Just Between Coaches – Episode 136
Mastering Hot-Seat Coaching (Amy Hager)
Amy Hager: When we do hottie seat coaching in our group programs, we do a little one on one in a little group. We really believe that hybrid and community is really key in our work. I don’t ever want a client leaving one of our hottie seat coaching sessions with their questions unanswered. So I tell them, bring whatever question is on your heart and we’re going to go through it.
Melinda Cohan: Are you ready to turn up the heat in your coaching sessions? Today, we’re diving into a coaching approach that’s not afraid to bring the sizzle, hottie seat coaching, where the traditional playbook takes a back seat and the hot seat becomes the center stage for transformation.
I’m Melinda Cohan and you’re listening to Just Between Coaches. I run a business called The Coaches Console and we’re proud to have helped tens of thousands of coaches create profitable and thriving businesses. This is a podcast where we answer burning questions that newer coaches would love to ask a more experienced coach. In this episode, we’re opening the door to hottie seek coaching, an approach that promises not just results, but a coaching adventure like no other. We’ll unravel the mysteries, the challenging of the norms, and hopefully, spark some inspiration that might just set your coaching practice ablaze. Ready to feel the heat? Stay tuned.
I’ve invited Amy Hager today for this conversation. She’s an organic marketing mentor at Joyful Business Revolution that helps coaches, consultants and other service-based businesses worldwide how to create magnetic messaging and organic marketing. She’s the co-founder of the content Personality Club and cohosts the podcast, Grow Your Business for Good. Welcome, Amy.
Amy: Thanks for having me, Melinda.
Melinda: I’m really excited to have you on the show and to talk about this topic. But before we get to that, would you please share a little bit of your background with our listeners?
Amy: Yeah, so I have been marketing since as long as I can remember. I actually used to race goat carts when I was nine and I’d have to go around town and get sponsors and followers. This was well before the Internet and so it was much different marketing game back in those days. But as I’ve gone through my career, I’ve worked for nonprofits and associations. I’ve traveled all over the state and been able to really expand more globally and help more businesses while doing coaching and really help them find their messaging and their voice so they can feel confident and comfortable in marketing their business and services.
And so I’ve been with the Joyful Business Revolution since 2019 and my partner in Joy, Shannon, founded our content personality quiz and the foundation for all of our methodologies about twelve years ago. So we’ve both been in the coaching industry for quite a while at this point.
Melinda: Awesome. Well, I know you’re going to bring some awesome stuff to this conversation and I want to dive right in. Hottie seat coaching. I have been part of a mastermind for many years. We called it hot seat coaching. What do you define as hottie seat coaching? Is it the same as a lot of people know as hot seat, or some people call it love seat coaching, although that sounds a little weird, but whatever. What is hottie seat coaching?
Amy: I would say it’s definitely the same as hot seat coaching, but we always approach our coaching style very open, very safe, very loving. I think it ended up just being a mess up that we said one day, hottie seat coaching. Our clients were like, we love calling it hottie seat coaching. It doesn’t sound so scary. Yeah, hot seat coaching does have that little scary tone to it because you are putting yourself out there with a problem in your life, with your business, whatever it may be, and you’re getting live, in depth coaching right there with an audience watching you. And so when we messed up and said hottie seat and our clients really loved it, I was like, let’s keep rolling with this. And that’s what we call it.
Melinda: Those accidental discoveries are the best. I love it. And it’s true. I’m thinking back to all those years I was in that mastermind. Now, it was a safe environment. There was 50 members in that group, just profound levels of trust. You know, I was ready and willing to be as vulnerable as needed to get through whatever challenge I was facing. But when it came to hot seat coaching, I got nervous because I’m like, oh, God, I’m on the hot seat. It was daunting and scaring. It took a lot of energy to not want to protect myself. And as soon as I saw, like, we were preparing for this, I’m like, hottie seat coaching? Well, that’s fun. It’s like, oh, let’s go explore instead, oh God, what are they going to find out about me?
Amy: And I think you really nailed it on the head. My favorite words are exploring and playful experimenting. I think that’s how we approach hottie seat coaching and that’s how we really approach marketing. What works for my business and what works at the Joyful Business Revolution may not necessarily work for you. Marketing is this huge, playful experiment, and that’s what we built our brand around. So to have that fun exploring, let’s see what we uncovered in hottie seat coaching, it just really takes it to a different level. That scariness of going in and being vulnerable and sharing what’s going on in your world just kind of fizzles away.
Melinda: I love it instantly. And being on the hottie seat, working with them, is this something that’s a coaching framework that’s like you have to do it in a group setting? Can it be done in an individual setting? Is one or the other better or how does that work?
