In previous blog posts, I’ve shared how I structure the coaching aspect of my business, and what happens during a coaching session.
Now let’s explore the most interesting thing about coaching, which is:
WHAT ACTUALLY MAKES IT WORK?
What I mean by “coaching”:
Working with clients individually to provide “done-with-you” course design and course creation services.
What I mean by “makes it work”:
The client ends up with a course design that fulfills their vision, goals, and expectations for what they were hoping to produce.
It's the immediacy and specificity of the coaching situation
that make it so highly effective.
Coaching is completely customized to the client’s unique course design situation:
their specific target audience, subject matter, and goals.
The importance of CONTEXT
Clients often have course-design questions such as:
The answers can only come from understanding the whole CONTEXT:
The structure of a coaching session optimizes the ability to answer these types of questions.
Designing an effective and engaging online course requires BOTH subject matter expertise AND course design expertise, and coaching provides a customized context for making that happen.
The client operates their subject matter expertise and I operate my course design expertise.
We are like two people moving a large heavy item of furniture (the course content)
to place it in the ideal setting (the course structure).
It's difficult or impossible to move a couch up three flights of stairs and around a corner all by yourself,
but if you have someone helping you by holding up the other end, the job gets much easier.
That said, there are times when coaching is NOT the best solution to a client's course design situation or needs.
If you don't have an immediate, specific need to create a specific course, or don't yet have a defined course topic or target audience, it may make more sense to take the Course Design Formula® Master Course rather than coaching.
The Master Course provides space, time, and a community of peers, allowing each participant to develop their online teaching skills while also clarifying the specific transformation they want to deliver, and for whom.
Let's say coaching IS the right answer: What makes it work?
Coaching is completely customized to the client’s unique course design situation:
their specific target audience, subject matter, and goals.
We start by creating a high level vision for what the client wants their course (or their whole online academy) to achieve.
That gives us a “North Star” to guide by, so that everything we design or create aligns correctly with the client’s highest vision and goals.
We then work our way down through a customized process I’ve created, to get clear on the specific transformation the client wants their course to provide.
Once we know that, we determine the specific domain of learning that will deliver that transformation most effectively.
We then use the Course Design Formula® to structure the course based on best practices for delivering instruction in that learning domain.
Getting the domain of learning right
is essential for creating an effective and engaging course.
When you have the domain of learning right,
the effect is smooth and easy -- like a knife through butter.
When you have the domain of learning wrong,
the effect is unpleasant and grating, like nails on a chalkboard.
(Yes, having the wrong domain of learning really is that unpleasant, it actually hurts).
Coaching allows us to quickly adjust the course design to fit the client's deepest vision for it.
We can listen for any discordant notes, quickly discover anything that doesn't fit the client's vision for what they want to create, and adjust it right away.
Coaching is highly effective and impactful. It gets optimum results for clients, fast. That’s because coaching:
The Coaching Conundrum
When the goal is to CREATE SOMETHING NEW (the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy) it is very helpful to have one to one direct support in alignment with the 2 sigma problem discovered by Bloom (yes, the same Bloom.. this is another aspect of his research).
The coaching conundrum though is that as Bloom points out in his 2 sigma article, coaching is expensive for the client and resource intensive for the coach.
Coaching takes a lot of INPUT of time and energy from the coach. The reason it works so well for the client is that it’s completely focused on the client’s unique situation and goals. That by definition makes it not at all scalable. The scale it works at is the scale of one to one.
So coaching solves one problem
(how to provide a customized solution tailored to each client’s specific needs)
that reveals another problem: how to design a scalable business.
"AHA!" you may say... and in fact, many people DO say... "this is where online courses come in!
You create online courses to scale your coaching practice."
There are ways in which this can in fact, work.
BUT...even in online courses, there is often a need for one-on-one direct live support
to help learners APPLY the teaching in the course to their own specific situation.
Coaching is highly effective.
Courses are highly scalable.
To be both highly scalable AND highly effective, courses often need to include at least some direct one-to-one coaching
BUT... coaching is not scalable, which then puts a constraint on how scalable an online course can be and still remain optimally effective.
Have you grappled with these issues in your online course business?
We are going to take a deep dive into exploring this "wicked problem" at the Learn and Get Smarter community meeting on Saturday, October 23rd, 2021.
I hope you can join us as we brainstorm and synergize how to provide an optimized learning experience for as many people as possible!
If you'd like to share your thoughts with me before then, drop me a note to Rebecca@learnandgetsmarter.com.
I can't wait to hear YOUR experiences, insights, and reflections on coaching, courses, and how they can work together in your business to help people learn and get smarter!
