If you’re trying to figure out how to hold coaching clients accountable when they fall off track, tough love usually isn’t it. When you get harsh, you give clients a reason to defend the exact behavior they’re trying to change. You can hold a high bar for your clients without being a jerk about it.
We’re talking about tough love today. From a coaching perspective, of course. How much is it your job as a coach to hold up a mirror to your clients and tell them what they don’t want to hear, because that’ll motivate them and get them back on track?
Probably not a surprise to a lot of you, but I have quite a different take on this.
If a client keeps skipping their check-ins or missing workouts, the instinct is often to crack down. “Hey, we talked about this. You said that you would do this. You made the promise to yourself. This has nothing to do with me. What’s going on?” It feels responsible. It feels like you’re caring enough about your clients to be honest with them.
I know some of you out there have been in this situation.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Why being hard on your client and challenging your client are not the same thing
- What the righting reflex is, and how it shows up even when you’re not being harsh
- What happens when you meet a client with confrontation
- The confrontation trap, the labeling trap, and the expert trap
- What to do instead when a client keeps falling off the wagon
Does Tough Love Hold Coaching Clients Accountable?
Not really. A lot of coaches think being harder on their coaching clients is how you hold them accountable, but the research is pretty clear on what actually works, and it’s not that.
The thing most coaches get backwards with this is that being hard on your client and challenging your client are not the same thing.
And this matters at the exact moment coaching often feels the hardest. Your client has a setback. They’ve had a few “bad weeks” in a row after seeing so much progress, and you feel like you’re kind of losing them, so it’s time to get tough on them, right?
But what you do during that setback decides whether or not they actually get back on track.
The Work Should Be Hard. Your Coaching Shouldn’t.
Two main things get jammed underneath this idea of tough love.
The first is that the work is hard. It’s going to be effortful. Your clients are going to have to get uncomfortable in the gym, adjust their schedule, maybe change the way they eat. With that comes failure, obstacles, difficulty, discomfort. And all of that is good and necessary. It’s how people grow and achieve things and feel good about what they achieved.
I’m trying to think, if I didn’t have the amount of challenge in my business this year, would I have felt as accomplished by the results we got? Probably not. Sure, if it could just be a little easier, that’d be nice, but that’s the way it is right now.
So yeah, you’re going to have to get uncomfortable. It’s going to be hard. Yeah, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices. I will always be in favor of that stuff.
The other thing that gets jammed underneath tough love is just harsh coaching, with undertones of guilt and shame. “You didn’t follow through again. We talked about this last week. You told me you signed off on it, so what the heck is going on here?”
Making the client feel bad for being inconsistent is a communication style. It’s not what I’m talking about when I say “we’ve got to embrace challenges,” and it does backfire.
The work will be hard, but you as the coach shouldn’t be hard on your clients. Don’t make it harder than it already is.
Can you go easy on coaching clients and still hold them accountable?
Yes. A lot of coaches think if they go easy on their clients, that’s lowering the standard. But that is not true.
You can hold a high bar for your coaching clients and keep them accountable. Have expectations of them, have conversations about those expectations, and even land some hard truths. You can do all of that without being a jerk about it.
What Is the Righting Reflex in Coaching?
The righting reflex is that natural urge we have as coaches to jump in and correct and fix when we see a client doing something “wrong.” And it feels like good coaching.
It comes out of motivational interviewing, which is kind of the backbone of a lot of the communication I teach inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification (HMCC). A lot of the MI research comes out of counseling settings, so it’s a little more clinical, but the communication principles translate really well into coaching. And we do have research on it in health coaching as well.
Tough love is kind of like a stronger version of the righting reflex. “I need to tell them like it is. I need them to remember their why and why they signed up to work with me, so I’m going to crack down here.”
But the righting reflex also shows up a little softer, even for coaches who aren’t doing that. When you’re jumping to provide solutions and direct your clients and tell them “this is what we’re going to do next,” that’s the righting reflex too.
Most clients are sitting in ambivalence. They want to change, and they also have real, valid reasons for not wanting to make that change. If you meet them there with tough love, the outcomes actually tend to get worse, not better. There’s more resistance, more falling off. This is when you stop hearing from them altogether.
What happens when you try to hold clients accountable with confrontation?
They argue for staying the same. When counselors used confronting, directing, or warning language, clients responded with more sustain talk, which essentially means they were arguing for staying the same. “Well, this is the reason why I didn’t do it.” “This is the reason why I did this instead.”
And sometimes that confrontation doesn’t even have to be harsh. It can just feel confronting to them.
But when the communication was more reflective and autonomy-supporting, clients talked more about wanting to change and the ways they could change. Which is what we want, by the way.
When you get harsh, you don’t just light a fire underneath your clients. You end up giving them a reason to defend the exact behavior they’re trying to change.
3 Tough Love Traps That Make Coaching Clients Less Accountable
The confrontation trap
This is arguing with a client about why they should change, why they need to change, why they need to do these things. It may not seem like actual arguing arguing, but you are arguing for them doing something. That actually reinforces the client’s reluctance to take that action.
The labeling trap
This is things like telling a client they’re just making excuses, or that they just need to be more disciplined. That creates defensiveness in clients. It doesn’t help move them toward actually making the change.
