In case you haven’t been following along, this is the third part in a multi part series put together by my friend and colleague Chi Chiu.  The aim is to help fitness professionals understand behavior change so that they can bring about the very best in their clients.

In Part 1 of this series Chi introduced the concept of stages of change and discussed how these stages show how willing we are to change to achieve a certain goal. More importantly, he highlighted the fact that recognizing the stage and dealing with it can help you to get better results with your clients.

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In Part 2 of the series, Chi discussed the first step in dealing with those in the earliest stage called “The Window Shopper”.  Today, he’ll be covering the next step in dealing with those in this stage.  Take it away Chi….

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Step 2 – The Goal

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After you have created a safe environment, you can discuss goals. This is not about goal setting, which I will discuss in a later post on the Customer stage, but about counselling skills. I have seen many times a difference in what the client wishes and what the trainer thinks is necessary. The goal however, is neither. The goal is what you negotiate and agree upon together.

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It is perfectly normal that a client comes in with a goal in mind, but leaves with a different goal. This is great, because, you were able to make it safe enough that the client accepted your advice or was able to express himself better. With some creativity, you can usually connect or even integrate their goal with your goal. The important thing however, is that when their original goal changes for whatever reason, you need to be explicit about it for several reasons.

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1. You will be judged on your results and that’s why you need to agree upon your goal.
2. The client may have accepted the new goal without giving it real thought, and has a hard time explaining it at home to their spouse.
3. The client feels that a new goal has been forced upon him and that he has not been taken seriously.

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All these scenarios are important, but I’ve seen huge problems with the second scenario.  In this case the spouse, who may not agree that your client needs a personal trainer in the first place, has been given an opportunity to disagree further. Any social support from home is gone, which makes it harder to get results. The third scenario is also dangerous because most of the time you may think that you know what’s best for the client.  However you may not notice, because some personalities strive towards harmony all the time and they sacrifice their own needs, the client is left feeling bad afterwards without you knowing it. This requires some skills like funneling.

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Some clients talk a lot, while other clients need some encouragement and even then will not spill their guts. Both types of clients can be dealt with in the same manner with a technique called funneling.

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1. Start with an open question with ‘Can you tell me about…’
2. Then redirect the conversation by addressing a specific detail with an open question, starting with ‘what’ or ‘how’ and get even more specific if necessary with questions like ‘when’ and ‘where’.
3. Close the subject by summarizing and ask whether you understood it correctly. The only allowed answer is yes, everything else means, you need to go back to step 1 or 2.

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Just to give you an example…

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You (1): How can I help you?

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Client (2): I need to lose 15 pounds and I tried everything and always fails, and …

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You(3): Ok, so have tried it multiple times and you did not give, that means you have experience. Can you tell what worked the best for you?

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Client(4): I used a diet that was super and I lost 20 pounds, but I failed it a couple of times and jumped right back to where I started and then ….

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You (5): Excuse me for interrupting, but I find the success you had with the diet interesting, when did you follow this diet?

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Client (6): Well, two years ago for a period of six months, later that year for a period of three months and this year almost 5 months.

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You(7): That’s a very specific answer, good memory. So if I understand correctly, you have been successful before multiple times in losing weight on your own, without any help?

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Client(8): Yes

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You(9): Well, that’s a hard thing to do and you have done it a great job with the tools you had. You did not give up after the first attempt and that’s the kind of persistence we need to make it stick this time!

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At first you started with a question that could lead to anywhere and the answer was quite concrete at first, but the client started to wonder off in all directions, getting emotional over failed attempts, but clearly stated that something did work. You may find it very impolite to cut someone off, because they are venting. Now you are being soft instead of being safe. You need to cut off a person, that talks easily and runs off in all directions. You do it however by empathizing and complimenting before you change direction. Now you kept it safe and you regained control.

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By asking to elaborate on a previous successes you are actually inviting to self-complimenting (line 3), while learning what works for the client. The self-compliment invite did not pay off and the client wonders off again so you need to canalize the emotional tsunami by zooming into a detail (line 5). I also get the information I want. You may want to funnel it a bit more, but then you need to close the subject. You do it by summarizing, paraphrasing it with an emphasis on the positive achievements (line 7). How positive you are depends on the self-complimenting response of the client.  You close with a level 3 compliment, when credibility allows it.

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At the end of the session, you need to summarize again and when a goal change was negotiated, it must be a part of the summary with the reason for change and what the new goal is. The client needs to agree with the summary and you compliment again.

