Avoid excessive formalism towards your customers.

Formalities do not fit all professional scenarios with equal effectiveness. The relationship between coach and client demands an atmosphere of trust and naturalness, which allows us to know in depth the client's concerns and needs to be addressed through effective strategies.

When we handle communication in a simple way, we are able to go deeper into the aspects we wish to discover, minimizing the barriers that may arise due to the novelty that many may have for the first time with a coach.

During the development of this guide we will be addressing some of the most important aspects related to formalities and how they are involved in the relationship with our clients, so that you can improve your communication skills and make your coaching sessions more effective.

Formality in a coaching session

Formality is misunderstood by many coaches as a factor that denotes professionalism. The truth is that professionalism and formalism have nothing in common, you can be a very good professional without mediating with formalities that have little influence on the quality of our work. Nor should formality be confused with politeness or politeness, these are completely different phenomena, formality is a set of rules, generally non-verbal, that guide and direct our behavior.

That said, formality has little to contribute in the communicative relationship between a coach and a client. What we want is that our client shows himself in the most real way possible, that a space of complicity and trust is generated where he can express himself with total freedom and naturalness. How do we intend to achieve such a scenario if we impose a whole series of conditions when communicating?

Use clear and simple language

Abusing technical, pompous or complex language in order to make our knowledge known is one of the worst practices that a coach can carry out towards his clients. You must understand that within your clientele you will have a remarkable variety of people with different characteristics, level of preparation, vocabulary, ages, previous experiences, etc. If you are not able to explain things in a way that even a child can understand, you can hardly be classified as a good professional.

The essence of knowing how to transmit knowledge lies in our ability to decode the most complex aspects and break them down into simple elements that are easy for the listener to understand. Always use everyday language when exchanging in your coaching sessions, remember that your main interest is that your client learns, not that he/she is impressed by you.

Break down communication barriers

Above all, when it comes to carrying out the first exchanges with our clients, there are usually a series of communicative barriers that shift the conversation towards a formal level, avoiding naturalness in the expressions.

Examples of these barriers are shyness, discomfort, superiority of the coach in the coach-client relationship, among others. Try to sweep away all these barriers to generate a space of trust. To do this, start by setting the example of what kind of communication you want to establish during the following sessions.

If your objective is for your client to be natural, start by being the one who expresses himself naturally, avoiding showing yourself as the one in charge of the relationship or imposing his criteria. Naturalness is built through informal treatment, which as we have seen above, has nothing to do with lack of education or courtesy.