I’ve been thinking a lot about why accountability is so effective in groups.  I think the number one reason is that we care what others think of us.

We are social animals, and it matters to us what our status is in our “tribe.”  But there is a hierarchy of how much we care what others think, depending on who the others are and how well we know them.

We feel more accountable to people when we know them better, and also when they are more like us.  Being held accountable by someone with more “status” than us can start to feel like an exercise in being ashamed.  Sometimes it’s hard when you are the coach, to draw that fine line between, “I understand; you had a tough week” and “What excuse do you have this time?”

So let me sum this up.  Groups work for accountability better than individual coaching because:

• We are social animals and we care what others think.
• The more people who are paying attention to what we’re working on, the more powerful the accountability is.
• There is no power imbalance among group members, so they are freer to question excuses.
• Other group members are in the trenches with you, so have a more immediate understanding of the struggles
• Each member becomes quite familiar with each others’ activities and goals, so there are more eyes on each person.  This multiplies the accountability effect.
• Members grow to care how the others are doing, which make the accountability much strong.
• Peer pressure and peer modeling is more powerful than just coach pressure and modeling, again because they are peers.

Groups still need leaders, so I’m not saying coaches are irrelevant!  But in planning your own practice or coaching business, keep in mind the power of groups in keeping your clients accountable and in helping them achieve.  They are cost effective, and they work! You can bring in more clients and impact more people.

What are your experiences with keeping people accountable in individual coaching and in groups?  What works and what doesn’t?

 
I often see coaches and trainers claim that accountability is a major focus in their groups or classes.
 

But when I look at what kind of accountability methods they are using, I’m never impressed.
 

The most common claim is: “In my program, you will be held accountable in our special Facebook Group.”
 

Unless you run a tiny group and you are ultra diligent, your Facebook Group will not make your clients feel accountable at all!
 

In a Facebook Group, the members don’t think, “Oh, I’d better do that thing today, because someone will notice if I don’t.” I don’t know about you, but when I know that nobody will notice I haven’t done something, I’m less likely to do it.
 

To keep them feeling accountable, you may create a post asking people to post what they’ve accomplished. BUT, a very small percent will post anything in response.
 

How does the coach remember each person’s commitment and goals?
 

If people do post their progress, it’s not easy for you to remember what they committed to do in the first place.  This is important, because people tend to drift and not stick to the more difficult actions that they want to consistently do.
 

In order to hold someone truly accountable, you need to constantly have their goal in mind, and the specific actions they committed to taking.
 

The other group members will certainly not remember, so their support of that person will be hit or miss.
 

There’s no way for group members to visually track their progress.  The awareness that they can’t keep track and neither can anyone else, makes it feel like nobody cares.
 

What if some group members dominate the airwaves?
 

A common problem in Facebook groups is that the people with the most “wins” dominate the posts. It is rare, although usually quite welcome, that somebody opens up about their struggles and failures in a Facebook Group.
 
I’ve been in countless private Facebook groups that were especially set up for a course or coaching program. They were helpful and fun, but they were very poor at accountability. Heck, I’ve run accountability groups on my Academic Ladder Blog, and I got a couple dozen sign ups, but no follow through!
 

To summarize what makes real accountability almost impossible to achieve in a Facebook group:

• It lacks an easy way for the coach to track each client’s actions, connect them with their commitments, and comment or keep them accountable.
• It also doesn’t have an easy way for group members to do the same, so they have a harder time supporting their peers
• It doesn’t have a visual system for tracking their progress
• Facebook groups are dominated by the people doing well. It’s not a system where it is easy to be vulnerable and open about problems.

What’s your opinion about Facebook Groups and how well they work for accountability?  Let me know in the comments below!
 

And please Pin, Like, Share and Tweet this post!
 

Most coaches don’t succeed in growing a business. They don’t have enough clients, don’t make enough money, or don’t know how to expand from a practice to a business.

Why is this? What separates the successful from the less successful?
 
The answer is that the successful people take goal-oriented action, and the less successful don’t.
 
And here is a major reason that less successful people don’t take decisive action:
 

FONK*

*Fear of Not Knowing
 

FONK results in the mistaken belief that if we only KNEW a little more, we’d DO a lot more.
 

