Personal Growth Coach: Three Steps to Choosing Your Coach by Doug Grady, Author, Speaker, and Coach

A personal growth coach sees you in a way that you cannot see yourself. This vision gives the ability to prescribe specific personal adjustments that can lead to massive positive shifts in your life. Whether you are striving to grow your business, improve your health, impact your community, or move closer to your God-given potential, the right personal growth coach can help get you there.

Here’s how to choose your personal growth coach.

Step One: Get Clear on Your Outcome

People don’t buy coaching, they buy solutions.
Jenny Shih

Ask yourself:

What are the specific results you want to achieve? What do you want to experience MORE/LESS of?
By when?
Why?
What’s holding you back?

The more clarity you have in these areas the more effective you will be in choosing your coach. For help in clarifying your outcomes go to: The MORE LESS Method.

Step Two: Check the Seven Criteria for Choosing Your Personal Growth Coach:

In The Ripple Effect I recommended seven criteria in choosing your coach. Your ideal personal growth coach:

Possesses knowledge you do not have. In essence you pay more for less when you engage with a coach. You don’t want more information. We have virtually unlimited access to information. What you really want is the appropriate information for your specific situation at the right time. A personal growth coach provides this.
Exhibits a level of effectiveness you do not have. Has this person experienced success in the areas of life you want to impact? Have they helped other people to achieve what you want to achieve?
Initiates actions you could not or would not initiate on your own. This comes from the ability to see you in a way that you cannot to yourself. This insight yields directives and adjustments. What you’ve done to this point has gotten you where you are. It is the shifts in behaviors and activities that will get you where you want to be in a shorter period time.
Maintains high expectations of you. A great personal growth coach will consistently see you as the possibility of something greater, even if you don’t.
Utilizes a system of accountability to encourage and track your progress. You will be aware of the results you are getting and why.
Stimulates a lifestyle consistent with the coaching. Your mindset, activities, and choices will tend to shift naturally toward the experience of life you intend to create.
Challenges you. Even if the coach sucks you will tend to work more effectively with one than without. This is because when someone is watching we tend to feel challenged. Given the criteria above, the challenge factor exponentially increases.

Step Three: Be Coachable

The starting point of becoming coachable is realizing you are uncoachable.
Landmark Education

Once you choose your coach the work has just begun. The coach can only be as effective as your willingness to be coached. This may mean letting go of your preconceived notions, limiting beliefs, and “knowingness” of how results happen.