a 3-part framework for boosting relevance I was struck by how well CoachAccountable was already poised to help coaches to be more relevant.

If you’re already using CoachAccountable (or even just considering it), it’s worth being familiar with all the ways it can serve you.  Making you more relevant is no exception.  So with that in mind, let’s look at that framework and consider how CA can fit in to each part:

1. Establish: Building a compelling value proposition

I think it’s fair to say that, when it comes to how you operate as a coach, you never want people to think (or even wonder if) you’re just some someone with a notebook and a telephone.

In distancing ourselves from that more nebulous perception, compelling can take many forms.  These include credible expertise, a professional system, offerings that are easy to understand, and maybe even a window into your process & how you work.

While CoachAccountable can’t do much for you in the expertise department (it’ll never seek to replace the human element in coaching!), it can give you a significant advantage with the other three:

1. That you have a branded client portal, one which tracks real numbers, puts good ideas into a clear record of to-dos (and dones), and serves as a documented record of the whole process, speaks volumes to your professionalism.
2. The combination of CoachAccountable Offerings and Engagements makes it easy to define and present the coaching packages you offer, and makes selling them from your own website a cinch.
3. Because largely made up of conversations, coaching is hard to show off to curious parties (particularly those considering hiring you).  But the records and structures used in your CoachAccountable account are readily downloaded, exported, embedded, and shared.  Just showing off a good screenshot or two of a coaching relationship in progress demystifies the whole thing.

2. Demonstrate: Claiming my coaching credibility

I feel that when it comes to coach credibility, credentials are a great start but nothing speaks more powerfully than real results.  Using CoachAccountable means accumulating any or all of the following with your clients:

• A record of past completions
• Metrics that show the progression of KPIs
• Written accounts of challenges, breakthroughs and wins

Any of these constitute a real story of what clients can expect in working with you, thus making it easy to demonstrate your credibility.

3. Maintain: Innovate service offerings

When someone has worked with you for a substantial length of time, does that work become a rote thing that might just feel like going through the motions?  Or can you inject a certain newness that gives the experience excitement similar to the start?

Here again CoachAccountable can help.  It supports and facilitates several modalities of the coaching experience: 1-on-1, group participation, and independent work within courses you create.  If one of these is your standard thing, you could offer another up as a way vary and deepen their work with you.

Even if it’s just, for example, 1-on-1 coaching through and through, you can inject variety and texture through offering one or more mini-course “modules” that your clients could work through.

For example you could design a 3-week course on establishing and retaining work-life balance, consisting of certain materials to read, assignments to do, and things to track.  Prescribe as needed to clients during your working relationship, allowing them to work through the course with benefit of your personal oversight and support.  This leverages your time: design once, use again and again.

Relevance is a great lens by which to evaluate and strengthen yourself as a coach.  I agree with DeAnne: if you can establish your offering to be compelling, demonstrate your credibility, and innovate to keep the experience enduringly valued you’re doing well to have real relevance as a coach.

I got a great question in my inbox yesterday:

I might’ve just answered right back, but this is a worthy concern that’s really at the heart of what it is to fully embrace any new system and make it a part one’s process.  So I’ll answer it here, for the benefit of Matthew and everyone else.

We are all of us routinely inundated with new systems, apps, and other online entities begging for our attention, each trying to get you to opt in to their newsletter, sign up for an account, or to allow them to send alerts to your phone or desktop.

As such we need to be choosy about who and what we give access to our precious attention.  That’s simple self preservation.

We know this, so we’ve crafted CoachAccountable to very respectful of user attention: worth using with not a lot of hassle or extra work to get real value out.  To Matthew’s question of not demanding too much of his coachees, let’s look at how this plays out in real usage.

It turns out, CoachAccountable makes it possible to by and large avoid any need, on the part of clients, to go to a website to hear from you, check notes, look at status.  So many of the common interactions can be run over email, a channel you were probably going to use to some degree no matter which system (or none) you ultimately go with:

• Session notes, once written up, can be emailed to your client with one click.
• Action items can be marked complete by replying “done” to a reminder email about them.
• Metric numbers can be reported by replying to a reminder email about them.
• A shared file can be accessed with a single click from the “your coach has shared a file with you…” email
• A worksheet can be brought right up to work on with a single click from a notification email
• Messaging and commenting on anything can also be done via email, like usual email but with benefit of it all being logged into the client record.
• A lot of these interactions can be done via text message as well, and these can all be tailored to the preference of the individual.

What all of these things share in common is this: we’ve polished the system to reduce and remove as much of the friction to participation as possible.  We know clients are busy and any hassles to participating in the coaching process will blunt their drive and ability to do the real work of applying your coaching, so we’ve innovated in every way we can think of to make it easy for them (and, while we were at it, for you as coach).

You’re able to set things up for your clients so that (1) they don’t find it a burden and (2) they get real value out of it.  Like other aspects of the rich skill that is coaching, there’s an art to this:

• You’ll want to set the stage for them so that when they first get going with you in CoachAccountable, they can immediately appreciate the why behind it (there’s a guide for that).
• You’ll want to be certain you’re not overwhelming them (there’s a guide for that).
• You’ll want to be sure you’re employing CA to help your client realize real wins out of working with you.  This may be tracking the right things, setting up action plans worth doing, sharing insights that they can look back on later, and so many other things.  (The guides for these lie largely in your coaching training, but CoachAccountable can help you really bring them to bear in practice!)

There’s a lot of flexibility here.  We’re happy to help you sort out which parts of CoachAccountable are worth using with your clients, and how to set them up so that they jibe best with their busy schedules.  Just ask and we’ll hop on a screen share to do so!

There was one other part to Matthew’s question:

Also, separately — the true client of mine is the boss of my coachee.  Is there a way they can view the progress of their employee.  I care about communicating with the employee (notes, metrics, etc) but am almost more concerned with keeping their boss up to date.

Again, great question.  There’s a nice consequence of using CA with your clients, whether full-on or to a very limited degree: it creates a record that is ripe for sharing with interested parties, like the boss of your coachee.  Here’s a guide on how to share that progress, and Happenings Reports in particular might be just the thing for you.

Ultimately CoachAccountable is something you can present to your clients as:

1. something to apologize for and thank them for bearing with, OR
2. as a real value-add to their coaching experience, something that’s going to genuinely help them get the most out of it.

With a little bit of practice wielding CoachAccountable with all (or even half of!) what it can do, you’ll find yourself comfortably presenting it as the latter.  Considering CoachAccountable really comes down to the opportunity to bolster your offering and up your coaching game.

At the end of the day, we’re in the business of making coaching as powerful and effective as it can be.  So whether it be with CA, some other system, or nothing at all, I hope you find something that really serves your needs.  Thanks for the questions!