I’ve had a couple of conversations with coaches recently where I’ve been told that they don’t want to learn ‘online’, they only want to work face-to-face with a mentor.
This article is about why, actually, I don’t believe that they don’t really mean that at all.
Online Learning
The rise of online learning opportunities has been phenomenal over the last 10 years.
Today, you can take courses at Harvard University, for free, via their online learning portal. Oxford and Cambridge also both offer free online courses, as of course, do countless other institutions. I use Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge simply to demonstrate that even universities that are considered to be amongst the best in the world offer free, online courses.
We’ve all signed up for online courses (think Udemy etc) that we may have paid a little for. (Honestly, who can say that they’ve completed all the courses they signed up for?)
What I’m trying to say is that we all have an idea of what online learning means, and how we believe we interact with it.
Mentoring With The Coaching Revolution
Our mentors are based all over the place. In the UK, we’ve got one in Newcastle and one in Salisbury. There are two in Cumbria, one in Lancaster, one in Peterborough and one in Leeds.
In mainland Europe, we’ve got a mentor in Nice.
In Australia, we have one in Brisbane, one on the Gold Coast and one in Sydney. (We’re busy growing our own mentors in both the US and Colombia – they’ll be ‘ripe’ by the summer.)
As we are dotted all over the place, all our mentors work with their mentees via Zoom or Skype. The sessions are structured and are 1:1.
This is not online learning as defined previously. This is focused teaching and learning, and support and accountability, delivered via video link.
And it works.
The coaches who say that they don’t want to work ‘online’ are giving themselves a narrative that I don’t believe is true. That narrative is that somehow, face-to-face is better.
I believe that they are focusing on the wrong thing.
The how isn’t anywhere near as important as the what.
How the sessions are delivered doesn’t matter, what’s delivered does.
Even more importantly – and this is the crux of my argument – mentees actually want the outcome. Focusing on the delivery method is missing the point.
The Desired Outcome
The result of working with our mentors is that you know how to find clients who can (and will) pay. You can find them in the quantity that you want them, in order to be able to sustain you financially.
There is, of course, an obligation on you to do the work; just thinking about the work never brings results.
Online, Offline, Who Cares?
We do.
We know that there is tremendous value in face-to-face meetings. That’s why, every three months, we meet up for a training day. Those days are precious to us and they are a hugely important part of what our mentees get when they join The Coaching Revolution.
However, if we only mentored those who were within driving distance of us, many people would lose out. We don’t want that to happen, so we take advantage of the technology available to us and we mentor via video.
And it works!
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