You’re about to discover the secrets of how motivational coaches inspire incredible change in their students.
These are techniques I am using every day in my role as a life coach. I’d urge any up-and-coming life coach to do the same.
No matter who you are, you could use these tips to motivate yourself into achieving incredible success.
Let’s dive right into it.
21 Ways That Coaches Inspire Their Students
These motivational techniques are practiced by some of the world’s most famous coaches.
1. Finding Your ‘Why’
Without a compelling reason why you want to improve, you’ll never commit to lasting change. That’s why the first job of a life coach will often be to help their client understand their ‘why’ on a deep level.
You don’t commit to financial success for the zeros in your bank account, it’s what you can buy with it.
You don’t commit to a fitness journey for the six-pack abs, it’s for self-esteem and the things you can potentially achieve with a better body.
If a client’s motivation slips, a coach will be quick to remind them of the big picture.
2. What Happens If You Don’t Do It?
Fear can be a greater motivator than desire. That’s why a coach will often encourage people to consider what will happen if they don’t change.
They’ll help a client focus on what they don’t like about their lives, and how it will feel if they remain the same forever.
How will they suffer? How will their family suffer?
Once someone realises the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of changing, that’s when they’ll commit to a lasting transformation.
3. The Use Of Deadlines
A great coach understands the power of deadlines. Without a strict deadline, people are prone to endlessly procrastinating.
You’ll often notice a coach trying to help clients realise that life is getting away from them. Many motivational speeches will point out how easily the hours pass us by.
This realisation often helps people to take action NOW.
On top of that, a competent life coach will always be setting goals with deadlines as part of their one-on-one coaching.
4. Skin In The Game
There’s an important reason why a motivational coach will charge so much for their services. It’s not just to support themselves financially.
It’s because having financial ‘skin in the game’ does a lot to motivate people to take action.
If you paid $10,000 a month for professional help on how to reach your goals, you’d probably be far more inclined to follow the advice. You’d be a lot more focused on becoming successful because you’d want a return on your investment.
5. Setting Goals The Right Way
Most people are aware of the idea that setting goals is a great way to spark yourself into action. However, this is only really true if you set them in the right way. If a goal is too easy, too vague or too difficult, it can actually kill your motivation.
For more advice on how to set goals that make a difference, check out this guide.
6. Build Rapport
People are more likely to follow advice from people they like. That’s why a great coach will put a great deal of work into rapport-building. This helps them build a strong personal relationship with all clients and help them move forward.
7. Communication Skills
A great coach knows they won’t be able to motivate anyone without holding their attention. That’s why they will spend many hours training how to communicate effectively. They’ll learn how to tweak their vocabulary, use their voice and alter their body language to make people listen and remember what they have to say.
8. Use Real-Life Stories
Real-life stories are one of the most effective tools to help people remember what you tell them. They’re simply more memorable than step-by-step instructions – and they can be great mediums for inspiration too.
If you’re a motivational coach, feel free to tell inspirational stories from life. Explain how you climbed from the bottom to where you are today. These are particularly motivational and can make you more relatable to those starting from a lower base.
9. Make Use Of Vision
You’ll often find a coach asking people to close their eyes and create a vision of their perfect life. This helps to get people more excited about improving.
The brain can’t separate vivid imaginations from the real world, so people will begin to feel the actual high of having accomplished their dreams when they do this.
Hopefully, that high will be motivational enough to push them further on the path to their dream life.
10. Cultivate A Team Spirit
Don’t underestimate the power of a motivated team cheering you on. This is one of the best inspirational tools you can invest in.
When you have a team of people all pulling in the same direction, you’ll often find yourself working for hours because you don’t want to let them down.
That’s part of the reason why a coach will strive to launch online mastermind groups, team challenges or group seminars.
This feeling of community can go a long way to inspiring people.
11. Accountability
Even in a one-on-one coaching scenario, accountability can do so much to keep people motivated.
If you promise someone you’re going to finish a task by a certain date and you don’t follow through, it creates a sense of guilt.
On the other hand, if no-one will find out you’ve been slacking off, you’re more prone to doing so.
That’s why a good coach will not only help you set goals, but also hold you accountable for hitting them.
12. Motion Creates Emotion
This is a concept coined by Tony Robbins.
It’s based on the idea that the way you stand, move, speak or breathe has a direct impact on your emotional state.
As such, you can feel more motivated to take on the world just by adjusting your body language.
It’s no coincidence that a motivational coach will have their audience jumping and cheering at their live seminars.
Even in a one-on-one scenario, a coach will recommend and teach physical exercises that help people feel more positive.
For more information, check out this guide: Motion Creates Emotion: Proven Unstuck Strategies.
13. Focus On Habits
Motivation is fleeting. It never lasts.
That’s great for anyone in a coaching career, because there will always be people who need their motivation topped up.
A good coach will be able to do that effectively. A great coach will help their client build strong habits.
Habits are actions we take almost subconsciously. We don’t need motivation, we just do it.
It takes around a month to ingrain a new positive habit into our brain. After this time, it becomes much easier to complete.
14. Reframing Mistakes
Mistakes are one of the biggest killers of motivation. They make us feel embarassed, stupid and incapable of reaching our goals.
That’s why one of the most important parts of a coach’s job is to help a client reframe mistakes.
