The CoachAccountable Blog

I got a note recently which utterly made my day.  It was sent as a response from one of the lessons in the Coaching With Software course:

Hi John!

First, I want to let you know that reading and pondering the articles you’ve sent has forced me to think differently about what my business really needs to provide potential clients. Years ago, I hired an executive coach to help me be accountable. Looking back, what their service ultimately became was an endless stream of worthless platitudes. They sounded and felt good but had absolutely no value or substance to help me move my business forward and hold me accountable. There was absolutely no meat just a bunch of feel good fluff that I was paying for on a weekly basis!!!

My coaching business has been on hold, for several years, because I could not see any inherent value that could be provided to potential clients.  You have inspired me to think differently and therefore, have decided to move forward again.  I am currently working on the details necessary to put my former coaching practice back in place. I have decided to use CoachAccountable as the vehicle to help me accomplish this.

You will hear back from in a couple of weeks once I have things back in place to support my coaching practice.

Thank you for inspiring me to take action!!!

Jack

I think Jack really gets to the heart of the hangup many have with coaching: all too commonly, it just boils down to so many feelgood platitudes.

As coaches we’re all pretty well adept at being a top-shelf cheerleader for the people we coach.  That sort of ability, to lift up and motivate others with our words, is neigh on a requisite of the practice.  But to truly have our coaching be worth taking seriously (not to mention worth coming back for), making our coachees feel good has to be balanced with actual lasting results beyond our interactions.  It has to contain structure, concrete actions to be taken, sincere follow through with those actions, and the courage to actually measure the results and respond accordingly.  Ultimately, it has to be results-based.

The degree to which the coaching industry is taken seriously depends on it.

To have CoachAccountable be recognized as a tool for giving those sorts of lasting results through structure and accountability is among the most important praise it could receive.  Thanks for the kudos, Jack.

This one’s a guest post by the venerated, bonified CoachAccountable customer #1, Dr. John Kenworthy.

During our visit a few months ago in Singapore, Dr. John mentioned that I gave him a lot of his free time back.  As I continue along my path of telling the story of CoachAccountable as being a win waiting to happen for your typical results-focused coach, I decided to ask Dr. John if he’d care to share with the class more precisely about that time he has saved.

His willingness to do so was generously enthusiastic, and his account was nothing short of remarkable.  I told him his title of saving 100 days of time this year might be regarded as a bit sensationalist.  He has assured me he’s ready to duke it out in any form of comment debate that ensues, so feel free to weigh in below with any skepticism and/or curiosity you have.

Take it away, Dr. John.

» Continue reading “How CoachAccountable is giving me 100 extra days this year”

A few weeks ago I got a request from one of the coaches on CoachAccountable:

I set myself up as a client and am essentially coaching myself.  I setup metrics to daily enter things from productivity level to weight lost.  I wondered if there was a way to have ourselves in the system but have it not count against our total clients?  It has helped me better understand how to use the tool with clients but as I get closer to ten clients I hate to have to pay for the higher tier.  Is there already a way to use the tool for ourselves or is this a possibility in the future?

At first I didn’t give this request much heed: doing extra coding and adding complexity to the system to have it track which client is technically the coach him or herself didn’t seem appealing, just to accommodate the (overall) rare event that a coach coaching themselves would push them over the threshold of the next subscription level.

But then I meditated on it, quite literally.

» Continue reading “Delightful Collaboration III – Coach Yourself”

Hot of the heels of the release of in-system messaging within CoachAccountable, I’ve already had a number of requests that it be possible to send a message to some or all clients at once.

I never meant for CoachAccountable to serve as anything resembling a email broadcast platform, but when I see what a natural fit it is to build upon the in-system messaging (with all of it’s perks) I see this as a rather nice fit after all.

You can personalize your bulk message by inserting your client’s name and a magic login link.