How can you motivate a client to improve their vocal performance?
As a vocal coach, you want your clients to achieve their full potential and express themselves with confidence and skill. But sometimes, they may feel stuck, frustrated, or unmotivated to practice and improve. How can you help them overcome these challenges and inspire them to reach their goals? Here are some tips to motivate your clients to improve their vocal performance.
The first step to motivate your clients is to establish a positive and supportive rapport with them. Rapport is the connection and trust that you build with your clients through communication, empathy, and respect. Rapport helps you understand your clients' needs, goals, preferences, and learning styles. It also makes them feel comfortable, valued, and respected by you. To establish rapport, you can use active listening, feedback, praise, humor, and body language. You can also show interest in their personal and professional lives, and share your own experiences and challenges as a vocal coach.
The second step to motivate your clients is to set SMART goals with them. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. SMART goals help your clients focus on what they want to achieve, how they will measure their progress, and when they will accomplish their objectives. SMART goals also help you design a realistic and personalized coaching plan for your clients, based on their current level, strengths, and areas of improvement. To set SMART goals, you can use questions, worksheets, and tools to help your clients define their vision, purpose, and action steps.
The third step to motivate your clients is to provide feedback and recognition throughout their coaching journey. Feedback and recognition are essential to help your clients learn from their mistakes, celebrate their achievements, and stay motivated to continue. Feedback is the information that you give your clients about their performance, such as strengths, weaknesses, suggestions, and corrections. Recognition is the acknowledgment and appreciation that you show your clients for their efforts, progress, and results. To provide feedback and recognition, you can use verbal and non-verbal cues, such as words, gestures, expressions, and rewards.
The fourth step to motivate your clients is to challenge and support them in their learning process. Challenge and support are the balance between pushing your clients to try new things, take risks, and overcome obstacles, and providing them with the guidance, resources, and encouragement they need to succeed. Challenge and support help your clients grow, develop, and achieve their potential. To challenge and support your clients, you can use techniques such as questioning, modeling, demonstration, practice, review, and reflection.
The fifth step to motivate your clients is to create fun and variety in your coaching sessions. Fun and variety are the elements that make your coaching sessions enjoyable, engaging, and stimulating for your clients. Fun and variety help your clients relax, have fun, and learn faster. They also prevent boredom, monotony, and burnout. To create fun and variety, you can use methods such as games, exercises, songs, stories, jokes, and quizzes.
The sixth and final step to motivate your clients is to empower and inspire them to become independent and confident vocalists. Empower and inspire are the outcomes that you want your clients to achieve, as they develop their own voice, style, and expression. Empower and inspire help your clients feel proud, satisfied, and fulfilled by their vocal performance. They also motivate them to keep learning, improving, and sharing their voice with others. To empower and inspire your clients, you can use strategies such as affirmations, testimonials, role models, and vision boards.
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People hear in your voice what you don't say, or are hiding with your words. As I work with people to develop the elements of voice, I start early on them being inspired, empowered and self-believing. Voice does not lie, and it works best when there is harmony between the skills of tone, pitch, pace, modulation, inflection, fluency, breath power, and a inner confidence, passion, interest, purpose. Bringing these two together, through tools and techniques, reflection and awareness, people are able to well manage, build their strategies on what works best for them, and apply it is relevant situations. When they experience the merit of their own doing, that is motivation then for them.
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Motivation is fickle. It cannot be relied upon. “How can I motivate a client?” Is not quite the right question… “How can I help a client stop seeking motivation?” Is more helpful long term. Motivation comes and goes, without warning. The real question is how do I take intentional action on those days when motivation has left the building. Which it always will. Those days I don’t want to get out of bed, how do I get up and take action? This is where the superpower of consistency comes into its own. Building non negotiable daily habits which you can comfortably commit to. Consistency is a contract with your future self. Be super intentional about what you put into your contract, and never break it. You get to choose.
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