The CoachAccountable Blog

Actions are CoachAccountable’s way of helping coaches structure action plans with their clients and manage completion between sessions.  Actions recently got a big leg up this week with the addition of Action Projects.

An Action Project is a way to group related actions under the banner of a single project:

How close is the project to being done? The progress bar gives the overall picture.

Tying a new Action to a new (or existing) project is a snap.  Just choose an existing project from the drop down menu, or create a new one simply by giving it a name:

When an action is part of a project, weight is relevant.

“Weight” is simply a way to tell CoachAccountable how much a given action contributes to the overall progress of the project.  Effectively, it dictates how big a slice of the progress meter should be filled up when the action is marked complete.  Actions that are more important and/or entail more work should be given greater weights, and quicker or less significant Actions get smaller ones.

You can think of weight as being on a 10-point scale, but really they can be represent whatever scheme of weighting you like.  For programming projects where features to-be-built are contract line items, I like to make actions that mirror the line items with weights that match the dollar amount of those line items.

The progress meter is cool because it gives a visually satisfying look at how much is done, plus it’s fun to watch the meter fill up in the moment an action is marked complete.

Hover your mouse over any of the completed slices of the progress meter to see details about the corresponding action:

Hovering reveals an associated color for the completed action: red means it was done late, yellow, a little late, and green on time.

By editing the action project you can set a description for it, as well as set weights and update due dates in bulk for all of the Actions in the project:

The due dates of already-completed Actions can’t be updated, but their weights can be.

For my sake I already really like Action Projects: to queue up related actions into 2 or 3 projects is a major leg up from having a big, interlaced list of to-dos, organized only by due date.  To see the progress bars of each and recognize at a quick glance both how far we’ve come and how much further there is to go for a given project is super satisfying for me as coach, and my clients like it as well.  After using them for a few weeks, a big list of standalone Actions seems almost primitive by comparison.

I’m happy to report that already others have similarly weighed in.  L. T. from Australia writes:

Well done on the projects, makes working with businesses so much clearer!

and M. M. from Texas says:

Totally love the new Action Projects! :-)  Congratulations.

Enjoy!

In addition to the testimonial she so generously provided last month, Twila Gates offered to write a mini series reviewing the various features of CoachAccountable as a way to share with other coaches her experiences and how she’s made it serve her practice so well.

Recently I’ve had a few requests for a CoachAccountable user’s group, and until that’s ready I imagine Twila’s accounts make a fitting way to fill some of that void.

Twila has opted to start with the basics for her first piece, and herein describes CoachAccountable’s documentation of coaching sessions.  Take it away, Twila!

CoachAccountable is, by far, the very best interface for collaboration and coaching with a client.  After coaching for 19 years, I have several systems in place that I have utilized with my clients to promote success throughout the coaching experience.  One of those systems is documenting the actual coaching session in a way that my clients have added benefit beyond just reading an e-mail.

When I started using CoachAccountable, I was very happy to see that there was a way within the system to document the coaching sessions – even better, the documentation is stored in chronological order within the interface – and is searchable.  This immediately eliminated my need to remember the beginning of the e-mail address of my clients for sending the e-mail to them (I was using Outlook).   I also don’t have to save a copy of the documentation to myself, however, since there is the option to have the notes automatically sent to myself, I go ahead and keep a copy of the documentation in a client Outlook file.  The only reason I do this is in the event I need to review something about a client when I don’t have access to wifi.  Of course… how often does that occur – so I’m probably wasting my time and effort.  Hmmm… I might consider giving that up, now that I think about it!

Being able to pre-create templates for various types of coaching sessions is a real time saver.  It also creates some structure for my busy brain to latch onto so I can write optimal documentation to assist the client.  A typical session is easy enough, but what about “fire drill” sessions OR “focus sessions”…  You stay on track with giving your clients the notes they really need to promote continuity with their needs/desires.  Writing notes becomes easier and even enjoyable through the use of templates

I love the way CoachAccountable appends all actions created to the end of the documentation as an immediate reminder of agreements made during the session.  This creates the entire picture for the client to move forward… and I don’t have to go through gyrations to write notes at the top and the bottom in an e-mail.  It is all automatically pulled from the actions created during the meeting.

