Jeanine: Hello and welcome. My name is Jeanine Bailey, welcome to the Empower World Coaching and Leadership podcast, and I'm here today with my wonderful business partner, Marie Quigley. Good morning or good evening, Marie.

Marie: Good Evening. Good morning, Jeanine. Good afternoon. Wherever you are in the world.

Jeanine: Thank you for joining us, and today, what we thought we would cover is closing out a session with our clients. So, this is something that we've noticed is part of the questions that we get from our coaches in training, plus people that we're mentoring now, how to close the session in a way that feels psychologically safe for our clients and supports the clients to walk away with their learnings and their commitments and actually really trying on those commitments so that they're embedded. And the client is really wanting to take that action to support their new way of being and doing and walking towards. If I can use those words to what it is that they want. Marie, your thoughts.

Marie: Yes. Listening to a lot of recordings recently for mentoring purposes and those coaches to want to particularly move towards credentialing, and are looking for that feedback. What I've been noticing is, say, a coach is doing an hour of work with a client there at the end of the session that they're almost tripping over each other to try and end the session. And perhaps the client is in a state of deep reflection. Maybe it's very emotional. Maybe there's some deep awareness, but there's so little time left at the end. The coach has not prepared the client to come out of themselves, out of the coaching conversation and back into their world of reality, moving into to work or moving into leaving the coaching session. And there seems to be a rushing almost to close off the session very quickly, which can be a bit discombobulating for a client when you have particularly the work we do in its deep transformational work. So, the client is often so deep within their own reflections that to quickly wrap up and say, OK, we're coming to the end, we've got a minute left is a bit of a jolt. So, there are ways to gently and powerfully support the client to understand that the time is coming to a close. And how would the client like to end the session? What is present in the closing of the session for the client to reflect on their learnings? Become aware of what's new and, as you said, potentially facilitate growth and moving forward.

Jeanine: hmm. Yeah, it's so important to wrap up our sessions in a way that is still powerful, really powerful and enables a client to walk away feeling like, you know, I've got this, I've got the learnings. And so, it is really important as coaches to be able to allow that time to support our clients to recognize what they're taking away and what's within them. It is ICF core competency to be able to support our clients to really understand the new awareness that they've created, what they're committing to and trying on what their commitments are. So, if you can support your client to try on their commitments, so that might mean perhaps there's some there's a little bit of role play or it is really imagining when you take those steps, what are those? What are the outcomes? What are you noticing? What are you seeing, hearing, feeling, whatever it is that your client uses whatever modalities your client uses to experience the world? And so, checking in with a client, those sorts of things know what are you taking away? What's here? Is there anything that's holding you back? What are you experiencing when you go out into the future? When you try on those things again, it's going to reinforce the learnings that's going to support embedding the learnings. And again, we've spoken about supporting our client to program the particular activator system as well, the areas that part of our minds, that's like the Google search engine for what is wanted and potentially what is not wanted. So as coaches, we want to support our clients to program that part of their mind to seek what is wanted to really experience what they know in their heart, mind and soul and body, but that they do want.

Marie: So true so the actions, what actions are they going to take to move themselves forward is one part of the getting curious about that. And the other part is what are they learning about themselves in the WHO they're being in the work? What are they discovering about their patterns of behavior, about their ability to learn about their ability to shift perspectives? Who is this person at the end of the conversation versus the beginning of the conversation? What are the differences that they're experiencing? Maybe it's a thought shift. Maybe it's an emotional shift. Maybe there's a physiology shift that the client is walking away with. That's going to be really important for them to remember in the action state. We have this beautiful model that we talk about in training, that is be do have model. So, who are you being in order to create what you want to have in the world to be in the world? So those questions are really linking in that core competencies of paying attention to the who as well as the what?

Jeanine: Yes. Marie, I love that you brought in that. We do have more, I think, and I believe it's such a powerful model to utilize because it is about the who are we being, who is our client being? It's now going back to the mindset. And when we're working with our client, our client's mindset, that is when it's transformational. That's when the sessions come out of the head and really again into the heart mind body. So, when the client is recognizing who they're being and based on, that's what they are doing. So that model ensures that the client's awareness of what they want and what they recognize they do want to be different is being lived potentially in that moment and from that moment forward versus putting out their commitments out into the future. So, it is really powerful. And the other part that is important to when we're supporting our clients to try on their goals is also to test their commitments. So, to test when those challenges come up, because those old challenges that potentially our client brings into the session, what they've been experiencing and what they want to overcome, those challenges will continue to keep coming up. But what the client is learning is in powerful coaching conversations is who they are choosing to be. That is different. And also, what are they committing to doing that is also different. So, supporting our clients to test when those challenges come up in the future, know who is it that they will choose to be when that happens, what will be different as a consequence of making those different choices and choosing to potentially step into who they've discovered? They are truly being in the coaching session, allowing them again to experience that is continuing to program the reticular activating system. I hope what I've just shared now makes sense Marie.

