CompassCast™

Build Trusting Relationships and Accomplish More!

The coaching-focused Mastermind Group in the Upper Valley of Vermont / New Hampshire will begin a new text on September 7th, 2010 that will help you expand your network, gain support and reach your goals.

The group, in collaboration with Borders Books, meets each Tuesday at 10:00 am in West Lebanon, NH. The new text, "Who's Got Your Back", by Keith Ferrazzi, provides an executable strategy for your most important plans without costing your sanity.

Many of us are caught up in the day-to-day struggle between work and family and fun and wellness. How do you do keeping yourself balanced? How do you keep yourself grounded? How do you keep yourself focused? How do you insure you reach your goals in a focused but mindful way? Ferrazzi's book explains a nine-step approach to building what he calls lifeline relationships.

With "Who's Got Your Back" you will learn to create meaningful and trusting relationships well beyond your success. You will benefit from reading this book regardless of whether you engage the Mastermind Process.

If you are like most people, however, just read books and don't engage them fully. Coaching brings the book to life. Through masterminding this book won't be another piece of information but will become an actionable strategy you can depend on being accountable to.

If you live near the West Lebanon, NH / White River Junction, VT area -- you owe it to yourself to check out the power of Masterminding.

"Who's Got Your Back" shows us that relationships are the key to our success in business. You will learn the kinds of relationships that really make a difference. Ferrazzi also shows us how to get further in setting your goals and staying more powerful in your career.

The Mastermind Group works through each book slowly - one text about every three months - so participants can easily keep up with the reading.

Have you read this book? Do you think it is as impactful as Ferrazzi's last book, "Never Eat Alone" (which we also covered in the Mastermind Group).

For more information about the Mastermind Group, call me at 802-380-1026 or go to http://Mastermind.TrueAzimuth.biz.

To Like or Not To Like, that is the question on Facebook

If you have gone on Facebook in the last couple of days, you may have noticed some changes.

Facebook is heating up the competition to penetrate websites outside of the Facebook platform by adding a number of gadgets / widgets / tools that can be added to a website, they have created pages from the interest section of your profile and they have replaced “Become a Fan” with “Like” for business pages on Facebook.

What does this mean for the business owner or organization with a “page” presence on Facebook already? Confusion. What does this mean to your consumer / client / target audience? Confusion.

What should you do about all of this? Wait patiently for the dust to settle.

To illustrate the potential mess, consider my coaching business, True Azimuth, LLC. I have a website, a coaching blog and a Facebook Page. All are integrated nicely. When someone goes to my website or blog I encourage them to become a fan on Facebook. When someone goes to True Azimuth’s Facebook page, they can see a feed from my blog integrated on the page.

Now I have a new Facebook Page for True Azimuth, LLC (which I can’t control – at least at the moment) that was created from the employer listing on my profile. True, I could have chosen not to create the page – I am currently the only employee of my coaching business. But what happens to BIG companies with thousands of employees on Facebook? You guessed it – it only takes one employee to create the company page! What a mess – more on this later.

Now “Like” comes along. Facebook developers have changed “Become a Fan” with “Like” – a move which I thought I liked. But then they added these website gizmos to the mix – more things to “Like.” And guess what? None of these are connected!

So, say I add the inline code to both my blog and my website to allow people to “Like” them. A person comes to my blog and clicks “Like” – that does not mean they are now a Fan of my business on Facebook – they just “Like” my blog. Same thing with my website. If a person “Likes” my website, that doesn’t mean the “Like” my blog or my Facebook page. The result: complete marketing mayhem and utter chaos!

Thrown in with this mix is the ability to feed news from your website into the Facebook News stream of people who “Like” you. If you have a website, blog and Facebook page, it could easily mean your target market gets up to three duplicate messages if you have a consolidated / integrated web presence like I do.

Add to this these new pages created from Facebook profiles and you have a cluster of a mess to sort out.

My solution? I am waiting for this dust to settle before I jump into Facebook’s newest gadgets. BTW – you should be doing that anyway – meaning your social media strategy and your web presence strategy should be built on a solid marketing plan that you review and update annually – keeping you and your business from making impulsive, jump-on-the-bandwagon decision. (That is what I coach my business clients to do)

What is your solution? Do you like Facebook’s new “Like”?