Sometimes I do take advantage of the little check box at the bottom of the documentation screen to make the notes private for my eyes only.  This is great for remembering something that might not be appropriate to include on the client’s notes and yet is important to me.  Of utmost importance is that both myself and my client have easy access to all notes since they are web-based.  I can’t tell you how many times my clients asked me to re-send notes previously because they couldn’t remember where they saved them or maybe they deleted them and realized that the notes included important information that they wanted to review.  Having it all online is invaluable.

So, all in all, CoachAccountable provides an excellent package for doing documentation of meetings.  This is a huge added bonus for your clients as you are able to focus on documenting the things that really matter for various types of coaching sessions.  Of course we as coaches need to focus on what our clients need from us in our notes and CoachAccountable supports our efforts in this important endeavor.

Happy documenting with less effort and better outcomes!

Last week my wife and I were in Vancouver enjoying a little getaway, during which I had my second international face-to-face with a CoachAccountable customer.  This time it was David Frank Gomes of Life Compass Coaching.

Relative to the timeline of CoachAccountable, David and I go way back.  He was one of the very first people checking it out with whom I chatted on the phone, one of my early attempts to convey in words the how and why of the system.  This was in November of 2012, just over 2 months into CA’s public existence.

I think the job I did of convincing him was good but not great in that green period of my sales call ability: it wasn’t until 5 months later that David came back as a full-fledged user of the system, but to my delight he’s been a vocal fan ever since.

During our visit we talked of Team Edition’s imminent release, our mutual paths as entrepreneurs in the coaching space, and David’s experience of using CA for his year+.  For David’s practice though he loves the system he finds a lot of its mechanics (for example of Metrics and Actions) to be cold, uninspiring, a little too right-brained.  For his sake, he told me, he’d love to give his clients a more visual experience: something to viscerally inspire the dynamic process that dealing with life’s issues and ambitions generally is, and communicate more than just numbers and graphs.

“Like sharing images,” he said, “yes I can upload it as a file to share with the client and put it in their Files tab, but then they have to click through and download it to their machine and open it.  It’s clunky.  It would be nice to see them just appear in the Stream tab.”

He went on to explain how “Yeah you can do a Metric of ‘how do you feel about your dad’s death today?’, but what does that mean, when they report a 2?  I want them to go out in the world, take a picture that expresses how they’re feeling.  When they share that we can have a conversation, create and build a story based on that rather than some sterile graph.”

It was fantastic to see and hear things so clearly from his perspective.  The way he described the situation gave me several ideas of low hanging fruit to put more imagery into the coaching experience.

So today I’m happy to announce the release of two tweaks to the system which allow the coaching process to be just a little more visual.

The first is that clients are now able to upload and embed images into their journal entries.  Like coaches have enjoyed for a while now, a little image button on the WYSIWYG editor allows them to access and add to their image gallery:

Fun fact: that sketch of me was done by some nice gal during a drunken draw-off competition at a house party in college.  Pretty sure she won.

You may need to let your clients know that they can insert images into their journal entries, as that little picture icon is easy to miss.  And remember: as coach you can add images to your templates, worksheet assignments, session notes, and even client messages.

The second tweak is that shared files that are in fact images are now rendered inline in the stream.

Taken together the Client Stream can now be a much more pictorial account of the coaching process:

The client has included an image in his journal entry. The shared image file shows right up with no need to download.  Also: that’s what I looked like in grad school.

David, it was a pleasure hanging with you on the Granville Island harbor.  Thanks for sharing your inspired perspective!

While it’s true that I’m not getting yet making any headway on translating CoachAccountable to other languages (Portuguese and German are leading the small pack in number of requests), today I’ve added support for 24-hour formatting of times throughout the system.