Marie: And will to our listeners to thank you for sharing so important for us to think about all of that and listeners as you hear Jeanine and I talking about this. You can see a closing can be intricate. It can be powerful. It can be massive learning in the closing out. So, when you only leave a couple of minutes to close out, potentially you're missing out on an opportunity for the client to create some powerful learnings for themselves. So practically speaking, if you've got an hour session, leave enough time at the end 15 10 minutes to close off beautifully to wrap that flow around the learnings so that they can walk out with the gift of this session and unpack it. And remember it because you've embedded it and you've given them feedback about the responses or the physiology. It will make it even more impactful, for them as they unpack the gift when in real life. So don't discount the closing off part of the session. It is a beautiful process and masterful coaches recognize that's an important part of the conversation while giving as much value in the closing off as you are in the deep work that the client is doing.

Jeanine: Yes, absolutely. Marie beautifully articulated in terms of the closing of the session, giving it time, and it is again part of the masterful way of working with clients. And I mean, there are so many things that we do bring in to a closing session. I know that we do this, Marie. And there's a few more ideas that are popping through, and it is really also about acknowledging our client and. Sharing what we've noticed, so reflecting back again, that's what we do, is as coaches, we reflect back what we notice about our clients are being able to champion and acknowledge our clients in this part of the session is also very, very powerful and supports our clients to again recognize they've done great work. So. And even asking our clients, you know, how would you like to acknowledge yourself can also be very powerful so that the client recognizes? Yes, I've done some amazing, incredible work. And. Along with that, supporting them to understand accountability, who's going to be accountable for what it is they want. And again, as coaches, we really want to support our clients to take 100 percent responsibility for their results. If our clients are saying I'm accountable, then we can really appreciate that our clients are really on their way to supporting themselves, to become independent and to be able to lead themselves So. this is also going to be incredibly important. Now we also recognize that potentially sometimes your clients when they come to a coaching session, maybe deep into their challenge and perhaps as a consequence, they're so deep in their challenge. A lot of the session will be about supporting them in the moment with what is coming up for them. So even if we spend a lot of time supporting our client with that challenge and supporting them in the present moment, we still want to allow time at the end to support them to understand what are you taking away? What have you learned about yourself? What is it that you'd like to commit to? And it may be just journaling. It may be just reflecting because they've done so much heavy lifting as a consequence of what they've bravely brought into the session. So, yes, sometimes you might only have a few minutes to close the session. However, we encourage you coaches to as much as possible allow that plenty of time to close off a session in some of the ways that we've shared to stay.

Marie: So, coaches, listen to your work, get familiar with your own patterns of coaching and what's working well and what's not serving your clients. Remember, this is all in service of your clients and supporting you to be the best coach possible. So, listening to your work if you find your closing sessions, assure your clients a jolting out of your sessions. Instead of moving through the learning and happily moving on into them into their world, then reconsider. Perhaps how you're choosing to be at the end of the session. And if you notice you're constantly going over time, check in with that. What's that about? How can you support yourself to be really effective in the time that you have committed to give to your client? It's potentially a thing to bring to supervision when we're going over time constantly, perhaps as a need that you want to fulfill. So, it's looking at many various things that are going on in the coaching partnership when you are not able to close off gently smoothly for the purpose of serving the client or when we're going over time and moving into constantly being late on, closing all session is pretty intense. Work doing coaching and sometimes moving over time is not useful for the client, even though we think we should be giving more got time because as coaches were often really people who like to give. So, it's being mindful of how we are being.

Jeanine: Yeah, that's again, a really great point that you bring in Marie and. And if you're doing deep work and transformational work and at the same time, you're being really effective as a coach, you should be able to close out a session in the time that you've allotted. So, you shared and about bringing this to supervision. So potentially if you are finding that you're running over time, you wanting to give more and more, that is a wonderful opportunity for supervision and for mentoring as well. So potentially a combination of those things to understand who am I being as a coach? What are my beliefs that I'm bringing in that is perhaps supporting that, going over time and giving? So, there'll be potentially something that's going on within yourself as a coach that you're bringing into the session influencing the session somehow some way. And again, it's a beautiful opportunity for self-development self-growth to understand how can I be even more effective and transformational as a coach to support my clients to create their own beautiful transformation?

Marie: Well, said Jeanine. So, if you like what you've heard, if you want to know more. If you're curious about some of the work we do, some of the mentoring, some of the training or some of the supervision, please reach out to us. We'd love to have a conversation with you. And if you enjoy this podcast. Please share with the community because our purpose is also to share with us, many people and support coaches around the globe. Thank you for listening.

Jeanine: The world needs more wonderful, powerful, transformational coaches who can support their clients to do the same. So, we hope to see you somehow, someway in another podcast or one of our trainings, and we wish you all the very best with you and your clients.