It leads to:

• The futile search for more important knowledge
• The passive taking in of knowledge instead of more active goal-oriented steps
• “Busy-Ness” instead of business-growth-oriented action

 
EXAMPLE OF FONK IN ACTION

You just learned that by becoming a guest blogger, you will become better known and be able to add more people to your list.  Your first step would be to email or call the person that you’re hoping to blog for.
 
Suddenly, you’re not quite sure how to word the email. Also, you might not be a good match for this person, who might reject you.  
“Wait!” you exclaim. “Here’s another course on how to be a guest blogger! It’s bigger and more extensive than the last one I took! I don’t really know enough about doing guest blogs. I’m signing up right now!”
 

YOU WILL NEVER FEEL READY

Because it’s always scary to take that next big step, and because you have Resistance to taking a risk (after all it could flop and make you feel like a fool), you never feel ready.

Never feeling ready leads to you seek ways to get ready, and to a belief that you just don’t know enough. If you only knew more, you could do a perfect job.

IMPERFECT ACTION BEATS NON-ACTION EVERY TIME

But as we all know, you learn more by taking imperfect action and making mistakes, than you do by learning and thinking and planning.  None of those things are bad, but they are NOT the same as taking action.

Mind you, I’m not against courses; after all, I teach courses and I’ve taken plenty of excellent courses!

But there’s a problem:  Most people never take a step unless the next step is to take a course.

The problem is, it doesn’t matter how much you have learned, if you never take action on what you learned.

TMI?

If you think about it, most of us are saturated with too much information. We’re so overwhelmed with knowledge that it’s hard to think clearly!

That’s why I believe that

courses that don’t provide help in taking action are less useful and valuable than action-oriented programs. Gina Hiatt Click to tweet

In other words, the most useful and valuable courses provide (wait for it)…. COACHING.

Real coaching involves discussing the plan with the client, and then the client goes out and implements.  Whether s/he learns from their action or not, it is reported to the coach so that further coaching can happen. Without action, there is no coaching.

TAKE COURSES THAT PROVIDE COACHING

That’s why I always provide coaching (through Finish Agent’s online accountability system) with my classes.

It’s also why I follow people like Danny Iny, of Course Builders Laboratories, who I will tell you more about later in the week. He teaches you how to create courses that work, and he provides coaching in his courses. As a matter of fact, his ebook, “Teach and Grow Rich” is available for FREE for 5 days starting Jan. 26, 2017.

I urge you to consider upping the coaching element in your own courses, and to take goal-oriented action in your own life.

WHAT STEPS SHOULD YOU TAKE?

How do you add more coaching to your courses?

I could write a book on this, but let me give you some ideas:

• Do more spoon feeding of tiny action steps
• Break down all the steps into small and smaller steps
• Make sure that ALL your students take those steps
• Find out why any of them didn’t take the steps and teach around that.
• Offer daily support and accountability

How do you take action yourself when you take a course?

• Only take courses that help you get it done/implement
• Make sure you focus on action steps
• If you are not sure what the next action step is, ask.
• Write down the reasons that you are not taking action.
• Think back to why you took the course in the beginning. Are you achieving your goal?

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Do you have FONK? Have you taken more classes than you needed, and have you implemented them far less than you intended? Would some coaching along with these courses have made a difference? How do you get yourself to take business-growing action.

Tell us about your experiences or observations below!

A lot of innovative and highly effective ideas begin by turning ideas on their head.

Here is one of my favorites. Turn this:

• “Get High End Clients and Make Big Money Fast!”

Into this:

• “Offer Medium Price, High Value Services and Get Rich Slowly

Of course, everybody wants to get rich fast. But there is no free lunch. The “get rich slowly” route, is slow, but predictable, and leads to recurring income that can take you to retirement and beyond.

And what do I mean by “slowly?” I mean not overnight or next month, in some magical win-the-lottery way. I mean by building your business and over the months, adding more and more happy clients who stay with you. So within a couple of years, you can have significant predictable, recurring income.

Why shouldn’t we all try to get high-end clients?