Amy: Well, I think that’s a beautiful question and I feel like when you’re doing one to one coaching, you are automatically kind of doing hottie seat coaching because it is very conversational, very flow, very guiding. Going in with curiosity and question I think is key, especially as a coach. Our style may be a little different than the traditional coaching style because we do provide guidance for our clients. If there’s this particular problem, and I’m going to take an example.
Yesterday, I was meeting with a coach who is starting a new membership, and there can be 20 people in this membership and she really wants to get it so that they have two groups. And we were talking about the strategy of how she’s going to make the invitation for women to be in this group, how she’s going to handle increasing the pricing after the first 20, she’s increasing for the second 20, how she’s going to handle when others in the group want to share things that are going on in their business and invite their group members to events and things along those lines and just navigating the nuances.
And when we talked about, well, are you going to use hot seat coaching in this group of 20? She decided that she’s actually flipping it on its head a little bit, too. Every second meeting of the month, one person gets to be a featured speaker, whether they want to use that time to practice a presentation or speech, if they want to use that time to mastermind and bring a question that they’re struggling within their business or even in their personal life. And so she’s leaving it up to one person to say, this is the help and ask for what they need to receive, which is a big part of her program.
When we do hottie seat coaching in our group programs, we do a little one on one in a little group. We really believe that hybrid and community is really key in our work. I don’t ever want a client leaving one of our hottie seat coaching sessions with their questions unanswered. So I tell them, bring whatever question is on your heart and we’re going to go through it. There are times where I have to put perimeters around it when we are with a group. Sometimes, I want the group to chime in and help. I may specifically call on people because of their personal experiences, but again, that’s me getting to build really deep relationships and knowing everybody in that room.
Other times, I’ll say, put all of your suggestions for Melinda in the chat. Everybody else is getting to share their ideas. And at the end of their time with us, they have solutions to their problems to consider because each business is so unique. But I do have some students who get overwhelmed by it. And so when it’s their turn to ask their question, again, because I know them so well, I’ll say, go ahead, ask your question. I’m going to coach you a little bit through this, and we’re going to go back and forth. What I want the audience and everybody else to take away from today is either one tip they can use in their business or one point of clarity that they didn’t know about this person that now they know, and that’s what they share in the chat.
Melinda: Beautiful.
Amy: So I think there’s different strategies based off of the person who is in the hottie seat.
Melinda: I love that. I love how you brought the nuances. My experience with what we called in the mastermind, I was a member of the hot seat was the other 49 people that were there could chime in. And now the group, we were a strong enough group that had been together for so long that we knew each other, and it truly was a beautiful flow, but it was always everybody chiming in. And never did we have a facilitator or the lead person that says, okay, I’m going to take this one here. And I love the suggestions about modeling it for the person that’s sitting in the hottie seat. That is really, really brilliant.
Now, when it comes to having an effective hottie seat, how do you help the people prepare that are going to be on the hottie seat? Do you give them any guidance to prepare ahead of time to make the most of that?
Amy: Sometimes, I do. If they’re in one of our programs, I know them pretty well. I’ll suggest bringing that to the next group session. Usually, what I’ll do is I’ll have them kind of rank. I’ll rank, is your ass on fire and you need this question answered right now, instantly, or can you wait just a little bit? Even if we left today without this question getting answered, you would still be okay.
So I have them do a ranking, one to five. Those who are a five have their question all figured out, they are ready to roll. Those who are two, three, or one may not be clear on their question yet, but by seeing and watching the other hottie seat coaching, by participating in the audience and as a collaborator, they usually get clearer on their question. And then by the end of our session, they’re out of five and they’re like, yeah, I’m ready to roll.
That has worked really well, but there are times when someone will get on and they just stumble. They clamor, they don’t have the clarity that they need to ask the question. And so I think it comes back to me, as the facilitator, as the coach, to ask questions to get them clearer.
Melinda: Yeah.
Amy: And maybe it is what? How do you seek coaching is to get them clear on what their actual question is. And we may not actually get to the question today. We might have to get to a one-on-one session or into our group or something along those lines, but I think by always going in with curiosity and openness and as the facilitator and as the coach and knowing that sometimes people can really voice where they’re at and what they need, sometimes they can’t.
Melinda: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
Amy: And going in and just asking questions until I’m super clear on what’s going on is really, really key.
Melinda: That was a very helpful thing that we did in our group. There was always three questions. There would be one or two hot seat participants that the whole group got to respond to. And then, one of the days that we were together, we would break into many hot seats where there’d be like four of us in a group, and so there would be these small groups. Inevitably, we would take five minutes. They’d set a timer; we’d take five minutes. And there was always three questions that we had to answer. And we just took time journaling this.
