A while back my good friend Chi Chiu wrote a great review piece for my site on Gary Taubes’ book Why We Get Fat.  More recently, Chi mentioned to me that he wanted to put together a post to assist fitness professionals in helping their clients to change.  When I saw the first draft I had so many questions that I wanted answered that Chi said he’d literally have to write a multi part series just to fit it all in.  This is part 2 of that series and if you’re a strength coach or trainer who is trying to help people change their behaviors and their lives, this is the stuff that most of us are missing so eat it up, put it into practice, and watch your results explode.

In my last post on how to help your clients change, I introduced the concept of stages of change from a Motivational Solution-focussed Coaching (MSC) perspective. It describes how willing we are to change to achieve a certain goal. Any of us can be at different stages at once, dependent on the goal. Recognizing the stage and dealing with it, can help you to get better results with your clients.

While the introduction post covered the concepts and the how to recognize a certain stage, it did not go in-depth on how to deal with these stages. This post will cover concepts and skills required to deal with the first stage of change which I call the Windows shopper.

A model is a simplified view of reality. It may not be as neat when dealing with real clients, but a structured view of the process accelerates learning. It is all consolidated in a pyramid that consists of three basic layers representing the three different stages. The steps tell you what and when to do it.

However, we must remember that coaching is not an exact science, but a social science. To explain this, you need to know that science helps you to predict an outcome. The reliability of your prediction however, can vary and one of the ways to express that reliability is through the statistical r-value (Pearson correlation). In medicine we strive towards r = 0.95, which simplified, tells you that if you were to repeat the experiment 100 times, the outcome will be the same in 95 out of 100 times. That’s pretty accurate, because you have tight control of your variables.

When you try to predict the outcome of physiotherapy, you will find that it is much harder to control the situation. You can still get a r = 0.80 though. In social sciences however, where coaching belongs, you’re like the king of control when you reach r = 0.60 and understanding this will help you understand why this stuff is much harder than writing a kick ass program.

It may also help you to appreciate the hard work that goes into researching different methods so you and I can achieve better results with our clients. If all of this stuff sounds confusing to you and you want to know more about how to use research to increase your results, you may want to check out Mark’s product How to Read Fitness Research.

In any case, the pyramid the represents the MSC model is built on the assumption that your client starts from a window shopper stage, although that may not be the case. The Windows shopper however, is the hardest stage to deal with, so in this case we hope for the best and expect the worst. The steps are usually pretty in line with what you can expect in reality, even if the client is in the customer stage when he arrives.

Some of this stuff may come naturally to you, some of it may not. Note that achievement is skill x effort. If you are already good at something, you may actually become even better at it. If you lack the skill, you need to step up the effort a bit and you’ll improve. Some parts of coaching may not seem to match your personality at first, but I can only ask to you to give it a chance.

A lot of these ‘new’ motivational and resilience practices have been taught in the US army in 2009 and 2010 to drill sergeants (Lester PB 2011). Some of those sergeants consider a friendly pat on the back all touchy-feely, but they rated the program an average of 4.9 out 5! The program has now been approved for a massive roll-out for all military personnel. So without any further delays, let’s get some results!

I think that there is a good reason that you cannot remember anything from your time before the age of three. As you discover the world, you learn to crawl, stand and walk. That sounds easy, but with all the falling and bruising this seems like a process close to torture. So, I consider the amnesia functional. Your guidance however can be compared to learning your client how to walk on his own.

Therefore you need to create a safe environment.

The first rule of establishing a feeling of safety for your clients is that you tell what you are about to do, before you do it. Don’t assume that they are okay with it. When people are focused on walking, they walk, when they are obsessed with falling, they WILL fall! The approach of safety has to do with shifting the attention away from falling, which creates the necessary conditions to start walking. You can refine this approach if you’re willing to take into account some of the stuff I’m about to discuss.

The client usually comes with a problem and may or may not want to share it (completely) with you. The client can also be very negative about it. You can only reach him when there is enough trust and empathy. It is at this point that I may ask you to do something that flies directly against the nature of our business, where we need to be upbeat and positive all the time. I have nothing against positivity when it does not railroad results.

I’ll give you an example of a guy coming in the first time huffing and puffing, clearly out of shape, and he is late.

As a trainer you have several options:

Tell him that he is already warmed up (that’s positive)

Actually charge him for the extra work out (could be considered negative)

Empathize with him, telling him that you feel sorry that his experience has had to start this way, but you’re glad that he is here now.

