Set an intention for each session. Prior to your session, give thought as to what would make the biggest difference for you and the assistance and coaching you may need. Generally, sessions that are focused with a specific intention will make you feel more complete and focused. The coaching also handles whatever “shows up”, helping you stay present with the realities of your life.Prepare for each coaching session by spending 5-10 minutes reviewing your original coaching goals, recent progress and listing any new areas that you want to focus on during the upcoming session. You will work with your coach during each session to create actions to complete for the next session. These actions will help you to move towards your goal. Make sure you do what you promise and turn up prepared each time. Completing these actions may be challenging at times, but the real work happens between sessions: in your business, work and life. Not prepared? Spend the first five minutes of your coaching conversation preparing with your coach!

2. Focus on What’s Most Important to You

Get clear before you call your coach about what you want to focus on and what is the most important to you right now. Talk about what matters most to you. Talk about anything you want during your coaching sessions: your goals, your life, your needs, what you want to improve. Even stuff that may not appear to be all that ‘useful’ to talk about. Focus on what you need to talk about, not what you feel you ’should’ talk about. This approach will give you the most value from your sessions.

3. Do Your Homework

Often, you will have homework to accelerate your progress and the change between coaching sessions. Usually, the homework can be completed in 1-3 hours. Forgetting, skipping or ignoring the homework will affect the effectiveness of your coaching. If you’re having difficulty completing an assignment, please email your coach between sessions for assistance.

4. Focus on Feelings Too

Focus on what you are feeling, not just on what you want to produce. Sometimes, clients feel the need to focus the coaching time on how to produce more tangible or financial results. But intangibles, such as feeling happier, more peaceful and more inspired, are equally important.

4. Be Responsible

Be responsible for your own actions. This also means raising with your coach, in real time, anything that you are unhappy about within your coaching relationship. Don’t relinquish power to your coach. Coaching is a partnership and you need to be responsible for your own actions.

5. Be Committed
The coaching process takes absolute commitment. To achieve anything extraordinary in business and life, you need to be willing to engage, work hard and move past obstacles and your own fears. Make sure you are ready to take on the commitment when you start your coaching sessions. Being clear about your commitment will help you get through the challenges you will face along the way.

6. Be Selfish

Become incredibly selfish. Coaching is about you and what you most want. So, go ahead, and put yourself first. Yes, be selfish in the sense that you are what matters most. When you are happy and do well, others will benefit also.

7. Be Open

Be open to seeing things differently. In coaching, you will be working with your goals (the ‘what’) and your strategies to reach these goals (the ‘how’) and all the time working on you (the ‘who’). Coaching becomes exciting when you re-look at some of your assumptions, ways of thinking, expectations, beliefs and approaches to success. It often is exciting to evolve and arrive at newly developed concepts.

8. Remove Obstacles and Drains

Get rid of your “psychic sappers.” Coaching works because it focuses you in two areas. First, you get to stretch and take more actions than you would on your own. Secondly, you will be reducing/eliminating things that drain you, such as toleration, stressful situations, difficult relationships and recurring problems. Bring these areas to the coaching session.

9. Create Space

Get more space, not just time, in your life. Coaching needs room in order to work. If you’re too busy, rushed, adrenalined, or burdened, you’ll be using your coaching sessions to push harder instead of smarter. When you begin, consider reducing your roles, install personal management systems, etc. Get simple. Simplification gives space. Space is needed to learn and evolve yourself beyond where you are today.

10. Change Your Environment To Do Some of the Work for You

Strengthen your personal/business foundation. Use part of your coaching time to design the perfect environment in which to live and work. Where you live and how you live are key to your success. Hang out with people who will cheer your success, not your failure. Be willing to invest time and money in improving your environment so that you feel supported to be your best!

Before starting the MindMafia session, we explored why he thought he was procrastinating. At first, he thought it was because his father often procrastinated on big projects or because his uncle had modeled it for him. Then he mentioned that it might be fear of success. I could tell he was concerned and grasping at straws to determine why he was unfocused and not making the progress he thought he should be. When we entered the MindMafia session, I asked which part of Andy’s subconscious or psyche was contributing to the procrastination. Immediately, a subpersonality called “success” identified itself. When asked why it was causing Andy to put off working on his films, it responded with, “It is a pacing mechanism.” Then it continued, “He worked himself out of a job at his last company. I want to make sure that he uses his time wisely and doesn’t get ahead of himself. He only has funding for two films, one is completed and the second is almost complete. He needs to work toward the official release date and wait for funds from the sale of the first film before he starts his next.” Indeed, Andy had been let go of his previous position because he created several films for his bosses – enough for a year’s worth of releases and they had a backlog of work to edit, package and distribute.

After the session, we debriefed by exploring what this information meant for Andy and how he could use it to his advantage. Armed with the knowledge that procrastination was helping him to stay on target with a fixed deadline and that it officially is caused by the part of his subconscious most concerned with his success, he can relax and enjoy the time his psyche urges him to procrastinate.

A few weeks later, I spoke with Andy and he said, “Now I don’t feel so bad for ‘pacing’ myself and can use that wasted energy from “worrying” all of the time into channeling more creativity when I’m focusing on work and have more worry-free fun when I’m procrastinating!”

I call them the MindMafia because they are an underground group of “people” or voices sharing an organizational structure and code of conduct within you. There is the ego, the protector, the pusher, the child, the mother and father and a whole host of other subpersonalities that control you. And each is an important part of your make up.

In pyschological circles, these subpersonalities have been known for years and there are various methods to attempt to identify, understand and work with these entities. Inspired by a particular method called Voice Dialogue that has been around for over 40 years, I developed the MindMafia Mapping Method as a system for identifying, understanding the roles each of these subpersonalities play, how much control they exert over you and, more importantly, a method for negotiating with each of these “people” to change their roles, if they are willing.

This is extremely powerful work that can change your life in an instant, much like hypnosis. But unlike most hypnotic methods, you are completely awake and aware during the entire process.

My MindMafia includes my ego, vulnerable child, magical child, baron (pusher), guardian, cynic and critic to just name a few. Who comprises your MindMafia?

The truth is that most leaders don’t know how change works!  Change happens on seven levels and you must work on several levels to ensure that change can happen. The levels are:

1. Subconscious / Spirit
2. Identity
3. Beliefs & Values
4. Thoughts
5. Capabilities & Skills
6. Behaviors
7. Environmental

In your organization, which of these levels require the change? Are you focusing your efforts, resources and attention on the appropriate levels of change? Most organizations try to change at the behavioral level, but behaviors are built from the way we think, our beliefs and our identities. They may also be controlled by our subconscious, which, until now, has been difficult to access. (See the MindMafia Mapping Method for more information on accessing the subconscious.)

So, the next time you want change, take an inventory of what must change and which levels of change are required to maximize your time and investment.  And if your identity of being a good leader the status quo in critical areas, you’ll need to envision a new identity that embraces and supports the change long term.

Special note: If you require change on ANY level, the levels below it must also change in some way.