Now it got to the point where we always knew because it was always the same three questions. And so before we ever even arrived, like on the plane ride, I’m going through and answering these questions. But the first question was, what specific challenge or opportunity do you want help with today? We didn’t rank them. I’d love your ranking to help everybody understand the importance and urgency if it’s there. The second question, what specific questions question do you want answered today? That was probably what took the most time of the five minutes, because inevitably, the clearer you are with your question, the better input you’re going to receive.
Amy: Right.
Melinda: And then the third question, what’s the absolute minimum background that the group needs to get your question answered, because inevitably, one of the biggest mistakes, whatever time you set for that hottie seat, when people spend, you know, if you’re ten minutes on there, if you spend five minutes rambling about something, you’re wasting valuable time. And so that was another important question, like, what’s the bare minimum that the group needs to know? And those three questions were so helpful to receive as somebody going onto that hottie seat to really get myself organized so I could leverage the wisdom and experience of the group. Do you do anything like that with your folks, or is that through the coaching that you do?
Amy: We’ve got a couple guiding questions. They’re the same ish, in a way. Every week, they have questions that they fill out for us. When I am seeing the answers to those questions unclear, I’ll say, hey, bring this thought. Bring this question to our mastermind. Let’s dig deeper on it. What is really unique is when you come in to the Joyful Business Revolution, the first thing you ever do is participate in a workshop. All of our workshops have hottie seat coaching.
You get to actually experience it as one of the very first experiences with us because it is something that Shannon and I are masters at. By having them experience that right away, they know when they come and work with us in a group that there’s going to always be this opportunity. And there are times where it takes someone a little longer to warm up. That task is my task as the coach and facilitator to get to know that person, to help them feel confident and comfortable being in the hottie seat. So I think it’s a two way street of learning how to be a hottie seater, but then also how to really facilitate it.
And I do think, like, there are different models, right? We have our content personality club that I co-founded. What we do in that session is everybody is coming together to create messaging off of the same theme. So everybody’s kind of thinking very laser focused on something, answering questions for their business. The second week we break out based off of your content personality types, and there’s five types. And so you’re in kind of those mini sessions, masterminding, going over your messaging together and really hottie seating together and how I structure that because there’s not a coach in there.
But we believe you become clearer through conversation in your messaging. And so that’s what I want to do, is for people to be in conversation and for those who are listening to practice being questioning askers. What doesn’t seem clear? Where are you going with this, who do you serve? Or who is this for? And so when we’re breaking them out into those tiny groups. I say, you each have five minutes. And usually I’ll make up something funny, like the person with the shortest hair today or the person who lives farthest south gets to be the timer.
And so when they end up coming back from these breakout sessions into the larger group, there’s always one or two who still don’t feel clear enough. And so we’ll do larger group hottie seat coaching. So they’re getting double hottie seat coach to session. And my goal by the end of that session is for everybody to be an eight, nine or ten, that they can get that messaging out into the universe using their content personality type. If they’re not an eight, nine or ten and come in at the end of our session saying something lower, I give them a homework assignment, give them some way to get clearer. When they come into our third and final session of the month, we’re looking at results.
We’re talking about repurposing; we’re talking about did we enjoy creating this messaging? But going back to the hottie seat coaching of peers, I do think there has to be parameters around that. If you’re going to create that type of environment where it’s peer to peer hottie seat coaching, you as the facilitator and the coach, you’re able to provide some guidance, but it doesn’t always have to be you. That’s one thing that I love about how we’ve created that format in our content personality club.
Melinda: Now, we’ve talked a few different ways about making sure the person feels safe, making sure they’re ready for this, getting them prepared. What are some of the ways that you create a safe environment?
Amy: I want to make sure that not only do I know that person really well, but they have been given the opportunity to get to know the others in the room. When I am having sales conversations with people, I talk about the other peers who are going to be in the program with them and how I think they may jam really well together. I think my superpower in this world is a connector. I think by breaking down the barrier and getting conversation going on early in the experience will then prepare someone to feel a lot more safer.
Whether we’re able to do it conversationally in the workshop or maybe in the chat that I’m reaching out, I’m talking to them, Shannon’s talking to them. We co teach a lot of our workshops so that we can make sure that everybody in that room is getting the one-on-one attention that they really need. We have our materials well laid out. Shannon is a master curriculum designer, so we really make sure that the workshop foundation is set so that we can build strong relationships with those attendees. So when it comes down to hottie seat coaching time, they feel comfortable.
Melinda: Yeah.