This is nice for folks not accustomed to seeing times with “am” and “pm” appended (which, much like seeing 7/3/2014 versus 3/7/2014, can be quite disorienting!).

Like dates this formatting option can be set by each user independently, allowing everyone may see times in the format they’re used to.  Coaches and clients alike can find this setting on their My Account page right with the other localization settings:

Team Edition supports multiple coaches, administrative oversight and more.

CoachAccountable Team Edition is now publicly available.

With this release CoachAccountable is a suitable platform for managing an entire team of coaches, including administrative oversight, coordinated team coaching, shared team resources, and mentorship of newer coaches by more senior ones.

The well-loved and thoroughly-honed supporting structures for client-coaching relationships remains at the heart of the system.

See the full lowdown here.

This week has been a deep dive into client engagement in coaching programs, from why it matters and is worth managing to how to cause more of it.  To round out the series I’m happy to unveil CoachAccountable’s brand new Client Engagement Reports.

The impetus to create these reports began 12 days ago during an inspired conversation with Michael Leahy, wherein he expressed the desire to see how his clients were engaging but in a manner more efficient than clicking through to each one and manually reviewing.  The vision was further brought into focus last week when Nicky Roberts shared how keeping up with clients who are falling off in their engagement has made a substantial difference in her client retention.

So now I get it.  Between action plans, marking things done, accessing shared files and more, CoachAccountable already maintains a seriously detailed record of how much clients are engaged in their coaching process.  Knowing that a client is falling behind is actionable information: a chance for coach to check in and offer whatever support might be appropriate.

All that’s needed to make an actionable gauge of client activity is to pull it all together and present it to coach in a way that’s super simple to understand.  Thus the new Client Engagement Reports:

Move your mouse over any band of activity to see the breakdown of what it entails.

A client’s engagement is summarized on a per-week basis, and is comprised of whichever bits you think are an important indication of their participation: action completions, metric reporting, journal entries, and so on.  Even the number of times they logged in during a week can factor in to their level of engagement.

The setup is simple: pick the date range you’re interested in (the most recent month is a handy default) and which items you want to view engagement on.

Just pick a date range and which things you care about for gauging their involvement.

These reports make keeping tabs on who’s keeping up and who isn’t a snap, which is especially important when you’re coaching a lot of people in which case folks might easily go unnoticed when lagging behind.  Given how powerful it is to manage client engagement for the sake of results and a continued relationship, I suspect that this will be a useful addition for many coaches.

As illustrated earlier, client engagement with your coaching is vital to their getting results, and is a major deciding factor in whether or not they stick around.

Here are some practices for causing greater and more regular engagement with your coaching that you can enact with the benefit of CoachAccountable.  And if you’re worried about how much work this is going to be to get your clients up to speed with these practices, included with each one is an estimate of how much time it takes per client to set in motion.

1. Get them in the habit of creating their own actions.  Do it for them perhaps the first time, a basic setup.  Include one action to “Mark this action complete”, and one action to “Create your own action”.  These two may seem trite, but are actually quite useful.  The pair gives them the excuse to play around with Actions, see how they work and get the satisfaction of building up a collection of completed actions.  Bear in mind: the typical client when just getting started will often feel like a guest in someone else’s house, and accordingly will want to tread lightly and not mess anything up.  So it makes a big difference to give them permission to feel right at home and experience this as a resource for them to fully use as well.

Encourage them to set reminders and make comments when they create their own actions.  Let them know that actions can be easily marked complete by replying to reminder emails and texts.  Reminder replies can include comments too, making the dialog super easy to keep going.  Explain how comments keep the communication channels open for more support, and serve as tangible records of both progress made and obstacles overcome.

Time to set in motion with a client: 3 minutes the first week to setup relevant actions + a 2-minute conversation to illustrate the how and why of doing it themselves.

