What can you do to work through the  conflict when each of the 4 personality profiles have different “motivators”?   “Get it done” or “Get recognized”,  “Get harmony” or finally “Get it Right”?   When we seek first to understand our own behavior, and how we react in stressful situations and how we respond to conflict, then we can begin to appreciate the differences in others, and adapt our behavior to create  more open and respectful communication.

Understanding the four DISC behavioral types and how they handle conflict differently can be a very effective tool in helping to build stronger relationships. In fact, the DISC behavioral profile is used by many counselors and coaches in helping couples improve their relationships by understanding how they handle conflict, recognize each others’ “hot buttons”  and help us understand each others’ “sensitive spots.”

DISC  Personality and Conflict

DISC personality “D” type (Do-er, Dominant, Decisive) can be hard headed and difficult and will be fine as long as things are done their way.  A “D” personality deals with conflict head on, and has no problem with conflict, standing up against anyone who seems to resist them or their strong beliefs. The “D” personality seeks to “Get it right” and to get results, is task-oriented more than people oriented, and their biggest fear is not getting it done.. failure.  In a relationship, the “D” personality needs to be insensitive to people’s feelings and to focus on task.

DISC personality “I” type (Inspiring and Influencing) can talk their way out of almost anything as these personalities are great at influencing or inspiring others with their charm and charisma.  “I” personalities seek to “Get recognized and appreciated” for their ideas, and want to share ideas and to be heard. The “I” personality is people-oriented more than task-oriented and needs to pay more attention to details and also need to focus on the task at hand. This person can be “all over the page” and may have a hard time getting focused to complete a task.

DISC personality  “S” types  (Steadiness, Security minded) need to understand “why” change has to occur before being thrust into change. This person is loyal,  and likes to plan events as opposed to the “D” and the “I” who are more spontaneous. The “S” personality seeks “Get Harmony and Peace”, and tends to be more agreeable.  Although the “S” personality may give in to pressures from “I” and “D” personality, be careful because this personality will “stew” ab0ut giving in and circle back to talk about it again.

DISC personality “C”  (Compliant, Cautious, Careful)  is seldom wrong because they research, and at times can over-analyze which may be perceived as being critical. The “C” personality seeks to  “Get it right” and they ask alot of questions. This personality is task-oriented and although reserved in their demeanor, they can be relentless when it comes to research and getting all the facts before making a decision.

How can you learn more about DISC and how to help your clients manage the conflict in their personal and professional lives? Become Certified Human Behavior Consultant and use DISC Assessments in your coaching, consulting, organizations and ministries.

Janice LaVore-Fletcher, a Licensed Human Behavior Trainer, trains and certifies others in the use and application of DISC Assessments. She has more than ten years experience using DISC in corporate, private coaching, and consulting venues. The course is also approved by ICF to award 8 Continuing Coaching Education Credits for the DISC certification.  Read more here…

How clear are your core values? Clear values motivate us. Clear values help us make decisions. Clear values are the foundation for growth. Clear values bring greater inner peace.

What are your Top 5 Values? 

Start By Selecting 15 Values, and Then Narrow Your Selection Down To 5 Values.

If one of your core values is not listed, add it. 

How do your decisions and actions align with your core values? How do you feel when your actions are not in alignment? How do you draw boundaries around your values?
Janice LaVore-Fletcher, IAC-CC,  and Master Christian Coach Trainer is President and Founder of Christian Coach Institute, LLC.

• Specific: Identify exactly what you want. Describe the outcome in detail stating your goal in positive terms. Describe it in terms of what you want rather than what you don’t want. You attract what you think about when trying to accomplish anything so keep it positive. Scripture can be a can be a powerful form of prayer and motivation, so don’t hesitate to refer to relevant scripture.

Describe your outcome in sensory-based words. How will you know when you have reached your desired outcome?  What will you see, hear, and feel when you have it?

• Measurable: Quantify your outcomes – how much, how big, what size, etc. Is your goal testable and measurable? Answer the following questions in regard to achieving your desired outcome?

• Action: Plan your work; work your plan.  Prioritize the many tasks at hand.

• Realistic:  Be realistic about what it will take to accomplish the outcome and make a reasonable stretch. Is achieving the outcome within your control? Can your goal be initiated and maintained by you? If achieving the outcome is not within your control, either redesign it so it is, or let go of it. You can only control yourself, and that’s challenging enough.

• Time Targets: Designate a target date for starting ___/___/___ and completing ___/___/___ the goal.

Goal Summary

Now that you have a better understanding of your goals, list them out below in the appropriate timeline.

Describe your short-term (3 months – 1 year) goals

Describe your mid-term (5 year) goals

Describe your long-term goals (10+ years) in the following areas:

Now that you have identified and clarified your goals, who will hold you accountable?  Who will hold your vision for you when you hit a roadblock or a setback?

According to a client survey by ICF (International Coach Federation), 62.4% of the clients surveyed said they were more successful in achieving goals with a coach by their side.