Amy: It’s not 100%, though. There are times I’ll get a private DM from somebody saying, I’m scared to ask and talking through that with them and really seeing how we can overcome. Is there a different opportunity for them to get their question answered? Sometimes, they’d rather write their question and post it in our Facebook community, which that’s exactly what it’s there for. So I think it really does come down to knowing the people in the room. Being honest as well takes us really far. We are definitely a straight-shooting duo over here at the Joyful Business Revolution, and people see that right away.
When we start engaging with people we’ve known for years, we’ll say, I’ve known Melinda for years and I know some of the history. So I’m just going to get straight to the question that you have at hand. Or on the flip side. Melinda, I know we just met, we don’t know a lot about you and your business yet, but here’s what I’m feeling. So qualify the person you’re talking to and make sure that the others know. Do you have a deep relationship? Is this a new person? And just be humble and show who we really are.
Melinda: Yeah. And I want to go back to a point you just made. It sounds so simple. And for coaches, they’re like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do that. But it is so profound for the people on the other side. That’s when you talked about, you know, Melinda, we’ve known you for years, and here’s the depth of what we know about you. And then you get into it. Or, Melinda, we’ve just met. Take a few seconds. Like that acknowledging, giving the space, what that does for the person sitting in the hottie seat, it helps them feel seen, feel heard, feel acknowledged, feel held.
That right there, when somebody, a coaching client, I don’t care if you’re doing hottie seat coaching one on one coaching group. It doesn’t matter when you’re doing any kind of coaching. When we can help them feel seen, heard and held, that is when they will open up. That’s when vulnerabilities are more likely. That is when we really get to what’s under the surface of that iceberg and not just the top of it. It sounds so easy and most of us do it naturally without even thinking about it. But I just want to call attention to that because that is so profound.
Now, you know, you’ve talked about how you help people with messaging and all of that. So in the context of teaching messaging, how does hottie seat coaching serve as an effective tool?
Amy: When you’re creating marketing and messaging, clarity comes from conversation. We get spun up in the words and ideas in our head when we try to do it on our own in our head. So it really lends itself so well in creating messaging because it does set that platform to have a conversation, to ask questions and to be curious with each other. When our students know that when another student is asking them a question, it’s not a question out of judgment. I don’t hear what you think you’re saying. So I’m going to ask a question to get me clearer.
And as I’m asking questions to get me clearer, the person who is working on their messaging, they’re going to get clearer, too. So it really is a community co creation when it comes to messaging over at the Joyful Business Revolution. And I think that when people do it alone, that’s what becomes extremely frustrating because they can’t have that conversation with themselves.
Melinda: It gets very messy when we go solo into that territory, for sure. Now, when it comes to hottie seat coaching, what are some of the mistakes that you see made?
Amy: So I actually made a pretty large mistake. It’s probably been about a year at this point. We had been meeting together for months. All of us know each other very well. There were a couple of dynamics with the group, though, and I knew this and there were a couple women who just, I don’t know what it was about them, but they always had to get the last word in. One woman came and was celebrating that she had completed this huge project and sent us all the links so that we could look at it and enjoy it together. She had asked the question well, knowing that this just took me two years to complete and I’m super excited it’s done, but I really value you all. Do you have any feedback for improvement on it?
And I think everybody read the room right, but this one other woman, and she just went in on how horrible this thing was. The lady just said, it took me two years to complete this. It’s been blood, sweat and tears. Like when she gave that background, she gave all of the emotion she was feeling getting this done. And so when the other was giving the harsh feedback, I could just see the one who was supposed to be receiving it melting and melting. And I think at that point, I should have said, all right, I think we’ve probably given her enough advice and guidance for today. If you think you want to dive in more on this with us, bring it back next month.
But I let it go probably too long, and the woman ended up leaving in tears, and I never want someone to leave hottie seat coaching in tears. That is not our goal. I didn’t step in as the facilitator, and, you know, I owned up to that with both of them. I apologize to the one who was in tears, and I apologize to the one that I probably let go too long. But again, it really is reading the room. And so I think if there is a positive tip that I learned from this, I always have cameras on for hottie seat coaching because if I can’t see someone’s face and I can’t see their eyes and I can’t see how they’re absorbing the feedback, it’s really hard to truly facilitate well. I saw this whole thing playing out, and I didn’t do anything to really navigate the waters differently.
Melinda: Valuable insight.
Amy: So from that, I definitely learned. So, as the facilitator, how comfortable are you? Not breaking up a fight, but breaking up a conversation.
Melinda: Yeah, just the art of interrupting.
Amy: Exactly.
