I recently worked with a group of other coaches who are newer to the profession. They're honing in on who they want to serve, and how they want to serve them. In our discussion, I noticed a very familiar way of trying to identify who that “perfect person” or “ideal client” would be for each of them.

Old school marketing principles encourage you to create unique selling propositions for your ideal client avatars. To identify them, you’re told to criticize your ideal client. You hear language like “pain points” and “pleasure points” and “stress points.” You’re told to look for things you can solve or fix about your ideal client.

This type of marketing asks you to figure out how to make people feel scared. In other words, you’re told to make them feel like without you, they’re not good enough.

I’m asking you to consider how this is criticizing others. It’s a mistake to try to serve others by looking at what you can criticize them for. This is true for entrepreneurs as well as for leaders who work on teams of people

I'd like to you to consider this: Rather than looking for how to serve through the lens of “what is there to criticize?” focus on serving through the lens of “what is there to collaborate on?” What it will take for you to be able to listen for collaboration over criticism is to notice and celebrate what's working for people.

In other words, you don’t go to the person you consider your ideal client or go to the teammate on your team and say, “Hey, I've noticed that your projects are constantly in breakdown. You're not moving forward. Your health is a wreck.”

Instead of looking for where they’re struggling, start with what’s working really well. Such as:

“I just saw pictures of your kids on Facebook. It seems like you and your family are super close.”

“I noticed that you’re passionate about being successful at starting your new business.”

Start with celebration. Start with what’s working.

Once you’ve pointed out what’s working, the foundation of the conversation is inside celebration.

Now, you are able to dig deeper in the conversation.

“You have amazing interpersonal relationships with your family. They are the people that matter the most to you. Do you have the courage to ask for the time off that you need, to go on vacation with them?”

Why does this matter? How is this any different from above, since we’re still identifying things for people to work on?

What matters is the difference in how you're looking for those things. When you look for what to work on through the lens of criticism, you're looking for what's wrong and what needs fixing. You're actually inadvertently relating to your teammate or your potential client as less than you. You’re putting yourself above them in some way. You’re creating a power dynamic.

But in collaborative thinking, there's access to celebration. You're viewing the other person as someone equal to you. You just might have some tools or techniques to support them.

When it comes to marketing myself as a coach, I’m not into the language of “I can help you if you suck at this” or “if you work with me, you’re going to be better at that.”

Instead, I celebrate and coach thriving women leaders who are on their way to stardom.

Why?

Because I’m a thriving woman leader on her way to stardom.

I want to pull people into my orbit who are hungry to create the sense of community of women that I'm hungry to create. I want to work with people who get that we're here, together, to build each other up – not to flaunt our expertise of knowing more than anyone else, but to actually collaborate and exchange knowledge for everyone's greater good.

Are you a leader or entrepreneur trying to grow your clientele? Are you engaging in conversations that work from a place of criticizing others – looking for what’s wrong and what needs fixing? Or are you celebrating what’s amazing as the foundation of your conversations?

That’s what it looks like to come from a place of collaboration.