Private Practice Success Newsletter

April 2005, by Lynn Grodzki, LCSW, PCC (Professional Certified Coach)
www.privatepracticesuccess.com

One Minute Summary:

Intuition is an important skill for therapists, healers, and coaches in the work they do with clients. But do you know how to use your intuition and insight to build your private practice? Wendy Allen, my associate coach and my co-author of our new book, “The Business and Practice of Coaching,” (WW Norton, 2005) is this month’s guest columnist. She offers a fascinating (and musical) review of Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book “Blink” to explain how our intuitive skills can enhance our business results.

In this newsletter:

1) Intuition and Your Private Practice
2) Ideal Private Practice Books

Intuition and Your Private Practice
by Wendy Allen

“Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking” is Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book for businesses. His previous book, “The Tipping Point” is a staple in business schools and I encourage anyone running a business to buy and read it.

I Heard It Through the Grapevine

In “Blink”, Gladwell deconstructs the matter of intuition, which for many of us who are psychotherapists and healers is like preaching to the choir.

We know, depend upon, and utilize our intuition with our clients on a regular basis. Intuition is a personal, but essential method for gathering client data, through impressions and unspoken sensory input. We learn to read our intuition via the mental, visual, and physical clues it offers to us.

In my early years, a frustrated supervisor of mine at a clinic asked me how I knew that my client was scared.

“I know he is scared because as he spoke, I felt cold,” I said.

“Wendy,” the supervisor replied with exasperation. “You can’t just give that as an answer. You have to put more words to what you observed and experienced, and what the client said and how he said it!”

My supervisor was right. As I went on to teach and write and get a PhD, I learned that “I felt cold” was not a suitable statement unless my research was about the weather.

Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Today, the intuition pendulum is swinging the other way.

In both big and small business, there is much that is uncertain as markets and profits rise and fall. The old ways of decision making are well, old.

Management and leaders need to develop their intuition as a tool for rapid decision making. All of a sudden, what we therapists, healers, and coaches know best is in demand.

We therapists, healers, and coaches train our bodily intuition to work for us. Gladwell suggests that business leaders and owners can train their “head” or mental intuition to work for them.

In his book, he cites evidence and research that deconstructs mental intuition as a product of “thin-slicing” - - shredding your first impression into small, transparent slices that give you lots of data. I think that thin-slicing is not really intuition as much as it is learning how to quickly assess available pieces of data.

Instead of using thin-slicing as an aid for business, I suggest that those of us who are experts in change use our “earned intuition” - - my term for combining your total experience and skill training as a therapist and adding to that your sensitivity and exquisite attunement to subtle relational details.

When you allow your combination of skill training, actual client experience, and attunement to details to channel itself through your mind and body, you have a great tool to use for making decisions about your business.

Remember the disco song called, Dance With Me?

Small business ownership is a dance. There is a rhythm to business, consisting of ups and downs, evolutionary shifts, seasonal changes that reflect what services a client might be needing in December rather than in May.

All businesses go through an ebb and flow. The trick is to stay centered and solid as your business moves naturally. Using your earned intuition helps you stay confident that these “re-balancings” are normal and vital. If you can dance with your business, you will know when to take on new goals, and when to let go of old ones.

Want to dance a little?

Make two lists:
1) What drains you and
2) What you tolerate.

Then check in with your intuition, and if it seems right, take some steps to let go of list 1) and 2). Shift all of the items on both lists to make space for new goals and more energy.

Whenever you notice a new shift in your business or reach a new level of achievement, create another “letting go” list. Let your earned intuition be your guide. Dance with your business, so that you can keep it strong at its core.

Using earned intuition to re-enforce the rhythm of business is a winning formula. If you “Blink” you might miss what’s really important.

So check in with your body, remember what you know, and keep your eyes wide open!

(The above article is excerpted from Wendy’s email recent newsletter called “The Too Busy To Read? Series” in which she summarizes books for the small business owner. To receive her free email newsletter, email her at: weallen@earthlink.net and put “subscribe” in the subject line. Thanks Wendy!!)

Books by Lynn Grodzki, published by WW Norton
(order from the website, just click on any book.)

	The Business and Practice of Coaching By Lynn Grodzki and Wendy Allen (Summer 2005) An estimated 30,000 coaches have entered the coaching profession in the past five years, but unfortunately, the majority report they are unable to earn a living wage from their coaching services. This book shows you how, using a coaching approach to the business of coaching.
	Building Your Ideal Private Practice By Lynn Grodzki (2000) The best-selling guide to what you need to do and who you need to be in order to have a highly profitable, personally satisfying private practice. Often called the "private practice bible" this book has become a resource for tens of thousands of your colleagues.
	The New Private Practice:Therapist-Coaches Share Stories, Strategies and Advice Edited by Lynn Grodzki (2002) A groundbreaking look at the profession of coaching through the eyes of 16 successful therapist-coaches who tell you how to become a coach, what to charge, and show you how they coach their clients.
	12 Months to Your Ideal Private Practice: A Workbook By Lynn Grodzki (2003) This planned, motivational workbook will help you build the practice you desire. The workbook incorporates fresh ideas, new exercises, further skill sets and much more to give you a direct experience of being carefully coached by Lynn, month-by-month, for a full year.

More next month!
Lynn