The expert trap
“I promise you I know what I’m talking about. I promise it’s going to work. I’ve done this with so many other clients.” That’s really just undercutting the client’s own ownership of the situation. It’s taking away their autonomy.
And ownership and autonomy, that’s the stuff that actually creates follow-through.
Why Do Coaching Clients Stop Checking In After Tough Love?
Because they feel bad, and to be honest, you were the one who made them feel bad. There’s probably a big part of them that doesn’t want to disappoint you, so they’re just not going to talk to you at all.
Harsher tough love can feel more effective in the moment, especially if you’ve been working with a client who keeps getting on the wagon and falling off the wagon. You have the harsher conversation, and they nod along and say, “Yeah, yeah, I know. I needed to hear that.” So you’re thinking, okay, they heard me. That worked.
But compliance that’s built off of guilt is so fragile. Maybe something changes the next week, but if you’ve done this before, you’ve seen that it unravels very quickly.
Guilt can get you the words you want to hear from clients. But it does not give you a client who’s still following through in two months, three months, six months from now.
The deeper issue is that lasting behavior change has to be self-generated. It can’t just be coming from you. When you lean hard on tough love, the coaching relationship becomes more about them trying to make you happy than about their own goals and the things they’re really doing this for. You become a weak external motivator for them, and the second you’re not on them anymore, it’s not happening.
How to Hold Coaching Clients Accountable Without Guilt
You can still hold coaching clients accountable. You keep the standard high, but change the delivery of how you’re communicating it. The idea isn’t to go soft, brush everything under the rug and just tell your clients they’re doing a good job, because that’s also probably not going to work very well.
Get curious before you get corrective. Something like, “Hey, I see that things didn’t go to plan this week. Can you tell me a little bit more about what got in the way? I wonder if we can workshop through this and get something out of it.” So you’re not just going to pretend that didn’t happen and move on. You’re going to talk about it.
Reflect back the things they’re saying to you instead of lecturing at them. The goal should always be to have your clients expressing their desires and reasons for wanting to change, rather than you lecturing them on why you think they should change.
Think about any relationship where you have to have a hard conversation. Are you going to your partner or your best friend and saying, “Hey, you’re my friend for a reason, remember?” No. I mean, you shouldn’t be if you are. You should be saying something like, “Hey, this is something that I’m noticing, and I’m wondering if you picked up on this too, and we could talk about it more.”
You can absolutely tell a client something they maybe don’t really want to hear. The skill is doing it in a way that makes them lean in rather than shut down.
Can you hold clients accountable without coddling them?
Yes. And I need to be so explicit here, because I don’t want anyone to mishear this as “you should be coddling your clients.” The challenge stays. The discomfort, the doing hard things, that is how people grow. I will never walk that back.
What changes is that the hard thing is actually the work. It’s the changes they’re making to their lifestyle and the ways they’re thinking and reframing things. It’s not your communication and it’s not your coaching approach.
Your job is not to be the obstacle. Your job is to be the thing that actually helps your clients work through those obstacles.
Key Takeaways
- Being hard on your client and challenging your client are not the same thing.
- The work will be hard, but you as the coach shouldn’t be hard on your clients.
- When you get harsh, you give clients a reason to defend the exact behavior they’re trying to change.
- Compliance that’s built off of guilt is fragile, and it unravels quickly.
- Lasting behavior change has to be self-generated. It can’t just be coming from the coach.
- Get curious before you get corrective.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. You can hold coaching clients accountable to a high bar and even land some hard truths. You just change the delivery of how you’re communicating that standard.
Get curious before you get corrective. Try, “Hey, I see that things didn’t go to plan this week. Can you tell me a little bit more about what got in the way?” You’re not pretending it didn’t happen. You’re talking about it.
Guilt can get you the words you want to hear, like “Yeah, I know, I need to do better.” But compliance built off of guilt is fragile. Lasting change has to come from them, not from you.
It can be. Offering them solutions over and over again is also the righting reflex, and it’s likely going to cost you the follow-through you’re currently trying to force.
Knowing the difference between confrontation and challenge is a skill set, and it’s absolutely one you can learn. I’ve been teaching this stuff for six years in the Health Mindset Coaching Certification, and watching students leave with an entirely new way of communicating with clients that actually fricking works. If you want a place to start, grab my free guide below.
Links & Resources
[NEW FREE GUIDE]: Best Questions for More Clients and More Sales Conversions
Health Mindset Coaching Certification
Follow Dr. Kasey Jo on Instagram: @drkaseyjo
Research referenced in this episode:
Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. Motivational Interviewing.
Miller, W. R., Benefield, R. G., & Tonigan, J. S. (1993). Enhancing motivation for change in problem drinking: A controlled comparison of two therapist styles.
Moyers, T. B., & Martin, T. (2006). Therapist influence on client language during motivational interviewing sessions.
Moyers, T. B., Martin, T., Houck, J. M., Christopher, P. J., & Tonigan, J. S. (2009). From in-session behaviors to drinking outcomes: A causal chain for motivational interviewing.
AUTHOR BIO
Dr. Kasey Jo Orvidas, PhD is a published mindset and health behavior change researcher with over a decade of health and fitness coaching experience. She is the founder of the mindset and behavior change coaching program: The Health Mindset Coaching Certification.