Melinda: And that’s super powerful. Now, on the person, the recipient, the person on the hottie seat. I know one of the mistakes that we would tell everybody is, no, yeah, buts. You are in receiving mode only. No rebuttals. You don’t get to say, oh, well, I tried that, but. Or I would do that, but. Zero yeah, buts allowed. That’s a big mistake. When people get into that defensive rebuttal mode, what other mistakes as somebody sitting on the hottie seat, have you seen being made?
Amy: I think that when you are on the receiving end of hottie coaching, the key thing to remember is you’re the CEO of your business and your life. You don’t have to take every idea that’s thrown out at you and really being able to check in to with yourself and say, well, do I want to explore this? Does this sound fun or is this absolutely no. And if you have a whole list of ideas that are absolutely no, that is another question then for deepening within yourself of why am I having so much resistance to all these ideas for this burning question that I brought to this group.
But I would say that be your own guide. Listen to that God of yours because it got you pretty far, so far in life, not every idea is going to be the right idea for you. But something may spark.
Melinda: Yeah.
Amy: Something newer based off of what they said.
Melinda: Yeah. One of the things that we remind folks, and when I was in this group, we were reminded of it, that not every idea is going to be the idea that’s needed, but it’s the thing that leads to the thing and sometimes that is equally as important. What else do we need to talk about with hottie seat? Like we help coaches start their business, right? Some of them do one on one coaching, some of them do group programs, some of them do online courses. It’s a combination. Like is this something that could be an added benefit in any type of coaching that they can then market themselves as something they do? How do they integrate it into their business? Just start doing it?
Amy: I do think it does take practice. I remember the first time I was leading a hottie coach session. I really knew everybody in the room that I was coaching and so it made a lot easier. So now I can feel confident in hottie coaching a random stranger that just signed up for our workshop, right, that I don’t know so well outside of what they just told me in chat. I would say if you’re wanting to go down this path and add it as a facilitation method within your coaching practice, try it with people that you know first.
And heck, maybe even try it with a bunch of friends. Get them together and say, I need to practice this thing. I want you all to bring me a question about I don’t know, how to make your favorite pizza. It doesn’t always have to be super serious about life and business. I do think knowing the people in the room when you first get started is so helpful. Does it work well in all three platforms? You mentioned the one to one, the group, course. I definitely think it does, but it really needs to be the stage is set correctly, the space is safe, so everybody feels confident and comfortable in sharing. And you, as a facilitator, are ready to navigate those hot seat coaching waters.
Melinda: I love it. Well, we could explore this topic so many different ways, but right now I want to summarize some of the things that we’ve talked about today. I love immediately how we got into the definition of hottie seat coaching. And I think most of the industry, if they’re familiar with this, knows that it’s hot seat. Your accidental discovery took the scariness away, the dauntingness, and was like, oh, this is fun, let’s be curious. And you talked about it being playful, experimenting and exploration. I love that we talked about, how do you prepare if somebody’s going to be on the hottie seat, how do they prepare?
I love the tip that you gave us. Have the person sitting on the hottie seat rank. Is this a one or five for urgency as important needing to resolve that question. We went through some of the mistakes. We talked about, how do you create a safe environment and the importance of making sure you have done a thorough job as a facilitator, as a coach. And I just want to thank you for sharing that vulnerable moment that you had where it didn’t go well, because I think we all could learn a lot from your situation and then the lesson learned from that. Amy, do you have any parting words for our listeners?
Amy: If you’re listening to this and want to come and watch hot seat coaching, come over. Find me on the Joyful Business Revolution. Say that you saw me on this podcast. If you would love to be a fly on the wall and be an observer, more than happy to have that experience available to you, because I do think just like messaging and marketing, as you’re building your business, it’s really hard to do in a silo. So if there’s those opportunities to get exposed, definitely take them. And I would love to offer anyone that would like to see how we handle hot seat coaching in one of our sessions to come check it out.
Melinda: Wow. Everybody listening in. This is one that you say yes to. Like, just don’t think about it. Just go say yes. There’s nothing more powerful than having the experience of it. Thank you for that, Amy. And thank you for listening to this episode of Just Between Coaches. A giant thank you to Amy for this incredible conversation and exploration on such a fun topic. You can find out more about her at joyfulbusinessrevolution.com. That’s joyfulbusinessrevolution.com. And in the show notes, you’ll find a link to her website and other great resources. Amy, thanks so much for coming to the show.
Amy: Thanks for having me. This was fun.
Melinda: I’m Melinda Cohan, and you’ve been listening to Just Between Coaches. Just Between Coaches is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Making It and Once Upon A Business. To catch the great episodes on Just Between Coaches, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed this show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It is the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. Thank you, and we’ll see you next time.