Option A is in fact the positive outcome of the incident. The thing is that your response is not perceived as positive, but as a ‘quit wining’ type of statement. The client is not taken seriously and may feel as though he is being ridiculed and he will not perceive it as a safe situation. The willingness to change may have been dramatically reduced. You may feel that it is not real, but I see this happening all the time, usually more subtle. This forced positive attitude, can be very offensive and therefore unsafe for your client. There is a time and place for everything…even positivity.

What the client needs is your acceptance and understanding that he is upset. Whether you think that the problem of the client is trivial or exaggerated, is really beside the point. Empathy is accepting that it is a real problem for the client and has nothing to do with you agreeing with the client. As soon as you start to empathize, you can let the client release his negative emotions, instead of replacing it with anger towards you. Now you have created the right conditions to become more positive.

A lot of the goals that our clients come for have to do with lifestyle choices and the word choice, already holds the assumption that the client may have made wrong choices in the past and therefore is to blame. You can confront your clients with their previous choices, like they do on television shows, but this is reality.

Friends and colleagues of mine have been coaches on the Dutch version of the Biggest Loser and they will vouch for the results. Although they are very competent personal trainers, they have never had similar results with their own clients, as they had on the show. Television creates special circumstances. The tough love approach may create great television, but is not necessarily great coaching.

Blaming people for their lifestyle choices may be natural, even human, but is it helpful? It has been researched quite extensively and one example of a recent study (Pollak KI 2010) was the recording and analysis of 461 GP sessions on the topic of weight loss. The conversations were labeled as motivating or confrontating and then correlated with the results. Although it was nowhere near shouting, calling names and cursing, the clients of the GP’s with a motivating style lost an average weight of 0.8 kg after three months, while the patients of the confrontating GP’s actually gained 0.3 kg. This correlation has been shown many times over  (Gaume J 2009, Stams GJ 2006).

You may think that this approach is a bit soft, I know I did. Not confrontating however is not the same as being soft. You need to uphold rules and you need to be straight. Just take out the blaming and the judging part and you are on your way to motivating. It took me a while, before I found the right balance and there is some logic to it, which we will discuss when we reach the searcher stage in this series.

Everybody is receptive to compliments. If you want to educate your clients, you need to know that most learning is at first affective (emotional), before it becomes cognitive. This simply means, that you need to open the heart to get it into the brain. Compliments open the heart, but the impact can vary and some of it has to do with the credibility. A personal trainer has a hard time, increasing the value of a compliment, because he is supposed to compliment. It devalues the compliment and therefore it’s impact.

To make the most out of compliments, we need to learn something about appropriate complimenting. You may not be aware of it, but there are different kinds of compliments. You can even classify them in a hierarchy of impact. You can compliment on looks and stuff you can buy, which is a compliment made very often, like “nice car”, “nice tie”, “nice shoes”, etc. You can compliment on behaviour, like a job well done. And you can compliment on positive personal traits, like “you’re such a warm and giving person and you mean the world to me”.

Can you see the difference in impact between the “nice shoes” and “you mean the world to me”? The first one, I categorize as level 1, while the compliment on the personal traits is the highest level, level 3 if you will. If you really want to open someone’s heart, you need to be at level 3. The problem is that it is not safe, because it is not credible. Picture yourself telling a client that the first time he walks in. If it is not credible, your client assumes that you must have an ulterior motive and suspicion kicks in. We’re still at the first step of the MSC pyramid and our first concern is safety so we need to start lower.

A compliment on shoes however is safe and at that level you can get away with just about anything. And by anything, I mean anything that does not get you into a sexual harassment suit. However, a compliment on looks and stuff you can buy, will not have a big impact though, especially from a professional that is supposed to compliment. And then there is the matter of you as a person, just feeling uncomfortable with complimenting or being more introvert. In that case it’s even harder, because your effort will never be valued properly, which is not much of an incentive either. There is actually a work around that many of you already use and probably without subconsciously knowing it. It’s the indirect compliment.

The indirect compliment comes through a question. Ask how somebody achieved something, and it may spark a very detailed response, especially if he is proud of it. He may not be aware of it, but as he is telling you how he achieved this goal, he is actually complimenting himself. The value of these compliments are high!  And best of all, you get to charge him for it!

A guy comes in and he wants to increase his bench number because he is stuck for months now and heard you are the go to guy or gal for results.

You : How long have been benching?

Client: For two years now.

You: You built that chest in two years without any help? That’s impressive, how did you achieve that?

Client: Well, first I asked a buddy of mine and when I became bigger than him, I went on the internet and read anything I could find and that got me to this.

You: Well, that’s great. You’re not only willing  to learn, but you also know when to move on, which is smart and that means that you and I will maximize your results.

