In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, I walk through my experience pursuing a Level 1 International Coaching Federation Coaching Certification. I discuss:
- How coaching and dietetics can work together in practice
- Why I believe that the art of asking effective questions could revolutionize how dietitians practice
- What coaching is and is not, and how principles can be weaved into 1:1 sessions with clients
- The importance of continuously expanding your own expertise and knowledge
- How we’re incorporating principles of coaching into dietetics training and education through Dietitian Success Center
Links:
- Check out the Dietitian Success Center membership here
- Join the waitlist for the DSC Nutrition Counseling & Coaching Certificate of Completion
- Connect with Krista on Instagram @dietitiansuccesscenter and @kristako.rd
- Check out our Freebies here – PES Statement Cheat Sheet, Client Resource Kit & Business Planning Workbook
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Dietitian Success Podcast. I’m Krista, the founder of Dietitian Success Center, an online learning platform for RDs and students. I am on a mission to help more dietitians build confidence and expertise in running successful, profitable businesses. I went to business school so you don’t have to.
My team and I have grown DSC to a platform that serves hundreds of members. We’ve experimented with all types of marketing, tech, sales strategies, productivity tools, systems, and more. And we want to spill the tea on what’s working, what’s not, and how you can leverage our insights to kickstart, expand, or elevate your own business.
Ready to dive into your business school crash course? If so, let’s get started.
Hey there and welcome to a new episode of the dietitian success podcast. I am calling this episode a thought record. Because. I’m on this learning journey myself. And I want to take you along on this journey with me because. I have been. So I’ll walk you through the background here, but. I’ve been going through this process of getting my level one coaching cert certification through the international coaching Federation.
I’ll talk about that in a second. Because I am really. I have. I worked with coaches in the past, and I’ve always been really fascinated with how. Do, how does coaching and dietetics fit together? And I’ll talk about what coaching actually is. And how it’s quite different than how we’ve been educated as dietitians, but. Truly, I think that. Coaching, which is essentially just the art of asking. Questions. How I think that is going to.
I’m going to say revolutionize. The way that dietitians practice. Going through this program, myself has been. Transformational, I would say in terms of how I think and how I communicate with other people, how I listen. How I think about how dietitians work. And you don’t have to become like a certified. Coach through ICF in order to implement. Some of the things, some of the coaching principles around asking effective questions. You don’t have to do that, but it’s how can we, the thing that I’m thinking about a lot right now is how do we bring some of these. Questions and listening exercises. And principles into dietetic practice to help people actually make behavior changes. Because. This is still something that a lot of dietitians, I would say, actually, all dietitians struggle with. Is the. I want to say maybe feelings of. Insecurity or failure if somebody isn’t making changes or, if somebody is struggling to make progress, when it comes to nutrition, whatever is happening in their lives. I think that can be a challenge for dietitians.
And so. This is a new lens on how do we help people make behavior changes in a way. That is doable for them. And so anyways, this all sounds a little bit. Maybe vague and maybe all over the place, but I hope that this starts to become a little bit more concrete, but basically as some backstory, I am doing this because I have, first of all, I am always in the pursuit of more education and training that I feel like will benefit me as a. Professional as a business owner, as a facilitator of an educational platform for dietitians. I see my role as being like, I want to learn and go deep on a lot of the things so that I can bring those things and those new learnings and those new practices back to. Our members within dietitian success center. Because, from an advocacy perspective, We are. So our main goal is to help dietitians become the best versions of their personal and professional selves. We want to help them be incredible at their jobs. So that they have the confidence to showcase their value, to step into the roles that dietitian should be stepping into. And so as part of that, I want to always stay on top of what is new, what is emerging?
What is interesting? What is a different way that we can think about how we practice and how we do things. And to me. You know this idea of coaching. Has been really fascinating. And this actually stems back to a couple years ago, I worked with somebody who was actually going through the ICF certification.
And I remember that experience really. It was a really interesting experience because, and this is one of the core principles of. Coaching is the idea that the coach is not giving someone answers or advice. They are helping people find the answers within themselves. And so an entire coaching session. Is. The coach asking questions. To the client can you imagine having an entire session? Where you are. Asking you are sitting there and you were asking questions. But. To be totally honest with you.
Like I remember those sessions, so fondly because. It challenged me being asked all of these questions. I challenged me to think so critically and go deep and get super introspective about my thoughts, my feelings. Why things were happening for me or things weren’t happening for me. It wasn’t somebody telling me. What they thought was happening for me, it was like, no I’m actually the expert in my own situation. And this is one of the other core principles of coaching is, I am the expert in the. The client is the expert in their life and their situation.
And they are a whole incapable individual that has the ability to make changes in their lives. The coach’s role is really to help them recognize and facilitate this. And so, I have such fond memories of that experience because I. Mo, like I’ve never been asked these questions before. And it was it, those sessions turned into a space for me to do that. Self work and that. That. Yeah, I mean that critical thinking myself.
And so I’ve always thought about this experience and I’ve thought about, I think. It’s really interesting to think about, like, how do some of these questions, how can some of these questions be applied back to dietetic practice? Because I don’t believe that dietetic practice is intended to be just us asking questions of our clients.
That’s not what I’m saying. I believe that there can be a mix of both and there should be a mix of both because to an extent. People are coming to see dietitians because they do need information. They do need education. But when it comes to the implementation piece, I think that there’s so much opportunity there to add some of these coaching principles and to start asking those effective questions. That helped to empower action and change within the individual. So the reason why I’m calling this episode of thought record is because this is a journey I’m on.
