Hi! I'm Carly. I'm an ex-therapist who quit my job in 2018, after years of burnout, to become a coach. This is my publication, "Fortune, Fulfilled," which is a podcast, stories & resources created to help you create true fulfillment in yourself, your work and your life. If I'm not writing from Wānaka, New Zealand, with my dogs at my feet, I'm probably off adventuring around the world. If you're new here, say hi in the comments!
Have you ever had a client who found every excuse to not do the ONE thing that would actually move them towards the goal they said they wanted? Have you ever had a client who committed to a plan in session, then somehow turned up next week without having done it? And what about you personally — have you ever found it hard to make a change, even though you knew it would help you create an outcome you desired?
And then, have you ever felt bad about it? Like there was something you were doing wrong, a piece you were missing? Like maybe you or your client just needed to be more disciplined, to want it more, to bring more accountability or tough love?
If you’ve ever felt confused about why a client didn’t immediately rush into action just because you talked about it — who struggled to be ‘disciplined,’ who said they desired one thing but whose behaviour demonstrated another — it’s time you put down that expectation, of them and of yourself. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t helping either of you.
If you coach, mentor or lead other humans, helping them compassionately change their behaviour is one of the most important skills you have. Coaching is not just a title — it’s a skillset we can lean on to produce behavioural change. It’s not just coaches who use these skills. Leaders, mentors, course creators, parents, teachers — can all use these relational skills to help their clients, students and kids. And to do that well, there are multiple factors we can bring into our coaching to make it easier and more compassionate to help a client change patterns that have often been with them for most of their lives.
Developing this skill is the difference between clients who circle the same question for months and clients who take messy action. A coach who understands the complex forces acting on their client’s behaviour is the coach who can empower that client to change. This is the coach who sets herself apart from a potential client with a ChatGPT subscription. This is the coach who constantly hears ‘no one has ever been able to get to the root of this like you did.’ This is the coach who can tread the line between coaching and therapy — often changing decades-old patterns without needing to dredge up old painful memories.
This is the coach who is worth their weight in gold.
This piece is the fourth in the series “Lessons from Psychology that make me a better coach”, and this one is written to hand you some new perspectives and tools for helping your clients break old behavioural patterns and build new ones.
We’re going to explore:
why we say we want something, then struggle to create it
why verbal commitment is not enough to create behavioural change
the unseen forces acting on your client’s behaviour — how to identify what they are, and work with these forces instead of against them
what we can learn from Ted Lasso about human nature and behaviour change (I’ve been asked to share these thoughts for years now)
the soft skill that is the precursor to your client actually enjoying the change process, instead of leaning on discipline and willpower
the two factors that need to be in play for a client to take action
how to use The IMPACT Method and behavioural science in coaching sessions to guide change through simple questions
This is a series I’m writing in the lead up to our next enrolment period of The Midas Coach (one of the only entirely psychology backed coach training programs in the world). In August, we will be opening enrolment to our waitlist, so if you desire to feel confident in using tools, philosophies and approaches from psychology in your practice as a coach, so that you can guide the most complex clients and charge high ticket, add your name to the waitlist. And if that’s not you, this series alone will be an incredible resource.
Here’s what’s inside a Fortune, Fulfilled paid subscription:
The weekly Ask Carly private podcast — your real questions on coaching, business, psychology, fulfillment and wealth answered in depth
A monthly business report — what I’m seeing, testing and thinking about behind the scenes of a business that makes $500k, run in 15 hours a week
Regular Business Upgrades intensives — practical article series to strengthen one part of your business at a time (this is one of them!)
The full essay and podcast archive, plus the link to submit your own questions
To join us, you can claim a free 7-day trial — or, until the end of July, we’re offering 50% off the yearly subscription, making it just $7.50/month.
One of our finest qualities as humans is to dream about what we desire, and then struggle to create it.
If you’re a coach, your job is to help your clients decide what matters to them, and then close that gap — simplistically speaking. And when it comes to closing that gap, we first have to identify why the gap exists. Why is this client at point A when they want to be at point B? What is missing and required to help them get there? What do they already possess within them that could be useful in creating that outcome?
I think of this as building a ‘case conceptualisation’ for the client — a personalised blueprint that helps each client move forward with as little friction and as much fulfilment as possible. Like I shared in the first part of this series, exceptional coaching is not just about getting to point B; it’s about transforming the client so that point B is impossible to avoid, and sustainable to hold.
If we assume that our outcomes in life are created by a complex interplay between factors we have little control over — other people’s behaviours and biases, environment, systemic injustice, our history — and personal factors we have more control over — how we think, behave, perceive ourselves and the world, feel, create emotional states, and identify — then our job as coaches is to help transform the latter. To help our clients focus on what they can take personal responsibility for, while also understanding the external forces that influence their experience.
When I mentor and teach coaches in psychology-based coaching, we work with five areas of change: Perception, Cognition, Behaviour, Emotion and Identity.
Despite what Dilts and NLP instructors would have you think, one is not more important than the other; these are not hierarchical ‘levels’ of change. All can influence one another, but change to one area does not necessarily create change in another. A shift in a belief system does not automatically equate to a behaviour change; a shift in self-concept does not necessarily result in a shift in beliefs or behaviours. Instead, each of these is a ‘tool’ in our toolkit — helping the client identify what change is needed, and then selecting appropriate, evidence-based tools to create it.
Behaviour is the only one of these areas we can actually measure and observe. We cannot directly observe thought, emotion, identity or perception; we can only observe client self-report. Because of this, it’s very difficult to reliably measure their impact on changes in the client’s world. But can we influence behaviour, then measure the impact of that behaviour on their results? Absolutely.
Behaviour is where the rubber hits the road. It’s where skills are actually learned, through practise. It’s where new beliefs find evidence in the real world. It’s where clients integrate the changes to their self-concept that they speak about in session. Behaviour change is incredibly important. And more to the point — coaching in a way that equips clients to self-monitor and self-lead their own behaviour change is what creates an independent client who benefits from your work for years to come.
How we coach a client to change their behaviour matters. What we model — the language, the questions, the tools we hand them — this all matters.
This is where momentum compounds. The client needs you less for the day-to-day struggles that used to trip them up, and they move on to solving higher-quality problems, with your help. Now you’ve become a coach equipped to work with highly competent, capable clients. If you want to be the coach who can charge and deliver on high-ticket packages, this is where you want to be operating.
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Verbal commitment to change is very different from producing actual behavioural change. But just because this is human nature doesn’t mean we simply accept it. Exceptional coaching and leadership is about understanding the nature of human behaviour, so that we can work with it rather than against it.
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