Make'em Your Clients not Your 'CRYents'!

 Yesterday it was my first time to watch "The Repeaters", a Canadian thriller film about three young inmates: Kyle, Sonia and Michael, who were at a rehabilitation facility and struggling to apologize to those they have hurt with their addiction.   In the middle of all of their emotional pain, a storm rolls in, and each of them gets shocked and knocked unconscious. They find themselves stuck in a time loop: When they wake up the next morning, the events of the previous day repeat. Kyle, Sonia, and Michael stumble through the day and repeat their actions in a daze. When they discuss the situation, Michael is intrigued by the consequence-free possibilities open to them, and they commit petty crimes that result in a stay at jail. As the day repeats endlessly, the trio becomes emboldened by their apparent immortality.  Eventually Kyle and Sonia fall in love and work toward redemption, but Michael laughs and accuses them of hypocrisy and says that his actions are excusable because everything will become reset the next day.

Michael's behavior becomes more violent and antisocial as the days repeat. However, when Kyle and Sonia successfully make peace with their pasts, the time loop abruptly ends and they are simply not 'stuck' any more. Michael does not realize it until the middle of a violent rampage that ends with the senseless murders of two people. He commits suicide after Kyle attempts to reason with him. In the last scene, Michael wakes up again, stuck in his own time loop. 

I kept silent for a long while after watching this movie.   I thought this must be deeply philosophical:  this is almost an embodiment of what we are given in life: a series of days or 'repeats'…we wake up every morning and do the same thing – this can involve hurting ourselves or others by being stuck in the same patterns we are mentally conditioned to believe.  We tend to like the thought where one day everything will be fixed, or maybe trick ourselves that there is no other way out of this maze, until… maybe, when time is up!? 

I contemplated about our roles as coaches and trainers and why we are here in life to supposedly break the negative patterns our clients unconsciously follow. Isn't this exactly what we are supposed to do: Break other people's negative patterns to get them out of the 'repeat' mode?  Okay, but are we actually able to do this; for ourselves first and foremost, and secondly for others? And if we were really able to do both (as most of us confidently claim) why has the coaching industry been suffering or frozen for many business and life coaches? Research proves that the earnings per hour for Business Coaches has frozen from last year at $95,000, while annual earnings for millennial have fallen from $44,000 to $26,000.  The average drop in number of clients in 2015 was a scary 25-30% (Sherpa Coaching). 

From an interesting survey I conducted on LinkedIn – managers (who hire trainers) give very close or sometimes equal weights to specific variables that they think will help them and their teams break negative patterns and in turn improve the corporate ROI's.  But to the managers biggest surprise coaches and trainers were stuck in some of these negative patterns themselves because they are majorly not sure what 'tailored' scope will they be working on.  Is this because we rarely ask for sitting and speaking face to face with our trainees before the training to understand their problems and be able to prioritize them?  We – as coaches 'assume' this "one size fits all" coaching will offer them what they need, and that audiences are 'interested in attending' and that what we have to offer 'will influence' their negative patterns.  So we keep doing this time and again wondering why the industry is shrinking.  On the meta-cognitive level; do we ever ask ourselves 'Why' do we keep repeating this?      

The Executive coaches, on the other hand,  seem to be doing some smart work; taking into fact that it has only been the executive coaches who successfully leaped forward during the past few years by moving their hourly rates from $280(in 2013) and $335 (in 2014) to a good $350 in 2015.  Where 46.9% of executive coaches deal with clients who lead companies which generate something like $500 million annually.  Now, are executive coaches being influenced by their clients who are already pioneers in their fields and in turn are more equipped to break negative patterns? On researching missions of Executive versus Business Coaches I realized that the difference between both is that Executive coaches influence the overall behavior of the business by developing programs which are tailor-made for the business purposes by focusing mainly on people's soft skills.  As for Business Coaches; they use academic, degree based courses 'one size fits all type' which align with the industry standards (and not necessarily the specific business case); they focus on hard skills such as technical and planning skills. 

So here is the question: are we in dire need to make sure we are fully equipped to break our negative patterns and specifically understand what each client's specific needs are, to deepest level possible? Will we sign off the 'repeat' mode before we approach our Clients?   Or are we obstinate about frustrating them and turning them into 'Cryents'?

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