• It usually does NOT lead to success. I don’t know about you, but I have met many, many entrepreneurs who have gone the “high-end-client-big-money-fast” route, and who have given up.
• They are hard to find and harder to contact. It’s hard to get high-end clients.
• This is not an ideal market for an unknown. It’s certainly more difficult to sell to them when you’re new.
• Your reach is limited. Fewer people hear your message and get results from your work.
• This model doesn’t lead to predictable income. Your income usually sways way up or way down.

What if, instead, you could base your business on groups of clients all taking small daily steps towards their goals?

I know – it’s not flashy and it’s not sexy. And it may only attract savvy coaches who aren’t swayed by big promises that lead to disappointment.

But what is sexy is results! When your clients get actual results, they:

1. Shout their happiness to the world. In my program, The Online Group Success System (TOGSS), in which clients work on their goals in Finish Agent (FA), a client recently wrote:

“I feel really good about getting so much done today. My practice is feeding me, writing is motivating me, this format and the group is supporting my goals. So, yes, it feels amazing to take small, yet massive steps each day.”

Valerie Sorrentino
The Simple Art of Manifesting

2. Continue to spend money on you! Yes, Client Retention is the new black! It’s quietly sexy, and results in collecting money without you having to constantly look for new prospects (of course, you do, but you’re not desperate). Here is an example:

o  I just gave a 6- week course for $997, in which 29 people participated. Starting Week 2, they logged their daily progress in Finish Agent.

o  At the end of Week 5, I offered a $97 per 4-week session continuity session.

o  Guess how many people, out of 29 participants, are now in my Finish Agent accountability, with automatic recurring payments every 4 weeks?

o  Enter your guess here: ____________________

o  Here’s the answer: 20! Yes, 2/3 of the participants signed up!

o  That’s almost $2000 in additional recurring monthly income. In the future, I can hire coaches (we already have 10 ready to be trained) to run these groups, and they can become ongoing sources of passive income.

This is all from just one course!

In subsequent posts, I’m going to give you more information about the Get Rich Slowly method, and how it will actually get you there faster.

Note from Gina:  I love Kim Clausen’s description of why “one tiny step at a time” can make all the difference in the world.  We teach people to know what their goal is, but to concentrate on the next thing that they can do to move towards that goal.

Change One Thing

By Kim Clausen

Sometimes it seems like nothing works the way it should. If you’re a human, you have probably hit that point where work is no fun, relationship is a struggle and you don’t even feel comfortable in your body.

At times like these, changing your life can seem overwhelming. There’s so much to do…where do you even start?

It’s quite simple, really…just change ONE thing.

Read a magazine article you would never typically even consider. Try a new type of restaurant. Take a different route to work. Any simple change of scenery can shift your perspective, and has the potential to drastically transform your life.

It’s like a ship at sea…if it changes course even one degree, 100 miles later it’s in completely new waters.

Of course, the most profound shifts are the ones you make on the inside. Annoyance can easily be turned into fascination. Frustration can be flipped to become gratitude. Even anger can be transformed if you simply turn it into a song.

You don’t have to tackle the whole enchilada, just make one simple shift.

And the best part is…it’s all experimentation. If you don’t like your new perspective, you can always go back to your old one.

What “one-degree” shift can YOU make TODAY?

Seth Godin’s blog post, “The Simple Power of One a Day,” is perfect for those of us who want to get important things done, but are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of our big projects.  Molehill climbing is important skill for coaches to teach their clients.  Just as our licensees do when their clients use our our Finish Agent software, he reminds us to climb small mountains (molehills) each day, so that it adds up to a tremendous outcome (mountain) eventually.

His post also jibes with my emphasis on DAILY ACCOUNTABILITY, and not weekly or monthly.  We have to take those molehills one per day, not all of them on Sunday night.

My free webinar coming up soon, called “The 3 Top Reasons Your Coaching Groups Are Getting Blah Results, and What You Can Do About It,” is going to teach you how to use online groups to define and climb those tiny little molehills on a daily basis.  Sign up now, and you will learn what simple steps you can take to turn your teleseminar series, coaching groups, masterminds, or trainings programs that everyone is talking about, because your clients get RESULTS.  The biggest thing that we all want is to go into action and get things done.  So learn how to help you clients do just that.

Thanks, Seth Godin, for helping us get through another mountain of a day.