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The Window Shopper

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We have discussed several techniques, that you may find too cautious. That’s because they are geared towards the worst case scenario and that represents someone in window shopper stage. You learned from the previous post that Windows shoppers believe they have no problem and are usually pressured into visiting you. They expect to be judged, liked they have been by the person that pressured them in the first place.

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Instead they are being taken seriously and even received some compliments that they felt were genuine. Most clients will start to open up and may move up to the searcher stage. Their denial of the problem, may well in fact be a response to being pressured or be related to the insecurity of their own control over the problem. To admit that, they need to be in a safe environment and you can create that with the tools provided.

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It’s not always as smooth as I’ve shown above and  I’ll give you an example in my early years as a coach when I helped kids in weight loss programs. The parents from one 13 year old girl asked me to talk to her in the hopes of convincing her to stop smoking. Mind you, I really was not up for the task.

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Me: You know smoking is not healthy.

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Girl: Whatever, I smoke and I’m healthy.

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Me: You may be healthy, but others get sick from smoking.

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Girl: No way, all my friends smoke and they are all healthy.

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Me: You see that guy across the street, he smokes and he got sick.

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Girl: Yeah, but he is old!

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So much for education!

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This girl definitely did not believe she had a problem with smoking. I, on the other hand, had some serious problems. Although I was not experienced, I did figure out (after banging my head a couple times) that this was going nowhere. So I stopped with trying to ‘educate’ her.

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Instead I asked her a bunch of questions of how she ended up seeing me. And, of course, her parents had sent her.  I asked what her parents thought that she would get out of this arrangement. Her answer was typical and eloquent “don’t know”.  At the time, I did not know what to do with such an answer, but we will cover it on the next post. Then I asked her,  what her ideal world would look.  Because did not believe she had a problem, I wanted to know what an ideal world would like through her eyes. I was grasping at that moment.

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Her answer stomped me because her perfect world would be a world without her parents!!!  Of course, this is not that strange in puberty. But what I did not realize at the time was that just because she did not believe she had a problem with smoking, did not mean that she did not have a problem. She was a window shopper on the smoking issue and a searcher on the problem with her parents. One girl, multiple stages, which makes perfect sense (unless you confuse stages with types of people). Her problem with her parents was nothing serious, but a problem nonetheless. I started focusing on that part and I will elaborate on it in the next post, that revolves around the searcher.

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Winding Down

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We have covered a lot more than I anticipated in this post, but I hope you can understand why I needed this many words, to get a couple of concepts across. These are the foundation of good coaching. Even when you do most of it intuitively, those who have a better understanding of why they do what they will definitely be more successful. Even with all your talent, which I applaud you for, you can tweak your skills, to get even better.

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Safety first, gets a whole new meaning here and it starts with empathizing. You need to hold back on the education, because it may imply judgment of bad previous lifestyle choices, which may lead to a complete lockdown. If we want a chance to get something through their skull, we need to find the entrance and it lies in their hearts. Creating a safe environment will create the conditions necessary to relax more, while motivating by complimenting, will open up their heart.

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All this can be refined by using funneling techniques in our conversations. It’s both efficient to clients to talk sparingly and the ones you cannot seem to shut up. These are again skills that grow with practice and I want to leave you with an assignment that you can apply in every session, but also in every conversation you strike.

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1. Try to analyze when you needed to empathize instead of being positive.
2. Hold of the direct compliments, but focus more on indirect compliments.
3. Try to get from an indirect compliment to a level 3 compliment.
4. Try to detect any signs of change willingness and how you got there.
5. Evaluate any session / conversation and think of stuff to improve upon the next time.

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Every session while training or talking, I have had the last few years, has been recorded and as I experimented with concepts and techniques from MI, SFBT and positive psychology, I got to see the results. Because I also teach this stuff, my students get to see my video’s and literally learn from my mistakes. That’s why I spent so much time analyzing this stuff and it has resulted in great gains in rehab, prehab, and performance cases. I wish nothing less for you and your clients and hope to see you again with the next post where we will discuss techniques to deal with the searcher stage.

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References

• Lester PB (2011), McBride S, Bliese PD, Adler AB.  Bringing science to bear: An empirical assessment of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. American Psychologist, Vol 66(1), Jan 2011, 77-81.
• Gaume J (2009), Gmel G, Faouzi M, Daeppen JB. Counselor skill influences outcomes of brief motivational interventions. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2009 Sep;37(2):151-9. Epub 2009 Mar 31.
• Pollak KI (2010). Physician communication techniques and weight loss in adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 39(4), 321-328.
• Stams GJ (2006), Dekovic M, Buist K, e.a. Effectiviteit van oplossingsgerichte korte therapie: een meta-analyse. Gedragstherapie. 39, 2, 81-94

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