Yannick’s Coaching Lab features guest coaches from a broad variety of approaches, who showcase how they work as part of a live 45min coaching session, followed by reflections and Q&A with the audience.
Curious to know what this session was like? Have a peek at the Lab Report below or consider VIP membership to access the full recording of this and many more exciting sessions.
Yannick’s Coaching Lab #66 — Yannick Jacob
Lab Report by Natalie Fraser
Pre-Session Summary
Yannick and his client had not met face-to-face/zoom prior to this session. The client is seeking coaching to support them with their career building a coaching business, alongside being a manager, and having previously had a career as a violinist and artist. Themes of exploration included marketing strategies, the meaning of work, and the role of identity. The session revealed that a lack of inner clarity was being reflected in the lack of clarity in the client’s output, including their identity, the online content, their writing, and their marketing. The client recognized that she has been overly ‘formal’ in her public presentation so far which may come across and feel ‘awkward’, yet would like to show herself more authentically moving forward.
Session Summary
The outreach part of connecting with clients and establishing a client list was explored at depth, identifying which aspects the client felt confident with and which aspects were likely to be more challenging. This revealed that the client has exhausted all ‘easy’ outreach options, and is now required to seek alternative ‘harder’ outreach opportunities.
Using a thought experiment, Yannick and his client explored what their ideal scenario would look like if getting to the next level of outreach was ‘easy’. The client was unable to imagine this, leading to a conversation more deeply exploring what current parts of her coaching practice were succeeding (e.g. booking screening calls) and what parts had room for improvement (e.g. people not turning up to the booked screening calls).
The client noticed themselves avoiding questions, following which Yannick invited them to explore the significance of why this might be. This revealed insight into the client’s tendency to avoid challenge, with inner-confidence that did not appear to be being projected outwardly in the way she wanted to.
A ‘coaching personality split’ was described by the client in relation to the content they are creating in their two different languages on different platforms. This led to questions the client had not previously thought about to emerge, including in relation to visibility, relationship building, and collaborating. Giving space to explore the client’s identity revealed meaningful identities of being an artist and being a coach, leading to her asking “should I marry my identities”.
With the theme of ‘visibility’ identified as important to their marketing strategy, Yannick invited an exploration of what visibility means to the client. This revealed paradoxical existential themes: of wanting to be seen, and of being terrified of being seen.
‘The Stage’ both literally and metaphorically was used to continue exploring visibility. Drawing on the client’s past music career experiences, the theme of being seen was explored to establish similarities and differences between these forms of being seen (as a musician on stage versus as a coach in public and online circles).
“Lost in translation by default” was a phrase used by the client, who reflected that the vocal aspects of coaching were challenging, not due to either language, but due to being human with other humans. Art forms were revealed to come more naturally for the client when it came to expression and building relationships.
Yannick recognized the client’s significantly different energies when discussing different parts of work, reflecting how the client’s presence changed (e.g. flat, more dynamic) depending on what they were speaking about.
The discussion included exploring practical tasks that will help the client achieve their goal, drawing in part on positive psychology exploring what resources were already available for the client to draw from.
Yannick shared personal experiences to illuminate the theme of different ways of bringing one’s craft into the world, such as doing-for-self and doing-for-audience.
Key Insights
While some audience members picked up on the pace and the silence, the client expressed that the pace and the pauses were especially appreciated, creating a safe and spacious environment.
A key moment for the client was Yannick drawing parallels between the client’s identities of coach and creative.
Yannick felt aware of the importance of relationship building which led him to prioritizing this over challenging the client more, or trying to set clearer session goals. The client reflected that she needs a lot of space to reflect, and that she would have rejected attempts to try and challenge her or set clearer goals. The role of a coach’s intuition was found to be important in this.
The unspoken such as the client’s facial expressions and noises were identified as meaningful, reminding us that there is more to a session that the spoken word.
Yannick reflected that he was aware of his biases influencing the session, including related to authentic, multifaceted, complex, and creative people who may not market themselves in a single ‘niche’ as other coaches might. And related to needing to ‘bracket’ his own relationship with challenge versus staying comfortable.
In contrast to coaching training guidelines which suggest asking ‘one question’ only, Yannick reflected that at times he’d asked numerous questions, as “questions evolve when you are asking them”.
Exploring the theme of merging coach and creative identities, Yannick reflected a realization in his own career that coaching is a creative and relational experience which invites a transition from more traditional forms of creativity (e.g. music) into the coaching identity. Becoming a coach and playing less music (for example) was conceptualized not as a loss of creative identity, but developing a new form of it.
Shared experiences were discussed as both a powerful opportunity to build relational connection and to use metaphor to explore themes, whilst also something to be aware of as ‘your stuff’ which may interfere with the ‘clients stuff’.
The ethics of ‘going deep quickly’ were considered, reflecting on different coaches’ personal and ethical choices when it comes to opening or probing potentially sensitive themes, especially in a first setting and new coaching relationship.
Yannick adopts a more client led approach, preferring to invite explorations rather than push them, and remaining attentive to how clients respond.