In this short conversation, a lot of things are happening. First you started with an open question, that he cannot answer with just a yes or a no. He needs to be a bit more detailed and that’s especially convenient when the client is not the talkative kind. Then you compliment him with how his chest looks, which opens the door to his heart a little bit. The question on how he achieved it, gives credibility to first your compliment, because you are not just saying it, but you are genuinely interested. You just upped the value of your compliment. A good trainer is interested in knowing this because, as part of the client’s history, you may not want to repeat stuff he already did.

As he tells you that he has surpassed his buddy, he is actually bragging, but since you asked, it all okay. While doing it, he is complimenting himself, on his behavior. Then you compliment him with his behavior, and end it with multiple compliments on his positive personal traits. These compliments are credible because they simply enforce what he has told and you and your conclusion is nothing more than logical. What starts as a level 1 compliment, gets recharged on the second level and ends with credible fireworks.

You may not know whether he was a window shopper, pushed by his buddy to visit you, a searcher believing he was going to be stuck at this level forever, or indeed a customer. But with a couple of questions and compliments at the right time and the right level, he may have been catapulted into customer stage.

Client (1): Geez, could it get any worse? I was already stuck in traffic and I walked up seven flights of stairs, before I found out that you were two levels lower. Don’t you have any signs?

You (2): Well, we actually do, but you may have missed them.  I’ll take a look at them later. Please take a seat, I’m glad that you are here now and that you have been persistent in finding our place.

Client (3): Yeah, yeah. Just check the signs.

You (4): I will, it is always good to re-evaluate them.

This is a totally different conversation, where you don’t end on level 3 in complimenting. You barely scratched the surface of level two, when you noticed that he was persistent (line 2). Which is objective and credible, because he could have simply turned around leaving the building. This was a subtle invitation to an indirect compliment. He did not respond to this (line 3), so you did not open up his heart, but at least he did not slam the door in your face. The fact that he repeated his arguments about the signs, tells you that he still needs empathizing. You respond by taking him seriously (line 4), which is defuses the situation even more. To do that, you need to leave your ego at the door and that’s important. You may not know what set him off. Was it the traffic jam, looking all out of shape because of two extra stairs he had to walk, or is he looking for an excuses to bail out.

You (1): What can I do for you?

Client: I need to lose some weight and I’m far too busy to do it on my own, so I need a personal trainer.

You (2): Ok, that’s a clear answer, so let’s talk some numbers before we get to the details. How much weight do you want to lose?

Client (3): I need to lose 15 pounds, because I have a checkup for my insurance coming up in two months.

Here you see that you hold off on the compliments, just because he did not respond to it the last time, when you opened the door for a self-compliment. A compliment is actually given, when you told him that he gave you a clear answer (line 2). Although it may not seem like much, it is appropriate in this case. You don’t wait for a response, but you get down to business. Without asking him what he weighs, you ask him what he needs to lose (line 2). Some people find it hard to tell what they weigh. You need to get there eventually, but it may not be safe yet.

Notice that you did not ask him why he wants to lose weight (line 2). If he needs to share it, he will, like he does in this case (line 3). Why is this important? It makes perfect sense that when you know the motivation, you can help someone better. The problem with asking why, is that people tend to get defensive. “Well, because I find it beautiful myself”, is not an uncommon response. The emphasis on myself, tells you that he or she, perceives your question as judging. They hear it all the time. “If I’d look like you, I would never go on a diet”. They expect you to judge them and feel the need to justify.

In the two examples, you see that we use the same techniques, but the dosage is a bit different. The choice is dependent on the response on the invitation to self-complimenting. In the bench guy, it was no problem, while in the late guy, he actually turned down your invitation. It’s a great tell, that helps you differentiate your approach. But it also requires practice. If you compliment easily, you may come on too strong for some clients. There is a way out though, when you notice that you overdone it. Simply tell him that it may not mean much to him, but in your experience it’s something you don’t see often and admire. I have rarely seen, someone argue with that. A lot of trainers I see are more reserved and find it hard to compliment at all, except for behavior. Inviting to self-compliment and take it from there, can balance out both situations.

Okay…Mark here again...

As this post is running a little long, I think we’ll wrap it there today and in my next post I’ll share Chi’s next step in the MSC Pyramid – The Goal.

In the meantime, if you’re a fitness professional, please remember that Monday August 22nd at 8PM eastern is Alwyn Cosgrove’s Death of Personal Training webinar.  It is FREE and I’m confident that the content will be awesome and will change the way you do business!  If you can’t make the time slot, there will be a replay, BUT you have to sign up now to be able to access it.