Hello Honorable Samurai,
If you’re on this page, it’s because you want to know some of the best practices and tips for how to get the most out of the Dojo.
First off, just coming to this page speaks volumes about the way you are going to show up for this experience. And yet, reading these tips is not enough. If we could offer you only one tip for the Dojo, it would be to do more than just read or study these ideas, but to experiment and practice with them. As with all things in the Dojo, your weapons are only as powerful as your experience wielding them.
Which is why before we dive into our key Samurai Stratagems, let’s set some context and share some distinctions:
- Every sword isn’t for every Samurai – Some of these ideas may apply to you, some of them might not. For each tip, ask yourself if it feels relevant and adjust accordingly. If one tip seems scary or hard, notice why that is for you. If one tip addresses something you feel you don’t need to worry about notice that as well. Often it’s the places of our greatest fear and greatest confidence that hold the most gold.
- Don’t overfill your cup – Feel into when you need these tips and when you don’t. Trying to apply every strategy on this page at once will mute their effect. Instead use the ones that call to you and return here throughout the Dojo to see if there’s anything else that applies. If you listen to yourself, you’ll know which practice to take on at each moment.
- A wise eye can see much, but not all – These tips are based upon what we’ve seen work so far in the Dojo, but every group is different and every Samurai is unique. If your instincts tell you something else is going on listen to them and/or ask for some support. We did our best to include what we thought would be helpful, but you are teaching us as we are teaching you.
Now that we’ve set those ground rules, here are some of the stratagems we’ve found most useful in the past:
Take Responsibility for Your Experience
Sometimes Samurai get a few weeks into the Dojo and they realize they aren’t getting what they want. They thought there would be more structure or more flow. They thought we would talk more about enrollment or deep coaching or unicorns or something else. They didn’t realize we’d be going SO DEEP. But instead of speaking up and expressing what they want, they hold this in. Some have only mentioned their discomfort halfway through or only after they send us an email telling us they want to quit. While we’ve been able to support these Samurai in getting back on track, we’ve found this isn’t the most powerful way to show up to this experience.
Instead of suffering quietly, we invite you to take responsibility for your experience. If you want more from your experience, ask for it. If you want more support, ask for it. If you want us to send you caviar and a coaching love poem, ask for it. We may not always say yes, others may not respond in the way you want, but as Toku’s father used to say, “You’ve got to A-S-K to G-E-T.” The more you take responsibility for your experience both inside and outside of the Dojo, the more you’ll get out of this experience and your life as a whole.
Make Powerful Requests
This tip goes hand in hand with the previous tip. If you want something, ask for it POWERFULLY. Don’t just mention off hand that something would be nice. Enroll your sparring partner, fellow Samurai, or your Sensei into the vision of what you want. Don’t complain angrily that people aren’t responding to your posts, enroll us in responding. Don’t just ask for some support from your Sensei – help us see how supporting you will support the entire Dojo. If you can learn to ask powerfully for what you want, not only will you get a yes, you will feel better about asking even when you get a NO!!!
Connect with Your Fellow Samurai
We’ve found some people are very active, while others tend to lurk. Those who engage and connect with us as well as the other members tend to get more out of their experience. The best coaches we know find a way to be impacted by everyone around them. They see teachers everywhere and find a way to extract wisdom from every interaction. Whether you’ve got 5 years of experience more than someone else or 5 years less, take the time to connect with each other. You never know what conversation will have a lasting effect on the way you serve others as well as yourself.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
Throughout the Dojo we will share some frameworks, games, and practices we’ve found are super helpful for deepening your work as a coach. But trying these out in our Dojo calls is not enough. If you want to get the most out of the things you learn in the Dojo, go out and practice them. Some groups encourage you to spend time with practices and master them before you share them with others – in the Dojo we encourage you to do the opposite.
Toku is especially notorious for taking a class or reading a book and then using what he learned with his clients the next day. He also is constantly experimenting with form and flow to come up with totally innovative ways to lead his clients. Don’t wait until you feel “ready” to try out what you learned in the Dojo, just go out and try it. Sure you’ll make some mistakes, but you’ll also learn so much more than if you kept these ideas and concepts to yourself.
Experiment!!!!
While we’ve developed the tools in the Dojo from our experience as master coaches and as Dojo Sensei, these aren’t finely tuned instruments you need to worry about breaking. We find that there’s value in playing with both sticking to the form as we give it as well as changing the form completely. So while we love when you use what you learn step by step, we also want to encourage you to adapt, change, combine, remix, mashup, or modify what you learn here. And then bring back what you discovered to the Dojo so that your experience can benefit everyone else.
Teach It
Derek Sivers once wrote an article about the idea that the best time to teach something is right after you learn it. The reason is that as soon as you learn something, the process of learning is fresh in your mind, and the further you move away from it the harder it is to explain it to others. In addition, teaching what you learn to others is one of the best ways to identify gaps in your knowledge and solidify all the concepts you’ve recently gained. We hope that you will share what you learned here with your clients, colleagues, and fellow coaches. Our only request is that you honor where these ideas came from and give credit where it is due. This isn’t about making us feel good, but instead about practicing the flow of energy and sharing how many others influence what we create.
Don’t Fire Hose It
There will be a lot of things flying at you during your Dojo experience. We do our best to share with you all of our knowledge, experience, wisdom, and perspective. We do this because we are DEEPLY passionate about the craft of coaching. So much so that sometimes we can go a little overboard with our enthusiasm. If you find yourself being overwhelmed do the following:
- Take a deep breath – if you’ve stopped breathing, you’ve probably stopped learning.
- Ask us to slow down – especially if we’re on a call and you stop integrating what you’ve learned.
- Focus on the edge of where you’re at – most of our growth happens at the edge of our experience and knowledge not far, far beyond it. If you find yourself focusing on where other coaches are at or wishing you were further along, remember what our friend and mentor Rich Litvin says, “Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.”
Embracing “Mistakes”
As we grow as coaches, often the most powerful lessons we learn are the most painful. It can be easy to get down on yourself when we learn these lessons because it can feel like we’re failing. When Toku was first was practicing inviting people into coaching conversations, a few of his friends said “no” and actually felt a little off put by how he asked. At first he felt really bad about this, but then he went back and talked to them so he could understand what he did. He learned more from these two “screw ups” than he ever did from all the conversations that went well.
As you go through the Dojo, remember that if you don’t do a good job in a session or you don’t ask the most powerful question, there is a lot to be learned in these cases… IF you’re willing to embrace the mistakes and extract the learning from them.
Beginner’s Mindset
There is a saying from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind that goes like this: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” The reason for this is that the ‘expert’ knows how things should be. They have an idea of what great coaching is, they have their techniques, they have beliefs that have hardened around years of practice. But for a beginner anything is possible.
When Toku built a 6 figure coaching business in 18 months, he did so because no one told him it was supposed to take longer. This is the power of the beginners mind.
As you seek to become masters of your craft, it’s important that you also make space to have a beginners mind about what you do. Slow down and see: “What if my ideas are wrong here? What if I do the opposite of what I normally consider the ‘right’ way? What if every assumption I have about coaching and depth is wrong? What if it’s deeper if I get them to laugh? What if I start with a silly context instead of a powerful one? What if what if what if?”
If you come from this mindset you will be more impacted by every other coach in the Dojo. You will learn from everyone you meet, and you will become a master far more whole than if you simply tried to rarify your expertise.