How can you balance pushing clients to improve without overwhelming them?

Coaching is a learning experience and my coaching style is based on a strengths based approach allowing my client to gain a greater sense of their superpowers. With the energising certainty of these strengths and a full understanding of what success looks and feels like I explore the true purpose of my client, what motivates them, what is their passion and their mission. This is supported by defining their values and the confidence that arises from this, the energy and creativity it can unleash avoids overwhelm. My coaching enables the client to free their time up by focusing only on what matters personally and professionally, balancing true success by ensuring all aspects of what is most important become the focus of their full attention.

I strongly believe that a client cannot and should not be 'pushed' to achieving anything. The drive, even if it is minimal, should originate from the client herself and be aligned to her deeper self. As a coach you can use tools such as visualization to provide clarity to the client on what they want to change/improve, what the end state would look like, how it would feel and how it would be related to their deeper values. Once that is established, a coach can then use the client's mental landscape to support them in creating achieveable goals and sticking to them. Additionally, ensuring that the dopamine released at the end of each minor achievement is anchored and celebrated will ensure the client is on the path to success.

My best recommendation for this is to allow students to pick their “poison” as one of my former mentors did with me. If a student picks something that is too hard you can recommend something else but let them know why and how you will get them prepared for the harder piece. Or allow them to try it and tell you it’s too hard or challenging for them right now.

I think the art of motivation is all about knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your client. Know how far they’d like to go. Take it a little nugget at a time.

In my opinion, It’s all about encouragement and trust. You can’t know someone is overwhelmed without honesty and when you create a safe space where someone can be open with you, you can help navigate them through what they want to work on at their pace.

This is a delicate and important aspect of being a supportive and effective assistant. Here are some strategies. -Establish clear goals and expectations -Encourage growth through incremental progress -Provide constructive feedback: -Personalise the approach. . -Foster a supportive environment. -Regular communication and check-ins. Remember, the key is to challenge and support your clients in a way that fosters growth while maintaining a sense of balance and well-being. By understanding their individual needs and tailoring your approach accordingly, you can push them to improve without overwhelming them.

The voice is made of the same kind of muscle you work in the gym, which means it adheres to the exercise principles of: 1) Specificity 2) Frequency 3) Overload 4) Detrainability You wouldn't go into a work out where you're currently able to lift 10lbs and try to lift 100lbs - you'd hurt yourself. It's the same thing with singing. Building strength takes time and specific work - which is why working with a vocal coach is so important. Your voice doesn't have a carrying case, you can't go out and buy a new string, so taking care of it is imperative both in rehearsals and outside of them.

When setting goals, especially ones that you want to achieve, it's also important to ask questions like "how much time can you realistically spend on exercises?" "what elements of life may get in the way of you achieving your goals?". Also, having a regular check-in about the right fit of the goals and movement towards them is essential to ensure the learner and coaching keeps on track.

In my 20 year teaching here and overseas, and also online, setting achievable goals is, in my opinion, is the greatest motivator. These goals are not only learning goal but performance goals. I create performance opportunities for my students to be heard — these are mini in student recitals amongst themselves and concerts for public audiences. The technical goals are met strategically to create a voice that is well supported, stable and expressive — with a view to reach their goals to perform. Singing for your own pleasure is important but setting performance goals, including auditions, has the greatest effect in motivating and consistency of focus because at the deadline the singer is going to heard by others too.

Always keep the clients goal(s) in mind ?? I try to include their goals in our convos and tied to the work we’re doing in each of our sessions together. Helping them to connect the dots on how going over fundamentals, learning how to feel a song, or making sure their vocal health and mind set is dialed in will tie in to them knocking that audition out of the park or eliminating vocal fatigue after their next performance…it’s empowering for a client to know that the small steps they are taking today will lead to bigger strides tomorrow! ????

The sandwich approach is great. It's imperative when working with singers that you don't tell a client what is happening. Ex. "Your jaw is tight." I'm not in their body, I don't know if their jaw feels tight. Their jaw may look tight, or be going to the side when they open their mouth - which indicates jaw tension - but the correct way of approaching the feedback is by saying what I observe. "Your jaw looks tight, how does it feel?" "Are you aware that your jaw is going to the side when you open your mouth?"

Yes, but when working with singers - you have to get them singing. It's really easy, particularly for new or inexperienced vocal coaches, to want to fix ALL the problems in one 30 minute session. That is overwhelming to a student, and not fun at all. No one is paying you to hear you talk for 30 minutes, they're paying you to help them become a better singer or speaker. Yes, give feedback, but give it in actionable amounts and focus on only 1 thing at a time. Do more "trying with" the client than "talking to" them.

We realize that every singer has a different voice. While there are good practices and techniques, what the singer produces is the singer’s own. I love hearing differences in tone and hope my clients appreciate what they have.

I believe the reason I was able to grow my business so far, is because I am able to adapt to each individual that I coach. It is great to have a certain 'branded' methodology, but each client comes with a different vocal instrument, a different body, a different objective and a different life story; these all need to be taken into consideration. These insightful pieces of information will be given to you if you're genuinely interested in each individual that trusts you with their voice. Don't shy away from small talk before or after your vocal lesson.

Singing or speaking in front of someone makes a client extremely vulnerable. Even professionals get nervous. It's hard to share part of yourself with someone so they can critique you - even when the critique is constructive. Creating a safe space is imperative. I always tell clients when they're scared to try something new, "What's the worst that's going to happen? You'll fail. We'll do it again. That's it. That's the worst thing."

In my experience a coach must balance bottlenecking and flooding for effective learning. Bottlenecking involves withholding information, allowing mentees or students to focus on practicing and mastering current skills. This approach builds confidence and foundational skills without overwhelming them. Once these skills are solid, controlled flooding introduces more complex information or challenges, pushing them out of their comfort zone to stimulate adaptation and growth. The key is for the coach to closely monitor their response, adjusting the training intensity to ensure continual progression without excessive stress. This balanced method ensures steady growth and skill development.

Effective #Coaching is about challenging clients to dig deeper to go further. As an Executive Business and Leadership Coach, my approach is to use of deep listening, mirroring, empathy, leading the client and also a great coaching framework that gets clients to their desired outcomes

Encouraging clients to take small steps out of their comfort zone is a great way to build skills without becoming overwhelmed. If small steps are taken the growth will not feel too uncomfortable. I help clients to understand that growth happens beyond the comfort zone and that taking small steps is the best way to do this. Once a client is taking these small steps is is important to provide positive feedback and encouragement. Acknowledge that there may be some discomfort, but reassure them that this is bringing them closer to their goals.