2. Schedule appointments that have pre-session worksheet assignments tied to them.  Appointments are easily setup with reminders for both you and your clients, and can be configured to always have a worksheet assigned beforehand.  Reminders for your clients remind them of the fact that they’re being coached on things that are important to them, and thus gets them thinking about those things.  Filling out a pre-session worksheet gives them an opportunity to take stock of what they would like more support on, and sets you both up for a focused and less meandering coaching session.

CoachAccountable manages the assignment of the worksheet at the right time prior to appointment, and puts your clients one click away from being able to fill it out.

Time to set in motion with a client: 1 minute per appointment, or 2 minutes to setup a regular sequence of up to 12 appointments.  Zero time is required if you allow your clients to schedule themselves with you.

3. Get them in the habit of reporting on Metrics.  You may not have concrete numbers that you are working on, but even subjective elements like how they feel about their progress (on, for example, a 1-to-10 scale) are a useful thing to track.  Regularly reporting Metrics builds a story of progress and what’s working over time, which helps them focus more on causing results in the desired direction AND gives you hints on what to focus on in your sessions.

Remind your clients that Metrics are quick and easy to track, just by replying to regular email or text reminders.  If you’re not sure what to track, see the Four Types of Metrics for ideas.  For a full primer on Metrics and how they work, check out Why Metrics are Awesome.

Time to set in motion with a client: 2 minutes to create the first relevant metric + a 3-minute conversation to explain the concepts and importance of regular reporting.

It’s typically hard to cause high engagement without being high touch, and being high touch is often impractical for the time it requires (and even then it may be off-putting to clients!).  With these practices however you can cause your clients to more regularly engage with your coaching, both with a very small outlay of time for you and in a way that is satisfyingly interactive for them.

I once presumed that, within coaching, client engagement could be taken for granted.  After all folks are paying good money for the experience, and it’s a way for them to grow and prosper in ways that are important to them.  So of course they’re going to keep up with the materials, heed coach’s advice, complete all assignments and follow through on action plans, right?

If you’ve been coaching a while you’ve probably had a handful of such A-students of the process: those who put in their work as though the quality of their life depended on it, and were accordingly rewarded for their diligence with the results they sought.

But not everyone who is coached has all of the will, the wherewithal, and the confidence in the process to follow your guidance with such high fidelity.  This is just as true for individuals who undertake being coached of their own volition as it is for individuals participating in some form of company-mandated training program.

We could say that the success of coaching is the product of how good the direction is (expertise, content, fit with the client) and how engaged the client is with that direction.  This probably makes intuitive sense: you can have the greatest coaching methodology in the world, and if the engagement is nil or negligible it won’t make a difference.

One way to look at client engagement is that it simply lies within clients themselves: some are sufficiently motivated and in a good place to take advantage of the process, and others just aren’t.

But building CoachAccountable and helping hundreds of coaches over the last two years has given me evidence that there’s more to the story.  The degree to which a client engages with a given coaching program is actually quite malleable, and is intimately tied to how the program is structured and the ways by which a client can participate.

Client engagement, then, becomes another dimension along which coach can improve his or her coaching offering.  When clients are engaged, they are doing the work, getting the results, and in turn more apt to be satisfied with the process (and perhaps most telling of all: more likely to stick around for more).

Yes, there are the gimme clients who are rip-roaring-ready-to-go without much effort on our parts.  But the others are by no means a lost cause.  If you lose clients after a week or a month because their enthusiasm to keep up simply peters out in a predictable fashion, it isn’t necessarily that they were a misfit or that your coaching is no good.  It may be just a failure to keep clients sufficiently engaged in a process meant to ultimately benefit them.

So if client engagement is something that can be caused, how to cause it?  There are three main rules for doing this that I’ve sorted out, rules which have had a large part in the design (and success) of CoachAccountable.  They are:

1. Keep the results tangible.  “Am I getting anything out of this?”  If your clients are ever left to wonder this on their own, your prospects of keeping them engaged have already taken a big hit.  To avoid this you’ve got to be doing things like measuring results, keeping a scoreboard, or making a game which enables them to see where they are and how far they’ve come at every turn.  This sort of tracking prevents the weeks from blurring together, and replaces that sensation with one of being on a path that’s leading somewhere good.