In reality, mistakes are valuable learning tools. They help us see we’re on the wrong path, and inspire us to move to a new one. They’re a necessary and inevitable part of progress.
15. Allow People To Make Their Own Decisions
This is a key element of coaching. It’s not about telling people what to do. It’s about guiding them to identify the solutions that serve them best.
This is as true of motivational coaching, as it is for any other type of coaching.
When you give a client control of the goals they set themselves, they’re more likely to set targets that excite them.
This type of relationship tends to build a stronger rapport between coach and client. Plus, it helps a client feel more capable of autonomously steering themselves to success.
16. Give Feedback On The Process, Not The Outcome
In many walks of life, you can take all the right steps towards success and continue to get knocked down. That’s the way it goes.
We all fall down from time to time. But, if you keep taking the right steps, success tends to be inevitable.
With that said, you do need the motivation to keep going no matter how many times you fall.
A great coach will understand this – and that’s why he’ll encourage a client to focus on the process rather than the outcome. Any feedback given by a coach will mostly centre around the client’s process too.
If one only focuses on the outcome, it can quickly feel disheartening.
17. Show Them What’s Possible
When someone leads a reasonable life, they can struggle to find the motivation to improve.
It can be particularly troublesome if your immediate circle are all worse off than you.
That’s why a key role of a motivational coach is to show their client what’s possible.
Ideally, they have a lifestyle that most clients would desire. If that’s the case, you’ll often see a coach showing this off on their business website or in YouTube videos.
The idea is to shake people out of their fantasy world where they can’t do any better.
By presenting this luxury lifestyle that’s better than theirs, a coach can indirectly inspire others to become even more successful.
18. Don’t Force People To Change
A great coach knows it’s impossible to force people to improve themselves. They have to want to improve. The best a coach can do is to show people evidence that their advice works.
If a coach hard-sells their services, it’ll typically only serve to create more resistance within a potential customer.
Instead, they’ll calmly outline the difference they’ve made to other people’s lives and explain how they can support this person.
It’s still up to that person to decide that they need the coach’s help.
If they’re not passionate about creating an improved life for themselves, they most likely won’t do the work anyway. So, it’s no loss for the coach either way.
Wondering how motivated someone really is to transform their life? See this list of Ways How To Measure Motivation.
19. Make It Fun
Improving your life is a serious business. Whether you need a coach to switch careers, improve your personal skills or achieve financial success, the outcome of this coaching is likely to be very important to you.
However, a great coach knows that people are more motivated to stick at something if it’s enjoyable.
So, don’t be surprised if your life coach regularly takes a light-hearted approach toward your obstacles and challenges.
They know this approach could help you to power through these tough times on the road to success.
This is a particularly effective strategy when Motivating Your Intelligent But Unmotivated Teenager.
Frequently Asked Questions About Becoming A Motivational Coach
Here are some of the most common questions about this form of coaching.
How To Become A Motivational Coach?
Technically, there’s nothing stopping you from setting up a website and offering online coaching to people today.
However, to give yourself a chance of standing out from all the professionals out there, it’s highly recommended you invest in an ICF-accredited coach training course.
This will do so much to improve your reputation and performance as a professional coach. Plus, an ICF accreditation on your website will prove to people that you’re up to the task of coaching them.
To learn more, read my comprehensive guide on ICF coaching certifications. Alternatively, if you’re ready to get started, search my list of recommended ICF-accredited courses.
How Do I Become A Good Motivational Coach?
As well as being able to master the skills listed above, a great coach will be exceptionally patient and empathetic, as well as being able to consistently connect with people on a personal level.
These are all skills you can expect to learn during coaching training.
It’lI also prove helpful if you can set an example of what’s possible by having lived an inspiring life yourself.
Who Is The Best Motivational Coach?
There are so many inspirational professionals out there who have enjoyed a remarkable career helping others.
Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Jack Canfield and T Harv Eker should all consider themselves among the leaders in this career path.
If you’re looking for inspiration, search for their websites and get a feel of how they encourage people to follow their dreams.
How Much Do Motivational Coaches Get Paid?
A coach is a self-employed individual, so they have the power to charge whatever they wish they want for their services.
The amount they can successfully charge for their books, courses, events or one-one coaching sessions depends on their experience and reputation more than anything else.
The sky’s the limit for this career. The individuals at the top of this field have probably made millions over the course of their careers.
Indeed, once you get to the top, you can charge huge sums for a couple of hours of one-on-one coaching. A chief executive at a huge corporation would be happy to pay it. In fact, they’d often struggle to be motivated by anyone who wasn’t earning big money like them.
With that said, a quick web search suggests that the average professional motivation coach can expect to earn between $40,000 and $60,000 per year.
To learn about other types of life coach salaries, check out this article: Online Life Coach Salary – A Comprehensive Guide.
Any More Questions About Motivation?
Thanks for reading my post. I really enjoy writing these articles for you.
Now you know the secrets of motivation, what are you going to do with them? Will you push yourself towards your dream life, or continue procrastinating? The choice is yours.
Want more ideas on this topic? See this handy Inspirational Coaching: Fact Checklist.
If you happen to have some feedback on this article or you’d like to ask a question, feel free to do so in the comments section.
I love to support visitors to my website. You’re my personal source of motivation! So, please don’t hesitate to get in contact.
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