Blog Post: No one Ever Washes a Rental Car

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rental-carIn my previous post, I shared some of my thoughts about the importance of a coach truly believing that her/his clients are healthy, creative, and resourceful. I hope you read that article and accepted my challenge to unlock the vast reservoir of knowledge, passion, hopes, and dreams from within your clients for maximum power in your coaching relationships.

In this new post, I want to talk about an equally important mindset for coaches, and one that can help us be better encouragers. Even when you have some difficulty with that first mindset, this second one can help put you in the right frame to effectively serve your clients.

This second mindset is summarized in the phrase “No one ever washes a rental car”. In other words, we tend to take care of our own stuff better than we take care of others’ stuff…including our ideas, thoughts, hopes, dreams, solutions, etc…

I’ll confess that early in my coaching journey, I did, on occasion let my ego blind me from the first mindset I mentioned. As much as I tried to believe the best about those early clients, I did at times allow myself to believe I had better ideas than they did. I thought my experience or wisdom in a certain area gave me some special privilege “just this time” to inject my own thinking and conclusions and I gave clients the answers.

I remember driving in one morning to the Hollifield Leadership Center, where Chad Hall and I were teaching a coaching class, and I was listening to NPR in my car (I know, you’re shocked about that J) and heard an interview with a US military commander who was working in the middle east. He was asked a question about some of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis and why it was so difficult to maintain the cease-fire that had been in effect. I’ll never forget his response and how it made such sense for myself as a coach. He told the reporter “No one ever washes a rental car”. He was speaking about how living in someone else’s land – not having a home to call your own – makes it difficult to want to take care of it and work toward any kind of permanent peace. In other words, it goes against our nature to want to give ourselves fully and completely to a cause or solution that is imposed on us.

It was so clear to me that the same dynamic was true in our coaching conversations and relationships. When we give OUR solutions to people, as good as they might be, they are still OUR solutions. And it goes against human nature to accept someone else’s ideas in place of our own.

I travel quite a bit (in fact I’m writing this blog while on a flight between Dallas and Austin, TX.) and I rent quite a few rental cars every year. Virtually every car I rent (except for that really cheapo rental in Amarillo a few months back) is a late-model, low-miles vehicle with a LOT more bells and whistles than I’ve got on the old Camry in my driveway. BUT…I take care of that Camry. I keep it maintained, clean, vacuumed, tires, oil, EVERYTHING! Now…those rental cars? Um, no. I pay no attention to them at all. I don’t know when they were last serviced. I am not all that careful when taking curves. I gun it occasionally on a flat, straight road just to see what it can do…. To be honest, most of the time, when checking into a hotel, I can’t recall what make, model, or color it is, and I sometimes have to use the remote to identify which car is mine the next morning.

Oh, but that Camry….that’s MY car. And I take care of MY car…and it’s not because that Camry has more value than those rental cars. The Blue Book on it won’t come close to ANY of the cars I rent every month. No…the reason I take care of that Camry is because it’s MINE.

And I’m the same way with my ideas….my creativity….my passions…my hopes and dreams. I take care of MINE. I may use yours for a bit, but the ones I come up with…those are the ones I nurture. Those are the ideas that I take care of.

And my clients are the same.

And yours are too.

This coaching mindset, that “No one Ever Washes a Rental Car” is a recognition that the ideas/solutions our clients are most likely to appreciate, nurture, follow-up on, etc…. are the ones THEY come up with. My colleague, Chad Hall says it another way. “People don’t do what they’re told. They do what they tell themselves. So let’s help them tell themselves what to do better”

When we really catch that truth, we can’t help but encourage our clients more effectively with better results. When I realize that the best value I can bring to my clients is not my wisdom, but a process and mindset that understands they will make more progress and go further faster, when they are listening to themselves…when they are encouraged to dream and discover for themselves.

Great coaches know that not only are our clients healthy, creative, and resourceful…but they also don’t do what we tell them. So…let’s stop telling them. Let’s believe in them. Let’s encourage them. Let’s unleash THEIR creativity and resourcefulness. Let’s help them tell themselves the best way to move forward!

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