 Is 2012 the year you will become a coach to help others achieve their goals?  Find out more about our Christian Coaching Training Courses.

1. I can be relied upon to be on time for all calls and appointments.
2. I am willing to be accountable to another person.
3. I am fully willing to do the work and let the coach do the coaching.
4. I am willing to eliminate or modify any self-defeating behaviors that may limit my success.
5.  I am a self-starter and am willing to take the action necessary to achieve my goals.
6. I will speak truth to the coach.
7. I am willing to work with my coach in a partnership.
8.  I am well-disciplined and it is easy for me to draw boundaries.
9. I understand that coaching is not counseling, consulting, or mentoring. Coaching is an ongoing partnership that will help me produce fulfilling results in my personal and professional life.
10. My Christian values are my moral foundation.

Asking a few simple questions to assess your client’s coachability is a good way to build trust and open dialogue about the coaching relationship.

What additional tools do you use to identify your client’s coachability?

Do you feel that if you narrow your focus, you will lose potential clients?

Remember the golden rule of marketing: “If you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one!”

Here are 7  Tips for How to Be Clear About Your Niche:

1) Know your own experience, credibility and contacts

2) Identity your ideal client profile complete with demographics, attributes, and specific problem they have (ex, what keeps them awake at night?)

3) Know how what you do solves their problem and that your solution is valued

4) Tell your compelling Story related to the service you offer that connects YOU with your ideal client – ex. tell them how you got here

5) Research: where does your idea client hang out, network groups, trade shows, professional organizations, forums, blogs. etc.

6) Connect – build and maintain relationships

7) Pay it Forward – coaching is about community and there are plenty of clients so set your network of referrals and help others.

Interested in becoming a Certified Christian Life Coach?

Learn more about how we train our students for success in building and growing their coaching business and ministry.

At Christian Coach Institute, we train our coaches on how to help clients understand, and embrace their personality traits, life and career experiences, talents and strengths, spiritual gifts and core values.  The convergence of all of these is your client’s “sweet spot.”  And then we train you on how to help your clients “live” in their sweet spot.

Curious to learn more about your own “sweet spot”?

A few years ago, I read the book, Cure for the Common Life, by Max Lucado and I still love to pick the book up and read it again.  Mr. Lucado writes “God endows us with gifts so we can make Him known. Period. God endues the Olympian with speed, the salesman with savvy, the surgeon with skill. Why? For gold medals. closed sales or healed bodies? Only partially. 

The big answer is to make a big to-do out of God. Brandish Him! Herald Him!   God has given gifts to each of you from His great variety of spiritual gifts. Manage them well… Then God will be given glory (1 Peter 4: 10-11 NLT)

When you magnify your Maker with your strengths, when your contribution enriches God’s reputation, your days grow suddenly sweet. And to really dulcify your world, use your uniqueness to make a big deal about God…

every day of your life!”

Have you found your sweet spot? And are you living in that sweet spot?  Coaches, how do you work with your clients to live in their sweet spot?

He hit the table with his closed fist, making my glass of water splash and the other diners pause for that brief moment.  “I’ve got to reach younger men and help them grow in their  deeper in their walk with God,” he said through clinched teeth, “or I just won’t be able to live with myself!”

“I think you’ve just confirmed your passion.”

Effective Christian Life Coaches help others find their motivating passions in life.  Many life coaching clients are stuck in their current roles, routines, or relationships.  They’re actually ready to move ahead if they can clear their heads long enough to see above the fog of confusion or distraction.  Christian Life Coaches ask powerful questions that help draw awareness to where they are, where they want to go, and how to get there and what has and what could stop them from pursuing their life passions.

Effective Christians Life Coaches help others keep their dreams alive.  Most passions aren’t developed overnight and very few, if any, can be realized overnight.  Life passions grow, change, and evolve.  Some clients have trouble changing with the passions or adapting to other factors in order to continue pursuing their passions.  For example, with the break-neck speed at which technology changes can tempt clients to feel like they can never keep up.  And, let’s face it, life is hard and works against those who would be extraordinary.  Christian Life Coaches help others remember their dreams, their plans, their passions.  They fan the embers of present dreams until the flame returns.

Effective Christian Life Coaching help others bring new focus and color to once-faded passions.  Some clients have been stuck for so long that they’ve lost sight or, lost touch with the passions that once stirred their hearts to action.  Again, life is hard. Accidents and surprises happen.  Unforeseen circumstances can rock a dreamers world, place other priorities above their dreams until those dreams retreat to another place and another time too far to be reached anymore.  Christian Life Coaches help others re-connect with those dreams, re-envision the new possibilities that exist today to make those long relinquished dreams seem once more worthy of pursuit and, once again, within their grasp.  And for so many Christian Life Coaches and their clients today, it all starts with a simple question from the coach to the client.

“What would you like to talk about today?”

