Success

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”…

The Integrity and Depth Principles

July 15, 2020 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

I often get asked how I’ve been able to grow and sustain such a thriving business, with so many hard core fans, happy clients, and referrals.

The answer? Well, it’s not just one thing (if only!). It’s been a number of things, but one of the biggest is that I approach all of my client work with what I call The Integrity and Depth Principles.

Integrity and Depth are at the core of creating an environment that motivates your clients to trust you deeply, be vulnerable, explore the parts of themselves they otherwise would ignore or reject, see their Truth with clarity, and be willing to take bold, aligned actions.

Integrity and Depth also allow your clients to see you as the practitioner they have profound confidence in, an individual they cherish and want to do their soul work with.

Over the next week or two, I’ll share some of these principles with you. Here are the first 2!:

1. Love all of your Client’s Parts (this is not as easy as you might think)

A big integrity issue as well as transformational skill is the ability to fully love ALL of your clients’ parts: not just their brilliance or their motivation or their kindness. But also their judgmentalness or their laziness or their victim selves or their jealousy.

When you are passing judgment or uncomfortable with or scared of an action your client has taken or a way that they are showing up either in the world or with you…your client can feel it.

Even if you don’t say a word about it, your client feels the judgment or fear, and as a result your client either feels shame or resentment or defensiveness. It does not create an environment of trust and willingness to look honestly at issues.
Practitioners are able to go deep and act in full integrity (i.e. guide clients to make the most aligned decisions) when they are able to love and accept each and every aspect their client shows up with…even if the client shows up in anger or resistance to the practitioner herself.

But it’s not so easy to do this.

It’s not so easy to truly love and accept all of your client’s parts, especially when they show up in a way that has you feel you’re not doing a good job, or in a way that challenges your own belief & judgment system.

It takes deep inner work around Accepting Yourself, Managing Your Own Triggers, and also Checking Your Biases and Filters so that you can show up fully present for all your client brings to the table.

2. Be Willing to Be Wrong

We’ve all witnessed this: a practitioner who is “GURUing” their client.

A big mistake I see practitioners make is that they offer an opinion to a client – either about a situation or an inner pattern or dynamic in their client – and the opinion simply does not resonate for the client. But the practitioner sticks to her guns – out of fear of being wrong, or out of fear of “not looking smart enough”.

And then one of two things happen:

a) The client ends up feeling unseen and unheard, and often mistrusting the practitioner

OR

b) The client overrides her own inner wisdom, listens to the practitioner, and ends up taking actions that are misaligned for her.

It sounds easy enough to Be Willing to Be Wrong, but in fact, most practitioners need more work on this one. It requires deep work Befriending Your Own Fears around being good enough, and being seen as smart & able. It also requires skills work around how to Create Awareness for clients in ways that activate their inner wisdom without “GURUing” them.

Hope these first two Integrity and Depth Principles were helpful and sparked some inner conversation for you! Will share more Principles soon!

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.

A Subtle Yet Vital Coaching Principle

October 25, 2019 by Joanna Lindenbaum Leave a Comment

Here’s a coaching, facilitation, teaching (and marketing) tool that I live by:

It is vitally important to reveal yourself, your imperfections, your not-so-great outcomes, and your not-so-happy qualities to your clients, students and community.

The transformational industry is FULL of gurus who seem picture perfect. They have “perfect” businesses; they apparently learn their lessons very quickly; they apparently don’t make mistakes; they apparently don’t really have sh*t happen to them

This is damaging to their communities – and specifically to their clients.

Because as a coach or practitioner, if you don’t consciously reveal your imperfections to your clients….they can make the mistake of believing that things happen perfectly for you.

And that essentially means that you become, in my opinion, a very, very dangerous role model.

Because no one is perfect, no one’s business is perfect, no one’s health is perfect, etc.

But your clients believe that if you – their coach or leader – don’t have frustrations, don’t have obstacles, don’t have hardships, that they should be able to attain it too.

And that’s a setup for failure, for frustration, and for unhappiness.

When I am with my clients and students, I never hesitate to share about my not-so-great moments, my not-so-great launches, my not-so-pretty feelings (yes, I get jealous and negative sometimes!), and my sweaty armpits (always happens when I facilitate!).

Of course, I share only when appropriate and only as much as is necessary to make the point: that I am human, just like my client is human, and we are bound to have imperfect lives and businesses. And this is as it should be.

When we are coaching or facilitating, we need to remember that when we show that we struggle with some things, that things don’t always go according to our plans….we are giving permission to our clients to not be so hard on themselves, to not be so self-judgmental, and to not think something is very wrong with them because they haven’t achieved enough.

This is the ONLY way real growth can happen. And this is the ONLY way real movement towards goals can happen.

And quite honestly, this is the only way real self-love can deepen (& I believe that at the core of ANY coach’s or practioner’s job, this is one of the most sacred).

When I train practitioners in Sacred Depths Coach Training, we spend a full module just on how to support clients through the Myth of Perfection. In addition to the inner work tools I share with my coaches on this, I also always share this important principle:

Remember that when you are someone’s coach, teacher or facilitator…you also bear the responsibility of being their role model. And being a role model doesn’t mean showing up as an image of perfection.

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.