4 Reasons You Should Not Hire A Coach

So you pay a bunch of money for a coach to help you work through things – whether a Life Coach, or a Business Coach, or Personal Coach, whatever happens to be their vocation – and you’re done with the hard part, right? The hard part I’m alluding to, for most people anyway, is actually making the decision to hire a coach. Making the decision to hire a coach, however, is not the most difficult part of self-improvement. It seems the popular view about hiring a coach is tantamount to bringing your car into the shop to get the engine fixed. You hire a coach and well, isn’t he supposed to fix ME? If you’re thinking that way, whether you realize it or not up to this point, here are 4 reasons why you should definitely NOT hire a coach.

 You are not prepared to be held accountable – Many of us don’t like being held accountable for what we say we want to do. I’m convinced that entrepreneurs must somehow be born in a lab that makes this trait worse than the average person. Somehow they think that trading in their boss for an enterprise they create means that they’ll never have anyone to answer to again. Well, that’s about as far as you can get from the truth. We all have people to answer to, and as an entrepreneur, it will be your customers, your vendors, and sometimes even your employees.

Also, your coach is not your friend. Even though you may tell things to your coach that you wouldn’t dare tell your best friend, you are not paying them to feel sorry for you or to tell you what you want to hear. Your coach will (and should) challenge you, even if they agree with you, you should be able to ardently defend your position to them. They will (and should) hold you accountable for things you say you want that your friends might otherwise say “Cool, do it bro!” because they don’t want to upset you. You might get upset at your Coach sometimes, and to a certain extent, that’s ok. You don’t have a right to get mad at her though if you say you want to get a project done by a certain date, and your coach asks you: “What happens if that you don’t make that deadline?” and then she calls you out on it if you miss the mark.

– You are not ready to put in work towards self-improvement – Your coach can’t fix you, only you can do that. A good coach serves as a guide, giving you things to consider that you may not have. In terms of improvement, they can’t want “it” more than you do. I overheard a conversation with two other coaches venting to one another about their “problem” clients. One of them referred to a former client as “FNC”. Afterward, I asked him about what that meant, he laughed and smiled sheepishly. “I had to fire him as a client,” he told me, “he was just not ready to put in some real work to advance himself.” “FNC” meant “Fired – Not Coachable”.

– You are too defensive about receiving feedback – This runs along the same line as being un-coachable. If you are too worried about looking good in front of your coach, you’re never going to improve. Part of learning and growing is failing. Failing when you have a coach allows you to analyze your failures through a different lens. Few people analyze their failures. Coaches want to hear your successes so they can understand what you’re good at so they can be repeated. However, they also want to hear your failures because that’s where the learning lies.

– You think he/she is too expensive – A good coach costs what a good coach costs. You have to decide for yourself what is too expensive. If you have a problem that is costing you an extra 12 hours and $2,500 every week, that $500 per session coaching might be a good value if the problem is resolved in 4 or 5 coaching sessions. The math is pretty easy when the savings is considered over the course of a year – staggering when you consider the savings in just 3 years.

Ultimately, whether you hire a coach or consultant is up to you. The problems you have in your life or business can not be fixed with a magic wand. You need to be in a place in your mind where you can take ownership of what is going on in your world – even if the things going on are not your fault. This can be tough for most people. If you can set these things aside, you will set yourself for much more success with your coach. Oh, and not be relegated to the list of “FNC”.