business development

6 Actions to Improve Your Client Sessions Before the End of the Year

July 29, 2020 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

Even though I’ve been coaching and facilitating transformation for nearly twenty years now, my answer to the question: “What is the one thing in your business that has the potential to make you cringe the most?” would be the same today as it was twenty years.

The thing in my business that has the potential to make me cringe the most is the thought that I am not supporting my clients in the most valuable and masterful ways possible.

This is more important to me than anything else – than marketing success, than visibility, that income.

For me, providing exquisite and highly skilled service, as well as transformation, is BAR NONE.

If you feel the same way I do, then I’m so happy to share this article with you! READ MORE

4 Tips for Effective & Transformational Exercises

July 24, 2020 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

One of the things people ask me most when they come to me for support on facilitation and curriculum techniques is “How can I create more effective transformational exercises?”

I love teaching about this because knowing how to masterfully craft exercises that move your participants is KEY to co-creating results and deep learning.

Yet, too often teachers and facilitators don’t quite get it right.

And when you don’t get it right, your exercises come off as trite, too surface oriented, misplaced or just plain weird.

There are a lot of components that are necessary for an exercise to work REALLY well, and this includes a very important piece about how you set up your curriculum throughout your workshop, class or retreat.

We’ll get to Curriculum Development soon, but for now, I wanted to share a few tips on what you can do within the exercises themselves to make them more powerful, more effective, and more moving.

Your Positive Thinking is Harming Your Clients

July 22, 2020 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

I know, I know – Positive Thinking is a good thing. I admire and have learned a lot from those who naturally have a positive outlook on life. For better or worse, I did not grow up in an environment that modeled any kind of positive thinking. In fact, quite the opposite. I grew up with two immigrant parents whose own parents had survived the Holocaust. My parents trusted no one, always expected the worst, and because of their own trauma, they were perceiving a constant threat of annihilation. It was kind of like living in Catastrophic Thinking Central.

Needless to say, my proclivity towards the negative (& my neurotic quirks!) speak for themselves!

In my early 20s, I learned about the power of looking through more hopeful and happier lenses, and I’ve been dutifully working on my own positive thinking ever since. I find it powerful and very helpful.

BUT.

And this is a HUGE “But”…

This Coaching Standard Does More Harm Than Good

July 17, 2020 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

Over the summer, I had a private session with a client who had been in session with her healer the week before.

My client was telling me that her Healer had intuited that she needed to go to the beach for a week. It sounded like a good idea to my client because she trusts this healer’s intuition, yet she told him she was feeling stressed out and pressured because she just couldn’t figure out how to make a week away that month fit with her life.

6 Tools to Create Deeper Transformation with Your Clients

July 6, 2020 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

In my 15 years of facilitating Transformational Experiences for thousands of individuals and groups, I’ve come to learn that there are certain skills and elements you need to master as a leader and facilitator in order to be successful at creating lasting shifts, healing and real openings for your participants.

In fact, what I’ve come to see is that without these tools, things can go very, very wrong. Your workshops can fall flat or not go deep enough, or someone in the group will dominate and upset everyone else, or you will misuse your energy and feel exhausted and spent.

Here is a snapshot of some of the most valuable tools I’ve developed over hundreds and hundreds of rituals and workshops:

Inanna’s Descent and You

November 18, 2019 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

Every Autumn for the last 18 years, I’ve spent time working with the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s Descent. It’s work that becomes deeper and deeper, more and more meaningful and profound each cycle I focus on it.

The myth of Inanna is one of the oldest myths we know of. Inanna, being the Queen of Heaven & Earth, was a goddess with power and respect and clout and status.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself That Will Upgrade Your Coaching & Client Work

November 1, 2019 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

Of course, learning new skills and techniques to use with clients is important and really helps you go deeper and stronger with them. You absolutely need that. But another thing that’s really helpful is simply asking YOURSELF questions that will take you deeper into your own inner wisdom, your own self-awareness, and your own understanding of your client’s situation.

Here are 3 questions I recommend journaling on after EVERY client session you have over the next week or two. You will learn LOADS from this and upgrade your work through it. Eventually, you’ll automatically start asking yourself these questions while you’re actually in session, and be able to fine tune and strengthen your sessions right then and there.

What To Do When a Client is Pissed Off Or Overly-Demanding

September 27, 2019 by Joanna Lindenbaum 1 Comment

If you are in the business of working with human beings, no matter how amazing you are, a moment will come when a client will get pissed off at you, judgmental of you, or overly-demanding.

It can at first feel really icky. You can feel like you’re not doing a good enough job, like you need to give more and more, and like other professionals are doing a much better job than you. You can also find that you don’t know what to do next with the client.

What You Need to Know About How The Industry is Changing

July 26, 2019 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

Just like every industry, the coaching and transformation industries go through different cycles and stages of evolution that are critical.

Right now, we are going through MASSIVE developments that are changing EVERYTHING about the industry. The more you know and understand what these developments are, the better equipped you’ll be to grow a business with staying power.

5 teaching modes that will revolutionize your retreats

April 26, 2019 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

This very important article is almost like a glossary of 5 different Teaching Modes that are each vital components of a transformational retreat or workshop.

In my nearly 20 years of experience as a facilitator, and in over 50 retreats that I’ve led and 100s upon 100s of classes I’ve taught, I’ve learned that having a healthy balance of these 5 modes creates a learning environment that nurtures true growth and transformation for participants. READ MORE