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Coach Interview Series: Scott Clift

by Brandon

Scott Clift

Life Coach & Organization Consultant

www.embracingyourwholeness.com

Our main objective here at the National Coach Academy is to enable aspiring coaches to reach their full professional potential. One of the most effective ways to educate students about the world of coaching is by offering them a window into the world of real, practicing coaches and showing them all the different ways coaches make a difference in the lives of their clients.

We hope today’s interview adds another insightful glimpse into the dynamic world of coaching.

Today we are interviewing Scott Clift. Scott is a Life Coach, Counselor, and Consultant based in Denver, Colorado.

NCA: Can you describe your coaching practice and the kinds of clients you typically work with?

Scott: My coaching practice is a mix of both in-person and telephone coaching. I’ve been doing mental health counseling as well as life coaching for over ten years.

The type of clients that come to me are folks who are, in one way or another, stuck: stuck in a relationship, stuck in career path, stuck in behavioral habits that they just can’t seem to kick, or they have dreams that they want to implement but just can’t seem to take that first step to get started with them.

NCA: What initially got you interested in becoming a life coach?

Scott: I initially went into mental health counseling and discovered very quickly that there’s just a lot of information and wisdom that is being processed and is being utilized in that area that doesn’t really disseminate to a lot of folks. As I would walk around in the world or go to meetings, go to business networking events, or just interact with family members, friends and so on and so forth, there were so many skills, tools, concepts, perceptions, values, expectations and so on that I was able to really work with my counseling clients around that I saw so many other people in need of and being able to benefit from. And yet, they would never let themselves identify as wanting any sort of mental health services.

It was really born out of what I had perceived as an opportunity and as a need to really help a vast majority of other people with just certain skills and thinking tools and feeling tools that I didn’t see being used very often out in the world.

[Dr. Kimball] could see into the soul of people. She was just incredibly gifted in this way. […] I’d never ever experienced anything like that in my life before and I recognized it like, “Wow, the power of just being able to hold space for somebody is second to none in our experiences as humans.”

NCA: Working with your clients, what would you say is the most rewarding part of that process and on the flip side, what would you say is the most challenging aspect of the work that you do?

Scott: For me, definitely the most rewarding is kind of two-fold. It’s being able to interact with people on a very intimate level that doesn’t normally happen in most conversations and most interactions. Really getting at the heart of who people are and what some of their more intimate dreams and goals are for themselves and then being able to relatively quickly help them make a few tweaks and changes that helps unlock them to be able to start manifesting those for themselves.

The second part of that is really that no two individuals are ever alike. One of the most rewarding things for me is that I’m never bored because I’m never doing the same thing twice. I might be talking about the same tools, the same methods, the same ideas, but I’m talking about it with a completely different person so I’m always framing it to customize to that individual. It’s always new for me.

The most challenging is when I end up taking on too much responsibility for them changing.

NCA: You mean like on a personal and emotional level?

Scott: Yes, exactly. When I get too wrapped up and feeling like it’s somehow my job to fix them or it’s my job to get them unstuck. That’s always a pitfall, I think, for any person working with anybody in this capacity — just taking on too much responsibility for stuff that they didn’t even do themselves.

NCA: What strategies, if you want to call it that, do you employ to try to avoid what coaches call second-hand trauma?

Scott: Right when I started my career, it was very, very clear to me. I remember my very first session ever with a client, I’d done all this training and I was really excited. Then I just remember walking out of that first session in a moment of a very deep emotional crisis for myself because I knew in that moment that doing it the way that I had done that first session, I wouldn’t be able to maintain this as a career.

I had put thousands and thousands of dollars and several years into training to get to this place and I had this moment of like, “Holy crap, what if I can’t do this now?” All the emotional investment, mental investment, and just the overwhelming sense of vicarious trauma.

What I recognized in the subsequent moment was, “Wait a minute. It’s not my job to fix this person.” And that became a mantra for me which developed into: “I didn’t create this person’s problem. I didn’t create their wound. I don’t have a responsibility to fix it in them because I didn’t create it. It’s not my job to fix it. It’s not my job to heal it. It’s their job. My job is to be a guide. An instruction manual. A presence that holds them for as much time as I agreed to meet with them and no more.”

I very quickly started recognizing how to start putting my own boundaries around my emotional investment. Where that started, where it ended, what I would do, what I wouldn’t do and of course, over the course of a decade and more, being able to really refine and craft that into an art form so that I can really show up with somebody for the time that I’m meeting with them but then as soon as we say goodbye, there’s the sense where I can set it down and I can go back to me and focusing on what I need to do for me. I do yoga. I do five minutes of stretching.

A coach doesn’t have any business giving coaching unless they’ve also experienced it themselves and experienced different styles of it. To know what works and what doesn’t work, what fits and what doesn’t fit, what feels good and what doesn’t feel good.

NCA: In your path to becoming a coach, can you think of a mentor who played an instrumental role in you becoming the coach that you are today?

Scott: She didn’t work in the field, per se, but it was actually 20 years ago when I was a young adult and working through some of my own stuff. Her name is Dr. Lisa Kimball. It was through a church organization that I was a part of at the time. She was just one of those people that had that knack for being able to, as we say, hold space for somebody else in a way that’s totally accepting, totally non-judgmental. She could see into the soul of people. She was just incredibly gifted in this way.

I never had a formal professional relationship with her or a working relationship. She was more of a figurehead in the community but whenever I would meet with her, there was just the sense that I was being helped. I’d never ever experienced anything like that in my life before and I recognized it like, “Wow, the power of just being able to hold space for somebody is second to none in our experiences as humans.”

NCA: Finally, what advice would you give someone looking to get started in the career path that you chose?

Scott: Go work with three different coaches first. Go experience three different styles, three different personalities, three different ways of doing the work. In the process, you’re going to be working on yourself. For me, a coach doesn’t have any business giving coaching unless they’ve also experienced it themselves and experienced different styles of it. To know what works and what doesn’t work, what fits and what doesn’t fit, what feels good and what doesn’t feel good, just so that they have that experiential sense themselves.

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