Reality Coach® Teleclass now online

The weekly teleclass component of the Reality Coach credential is now recorded and available online at http://podcast.RealityCoaching.info or http://teleclass.RealityCoaching.info.  It is also streamed in directly at the main Reality Coaching site (in the feeds area).  So you now never have to worry about missing a call.

Reality Coaching -- an approach to business coaching / life coaching using an established model -- has an entire learning website avaiable for coaches who want to move beyond a constellation of disperate techniques or gut feelings to a model for growth and change used by thousands of "change agents" -- counselors, social workers, personal coaches, marriage and family therapists -- world wide.

You can participate in any number of ways -- from online blogging as you read texts to publishing papers that show the power of Reality Coaching -- to the weekly teleclass -- to live role plays via conference calls.  You keep track of your own progress and success via your own personal website / e-portfolio that is assigned and created for you at http://RealityCoaching.info (registered participants only).

One final note, listening to a recording of a Reality Coaching teleclass does not count as meeting one of the requirements toward the Reality Coach Credential (which is participating in the teleclass).

Coaching is controversial

Coaching is controversial. Not because getting coaching will have a significant impact on your life. It will.

Coaching is controversial because coaching as a service is not standardized and no universal coaching regulatory standard exists.

As a result, anyone -- and I mean anyone -- can call themselves a coach and take on clients.

According to Rey Carr, of the Canadian group Peer Resources, there are more than 65 distinct coaching credentials. The systems used to grant these credentials vary. Some are competency-based, some require hours of training, others require supervision by someone who already has the credential, some rely on self-assessment, some can be obtained without ever coaching a client; and some are blatantly based on simply proclaiming oneself a coach. The self-reported largest of these credentialing systems: the International Coach Federation, the International Association of Coaching and the European Coaching Institute all have different requirements for accreditation.

These self-appointed accreditation bodies and the liberal use of the terms 'certification' and 'credentialing' throughout the coaching industry only confuse the public.

While in theory certification protects the public, the current group of arbitrary designations create a profession with no integrity.

It’s little more than a marketing tool.

So what’s the coach to do? What‘s the consumer to do?

Prospective coaches: The best certification you can get is a college diploma. You need degrees in business or psychology. Ignore credential and certification programs, no matter how deceptive they may be with powerful words like universal registered coaching certification. If you attend a coach training program do so because of the content and skills offered and not because of the letters you get afterward.

Prospective clients: Ask about the credentials of a coach.  Ignore the alphabet soup of credentials after a person's name.  Do they have COLLEGE degrees in business or psychology?  If you wouldn't let a person with a college degree in philosophy and a certificate from the intergalactic council of dentistry go poking around you mouth, don't let a person without a business degree go poking around your business or a person without a psychology degree go poking around your life -- even if they list I.C.C. after their name because they have a certificate from the interplanetary coaching commission.

©2007 True Azimuth, LLC
Business Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Life Coaching

Coaching Case Study

Watch coach Scott Graham provide an overview of his coaching style using a personal coaching client.


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Models and road maps -- is your coach lost?

If you work with a coach, ask them what their model of human behavior and change is.

Do they respond by offering you some complicated graphic about the coaching dynamic, talking about techniques, skills or procedures or handing you some other mumbo-jumbo?

If you are a coach – you may be reading this and may have taken offense -- take a moment to articulate your model.  Post it under comments.  I want to read about it.

Coaching without a model is like driving a car without a road map.

You might be an expert at how to parallel park.  You might be an expert on how to change a tire.  But if you don’t have a road map, you will be lost the moment you drive outside the area you maintain in your head – your mental road map.  Most coaches who don’t have a model end up giving advice – based on what they know – directions, if you will, from their mental road map.

Most coaches operate without a road map -- they have no model.  Just an amalgamation of skills and "gut" instinct.

Working with a coach without a model is like getting into the passenger seat of that car and trusting that the person without the road map is going to get you to where you want to go!  Ever been a passenger with a driver who doesn't have a road map?  What was that like?

Gestalt Coaching, Adlerian Coaching, Coaching based on NLP and Reality Coaching® are methods of coaching based on an established model of human behavior.   They are they road maps to get you where you want to go.

©2007 True Azimuth, LLC
Business Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Life Coaching

About Coach Scott Graham

A short video to help you decide if you should work with me.


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