2. Make the process fit in their life.  Coaching is intrinsically tough because it’s the stuff of expanding outside of one’s usual habits, performance levels, and comfort zones.  Anything you can do to remove friction to their participation and get them fitting it in with minimal hassle is a win, especially considering that they’ve got enough to manage as is just acting on your coaching.  Make the experience of being coached go down more smoothly by sending reminders for appointments, making their action plans and progress readily visible, providing session notes that are always accessible, and sharing resources in a way that makes them easy to retrieve and easy to revisit.  In other words: give it to them on a silver platter.

3. Make the experience responsive.  If your client’s only opportunity to experience being coached is during your weekly session, that makes a lot of days during which they are on their own.  This time in-between presents ample opportunity for life to come up and derail plans made in coaching, even when derailment is as simple (and easy to overcome) as forgetting.  Sending little reminders to follow through on action plans goes a long way to maintain forward momentum.  Proactively reaching out with a simple “way to go” for progress made makes clients feel cared for, and moreover imparts in them a real sense that following through matters, by the simple fact that someone else is paying attention and cares.  Any way that your coaching presence can be gently felt between those times when you’re actually present makes your coaching a more immersive experience, rather than just a fleeting once-a-week time that stands largely at odds with the rest of life.

My personal experience combined with that of many other coaches reveals that to abide by these three rules provides a major advantage in causing client effort, and thus client results.

One of the reasons CoachAccountable works so well for coaches is because helps them follow these three rules with minimal effort.  To wit, last week I was favored with kind words from CoachAccountable user Nicky Roberts.  Here is an excerpt, a tidy report from the field which illustrates the pivotal role that rule #3 of causing client engagement has played in elevating the success of her coaching practice:

Before I used CoachAccountable I noticed that around the 6 week mark clients usually hit a slump in their coaching. They lost momentum and the sparkle and shine of coaching had worn off.  Since using CoachAccountable there is no slump.  I think this is partly because I have a better sense of when the slump might be starting because I notice a reduction of their use of CoachAccountable and can head it off immediately, and also because we stay in touch so much more, they enjoy a better overall experience of coaching.

Before using CoachAccountable about 40% of my clients stopped coaching after their first 6 weeks.  Now 0%, yes zero, of my clients end their coaching after their first 6 weeks. In fact, as of this writing I haven’t lost a single coaching client in over a year. I believe that CoachAccountable has been part of helping me achieve that success.

It was back in September when I put out a call from some of my favorite early adopters of CoachAccountable for a testimonial, something tidy to fit in to the then under constructions testimonials section of the CA homepage.  Some I heard back from immediately, others took a little while, still others I never heard back from (it’s cool, goodness knows it’s a serious favor, and not anyone’s job to do my marketing for me).

Twila Gates, Senior Credentialed ADHD coach of the ADHD Success Network lovingly let me know that time was tight but she’d get back to me.

Today she got back to me, and then some.  I’m delighted and humbled by the way-above-the-call-of-duty missive she has written, which I share with you now.  Twila, take it away.

I must say that I was extremely fortunate to have signed up with CoachAccountable very early on (I think John said I was user #8). In any case, I was so excited that I found CoachAccountable when I did. Even though CoachAccountable was in its infancy it provided many of the features that I was looking for in my desire to coach my clients to the very best of my ability.

When I signed on I had already spent $10,000+ to have a site developed with many similar capabilities to CoachAccountable… I can tell you that it was not a fun experience, despite my technical knowledge (from a database standpoint). I was at a point where I had to decide to toss the idea or spend a lot more to get it done right. I was wondering if there was anyone else out there trying to create the same type of interface as what I so very much desired… enter CoachAccountable.

I nearly came unglued with excitement when I found CoachAccountable as it had many of the features I wanted and it worked (unlike my own venture into this arena). So I signed up and started playing with it immediately. Not too far in I also added the feature for clients to login at my website portal. I have NEVER regretted my decision to use Coach Accountable.