I am not an expert in this, but I am so interested in it. I’m so fascinated in it. I have a lot of thoughts about it and I’m on the journey. And again, I want to take you along this journey with me and share some of those things that I’m learning throughout this process. And just, what does this, what is this looking like for what are my thoughts around how this is, can be applied back. Back to dietetic practice. And. From an application perspective. I’m very excited to start bringing some of these teachings and learnings into a couple of the programs we have.
So obviously we have our dietitian success center membership. So we have our nutrition membership and our nutrition plus business membership. And I’m really excited to incorporate some of this material into both of those. So in the nutrition membership, With our nutrition video courses, we include case studies within those courses.
So a case study on, working with a client who has PCO S or IBS or whatever. And I’m excited to introduce some of these coaching principles into these case studies as Hey, this could be a way that you could approach this. And then for the nutrition plus business member ship for all of our business members. Like so many of these coaching principles apply back can be applied back to our mindset around things.
And I think that’s where this process has been really transformational for me personally. Is because Like I have my own mindset, things that I’m always working on from a business perspective, confidence, imposter syndrome. So many things. That don’t just go away. These are things that are, we need to continue to work on.
And so many of these principles I’ve been able to apply back to and play back to myself and do my own self coaching on, which is really cool. And then we also have the nutrition, counseling and coaching certificate of completion. And what’s really fun is that well, so first of all, the material in that program is already so fantastic.
And so. Plugable and so action focused. And I’m also incredibly excited to continue to develop the material, particularly the coaching piece of the material and add some of these learnings to that course. And what’s been fun and what’s been, Interesting for me is. As part of my. Certification.
I actually have to do a certain number of practice hours and I have to practice these things. And so I am going back to working one-on-one with clients from a nutrition capacity to understand how does this coaching. Come back into pro, like actually apply to dietetics practice. What does that look like? I’m experimenting and what’s really cool about this program that I’m doing is there’s. We can practice and experiment with our other people in the program.
And so it’s a really safe space to experiment with. Nutrition. Health, business coaching. Leadership coaching. It gives us that space to be able to do it a safe space, to be able to learn and do it. And so I’m excited about that. I think that’s really cool. That could be a really fun sort of format to bring into our nutrition, counseling and coaching. Certificate of completion at some point. But, yeah, so this is how this is coming to life in my work and what I am thinking about in terms of how this applies back to my work.
So. Anyways, this is just a summary of where I’m at with this journey on this learning journey. And I’m excited to share more with you about it. I want to talk for a second just about what coaching is. If you’re somebody who’s not familiar with this term. And I think, what’s tricky about this.
The term coaching is because it’s not a regulated profession. Anybody in everyone can call themselves a coach as we know. Right. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve gone through any training at all to. Become a coach. And so most people. Who are coaching, call themselves a coach without having any training or background in that area, which is what it is.
Right. But. I love the idea of being able to take a certification program to build. Proficiency and skill in an area, even if other people are not, I don’t really care. I want to be really great at something. And so what coaching is it’s really the art of working with a client in a way that. Where we’re not giving answers, we’re not giving advice.
We’re helping people find the answers with themselves through thoughtful questions. And with coaching an entire session is the coach asking questions to the client? Things like what do you want to walk away with today? What’s been going well for you. What has not been going well for you?
What have you learned? What do you want? What else might be true? These questions that I’ve never thought to ask third, these thoughtful thought provoking questions that are really interesting. Coaching is creating space for someone to explore their thoughts and behaviors. I think that’s one that. For me as a dietitian has. I’ve thought a lot about with regard to how we work with patients and clients.
It’s like our job is to part of our job is to create the space. And hold space for someone to do that self exploration. Coaching assumes that the individuals whole and capable, and they have everything they need to make changes in their lives. Our role, as the coaches, to help them recognize and facilitate this coaching is not therapy.
It is future focused. So with coaching, you’re not diving into. Historical thoughts and feelings around things like oh, I probably feel this way because of my childhood. This happened, no that’s therapy. It is a different scope of practice. Coaching is for future focused, meaning you’re currently experiencing this challenge.
How do we move forward on this? And so, and I’ve been referring to it as an art because I do think it is an art. It is the art of asking questions and asking. Effective questions and asking critical questions. And again, I think that there is so much room for these principles to be added into dietetics work, whether it’s medical, nutrition therapy, or whatever work you’re doing. There’s so much room for this.
There’s so much space for this. And so anyways, Really the intent of this episode is just to start this conversation and just share where I am at with things. And. And how things are going and what I’m learning. And I’m going to continue to share some of this material as we move forward. As I move forward in this certificate, in this program. And yeah, I’m excited about it.
So anyways, I hope that you got something out of this. Out of this episode.
I would love to as always, I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts. If you have thoughts about this idea of coaching or anything that I said in this episode come have a chat with me. On Instagram at dietitian success center send us a DM. Myself and our two other team members we monitor and are in that Instagram account.
But we always like if a DM comes in that’s relevant to one person, then I will always see it. If it’s directed at me. So. Anyways, I hope that you enjoyed this weapon, this webisode. Oh my goodness. Wow. I love that word.
I don’t really know what that means, but I love it. Hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode. Have an awesome week and I will see you next Thursday.