Our Guest Post is by Todd Blake, a current student at Christian Coach Institute, and he is married and has four children.  He is the Staff/Student Care Representative at the Kunming International Academy (China). He is certified as a Life Purpose Coach, Human Behavior Consultant, Christian Life Coach, Prepare/Enrich Marriage Enhancement Facilitator/Marriage Mentor, and Cerny Smith Cultural Adjustment Coach, and is a Member of the International Coach Federation.

Todd Blake, Kunming Coaching

Coaches are motivated people.  They get things done and they help their clients “get it done,” too.  So, sometimes, it can be difficult to understand why a client is stuck where they are.  There are a lot of reasons, but here are a few taken from Gary Collin’s great work, Christian Coaching.

Clients can feel overwhelmed.  Some people or organizations can begin to feel stuck if they feel overwhelmed.  There’s too much on their plate and that’s a very easy place to get to, isn’t it?  How many advertisements for yet another time management book or multi-level marketing scheme talk about trying to balance work-life with a family life, spiritual life, a social life, and more?  Perhaps your client feels that they lack the time needed to get it all done in the available time.  Perhaps they have the time but, after a long day at work, lack the energy to do more.  This is when procrastination and uncertainty can begin to erode their resolve to make changes.

Clients can feel exhausted.  “I’m so tired!” is something many coaches hear from their clients and for good reason.  Most coaching clients are “Go Getters”, motivated, capable, and fully engaged people. Their level of involvement in a wide array of activities can make other people tired just thinking about it all.  But their level of involvement is taking a toll on them.  They’re physically exhausted and may be experiencing physical symptoms.  With their attention spread out across so many activities, their “vision” may be becoming a little more difficult to focus on.  They may be losing sight of their purpose and missing the “oomph” to keep up the pace.

Clients can feel lost.  “I don’t know where I’m going anymore.”  The focal length of a client who’s overwhelmed and/or exhausted can diminish quickly to the point where “the trees” are blocking their view of the larger “forest.”  They may feel that the team of which they’re a part isn’t pulling in the same directions anymore and that their personal and group progress is diminishing.

You’re ready. Christian Coach Institute coaches are well-trained active listeners who know how to use powerful questions to learn where their clients are, where they want to go, help them to discern an action plan, and helping their clients overcome obstacles to success and growth.  You’re ready for the game, Coach!

The PBC is clear, and asks for coaching to help improve the overall health, specifically eat healthier foods and get regular exercise.  And, being the professional coach that you are, you understand the client sets the agenda, so you refrain from jumping in with the words, “but I think you need to look at your relationships”.

So, what does a masterful coach do?  A Masterful Coach remains non-judgmental and does  not jump to any conclusions nor attempt to “fix the problem.”  No, the masterful coach enters into the coaching conversation ready to “listen” to the PBC’s health situation and probe to determine “where is the client” now in this present moment?  What has prompted the client to seek coaching in this area?  What does “being healthy” mean to the client?  How does it tie into the client’s values? What is the reward of being healthy?  Why is this important?  Who else is impacted by this decision to be healthier?  Has the client felt healthy in the past, and if so when?   How might the low rating of 3 in the area of relationships and the low rating of 5 in health be related?

And you trust the coaching conversation to help the PBC, as you ask powerful questions and demonstrate active listening, exploring their current reality, and expanding the PBC to greater self-awareness.  Yes, the client sets the agenda. And the coach does the coaching.

Coaches don’t have to be experts in the fields their clients work in to be a great coach to those clients.  If they want analysis, recommendations, and advice in their field of expertise that focuses on their business, they may want to consider hiring a consultant since that’s what they do.  What you do is focus on the client.  You can stimulate your client to make their own judgments and decisions.

What you bring to the coaching scenario isn’t a vast knowledge of every professional industry but the active listening, understanding, insightful questions, and ability to summarize what has been said in such a way that the client can look at their own situation, reach their own conclusions about what to do and then takes actual steps toward their new goal.  You, Coach, help them get from where they are to where they want to be.  You help the client articulate what is occurring, see the client’s best and speak to their strengths, help keep their vision alive, challenge, and bring some accountability to the goals they’ve set, and not give advice or direction.[1]

Newer coaches can experience self-doubt as they begin their coaching careers.  They’ve completed their certification, they’ve begun to seek out and accept coaching clients, and they may be facing the question, “Can I coach those in a profession other that the one I have credentials in?” Yes, you can.  In this scenario, you may not be a Fortune 500 design engineer, but you are a professional Certified Christian Life Coach and you know people.

Where does Rick feel he is now?  Where does he want to be?  What does he think would need to happen to get there?  Is he willing to do those things? Does he have any fears about that potential future?  What might be some obstacles that he can foresee and whom might he know with whom he could network to overcome those obstacles? Are there other life desires or goals that might be in conflict with work goals?  These are among the innumerable questions great questions can bring to Rick without any knowledge of his industry.  Can you coach across industries?  Yes, you can!