I work with people who have Attention Deficit (ADD / ADHD). Part of the focus in our coaching is… well …. developing “focus” and “structure”. I had always assisted my clients in creating goals with metrics (I was using a spreadsheet)… but to have it web accessible and web updateable was one of my dreams fulfilled. Setting automated reminders tied into session times, actions, metrics, notes, etc was unbelievably easy and VERY good for my clientele.

John was great and did some re-structuring of the metrics interface so it is possible to view major/long term goals separate from daily or weekly types of goal tracking. He also created an accordion feature for the graphic so a longer list was easier to view. I couldn’t believe that John was so open to my suggestions and ideas. I think at one point… I was a bit much for him, as I was contacting him every few days with questions and ideas.

John never wavered… I’m not saying he gave me everything I asked for, but if it made sense for coaches in general, he as happy to at least consider. Several fixes and additions were made and he knows about a few more things I would like to see happen. John is so fantastic… he considers everything carefully as his desire is to have a very clean and user friendly interface, which I agree is very important. I anticipate that John is already thinking about various requests right now due to his wonderful responsiveness and desire to continue to add features that make sense.

All in all, I would very highly recommend Coach Accountable to ANY coach. It assists you in creating continuity, awareness, motivation, effective communications and an outstanding experience for clients. Coach Accountable gets an A+++++ and John gets an A++++++++++++.

Twila

Metrics remain one of my favorite pieces of the entire CoachAccountable system: they make progress real, reveal hidden insights, and cause clients to be engaged at a very high and regular level.

Over the two years of using and learning how other coaches have used them I’ve come to recognize 4 distinct flavors of Metrics that are commonly employed: Cumulative, Measurement, Rating and Binary.  Each flavor has its own characteristic setup, and each best fits its own separate set of outcomes worth tracking.

I invite you to take a minute to acquaint yourself with these 4.  Do so not only to enjoy a nice tutorial on their setup (and thus on Metrics in general), but more importantly to gain ideas how to more broadly help and serve your own coaching clients.

Cumulative

Cumulative is the type of Metric that typically starts at zero and builds towards some accumulated total amount.  This is really common and handy for tracking long term performance goals in arenas like sales and other such measurable productivity¹.

The target trend line of a Cumulative Metric gives a day-by-day visual approximation of when performance is ahead of schedule and when it is lagging behind.  This is quite nice for honing in on what’s really working as well as identifying when goals are turning out to be off, either too easy or wholly unrealistic.

To create a Cumulative Metric the key is to choose the “cumulative” option for the Data Entry setting.  Then make suitable target values to match the goal.  Most often this will be zero to start, and an end target value of whatever you’re shooting for by the end of the Metric duration.  If for example the goal is $100,000 in sales over a 3 month period, you would set the Metric to last for 3 months and have the target values be zero to start and 100,000 to end.

Here’s what the setup of our example Metric above looks like:

Measurement

A Measurement Metric is perhaps the most intuitive of them all: it is simply the tracking of some real-world value that can be measured on a regular basis.  “Weight” in a fitness program is a good example of a Measurement Metric.

In contrast to a Cumulative Metric it wouldn’t make sense to have to have the numbers of a Measurement Metric be added up as a running tally: the numbers themselves are the real thing to plot and watch unfold over time.  A Measurement Metric typically has target values that start at whatever the real-world value actually is at the onset of the Metric, and ends with the desired goal value.  In the example chart above we see a starting measurement of 252lbs, with a desired end goal of 230lbs after two months.

Measurement Metrics are a very natural way to keep track of real happenings over time and provide a strong visual guide to how well the desired change is (or isn’t) panning out.

Here is the setup of our example Measurement Metric.  Note how Data Entry is set to “regular” and the target values are chosen to match what’s so to start, and the desired goal to end:

Rating

In contrast to Measurement Metrics which are concerned with real-world measurable values, Rating Metrics are made up of scales and subjective numbers that nevertheless give meaning and track-ability to the less tangible.

Things like “managerial effectiveness”, “confidence on sales calls”, “degree of overwhelm”, and “sense of well-being” are all subjective, yet they are still of vital concern when coaching individuals towards their desired outcomes.  By creating a scale and guiding your clients to weigh in regularly with their subjective assessments you gain a rather useful foothold into coaching and influencing these important intangibles.  When tracked over time, and especially when annotated with comments, a Rating Metric invariably tells a real story about how these subjective aspects are going, and gives you as coach a useful area to focus on.

To create a Rating Metric simply decide on what scale you’d like your clients to rate on. 1 through 10 is a very common one that everyone is familiar with.  You might include this range in the name of the Metric (e.g. “Managerial Effectiveness on a Scale of 1 to 10”).

Once you pick your scale you then pick a number that nicely represents a sort of “minimum acceptable” value, as if to say “this value is okay, anything above this is a win, and anything below tells us we should look to improve”.  I recommend you then set both your starting and ending target values to this threshold.

The setup of our Rating Metric looks like this.  I recommend generic “points” to serve as the unit of measure.  The “on a Scale of 1 to 10” doesn’t have to be there in the name, but it’s a nice cue to remind our client how to report his or her values:

(Note that in the above the goal is to “meet or exceed” the target value.  When tracking something negative, e.g. degree of overwhelm, you’ll want to set the goal to “get at or below” the target value).

This goal is not quite in the spirit of things.

A common mistake is to setup a Rating Metric with zero for a starting target, and 10 as the ending one (or whatever value is the top of your scale).  This isn’t ideal because visually what you’re saying, in essence, is that the bar is too low to trip over when you’re getting started, but then gradually gets to only a perfect 10 being okay.

You can play with the target values to be whatever fits your style and actual goals.  Again, I prefer a fixed target throughout but it might be the case that you start with a 4 being okay and the game is to have your client view a 7 as the new standard of okay by the end of the Metric.  Just make sure that your target values make sense as the real (an attainable!) goals throughout the period of time that you’ll be tracking.

Binary

In many cases it’s useful simply to track regular practices in terms of a simple “did you do it, or did you not?”  This is where a Binary Metric comes in handy, where “binary” is just a fancy way of signifying that something is”zero or one”, “on or off”, or “yes or no”.

Here’s a short video showing how to set up a Binary Metric.

Binary Metrics are by far the least obvious use of Metrics, but like the others they enable a commonly useful type of tracking.  Binary Metrics are a good way to ingrain regular habits into your clients like exercising daily, sticking to a nutrition plan, doing prescribed rituals, and so on.

To setup a Binary Metric the most important thing actually is to let your client know that he or she should report numbers as a one or a zero, one for yes and zero for no.   Then I recommend setting target values to 0.5 to start, and 0.5 to end.  I grant that that’s a wacky, nonsensical set of target values for something that’s supposed to be a yes or a no, but bear with me: setting a flat line for the target that’s halfway between zero and one leads to a visually nice graph where the “yeses” are shaded with a favorable green and the “nos” are in an unfavorable red.

(This assumes that yes is good: with a Binary Metric like “Did you smoke today?” in a program trying to discourage smoking, for example, you would flip the goal setting to “get at or below” the target value, and thus flip the coloring scheme.)

A Binary Metric is as simple as that: just a nice scheme to document how much a regular practice is being followed-through upon which shows the history and trends in a very visual way.  Our setup looks like this:

And there you have it: 4 commonly-employed types of Metrics, each with their own characteristic setups and each serving a different collection of things worth tracking during the course of a coaching relationship.

The great flexibility of Metrics is part of what makes them a little intimidating when you first set them up, but this flexibility is also what makes them so versatile for a broad range of outcomes tracking.  By employing a combination of these four types you’ll be able to track pretty much anything your clients are working on, and have them more engaged and satisfied with the process as a result.