FHTH Ep #194 - 10 Reasons All Trial Lawyers Need A Coach

What’s the difference between coaching and therapy?

And does every trial lawyer really need a coach? (Yes. Yes, they do.)

I’m joined by lead H2H Mindset Coach Kevin in today’s podcast to give you 10 reasons why you (and every trial attorney) need a coach.

If you don’t think you have to listen to this episode because it doesn’t apply to you, then you definitely need to tune in.

♥️ Sari

“All trial lawyers need a coach. Athletes have coaches. Trial lawyers need them, too.”
rick friedman

EPISODE 194 TRANSCRIPTION

Sari de la Motte:

Welcome to another episode of From Hostage to Hero. Today we're talking about 10 Reasons All Trial Lawyers Need a Coach. And I brought Kevin de la Motte back, the lead mindset coach at H2H, also my husband, also your birthday today. Happy birthday.

Kevin de la Motte:

Happy birthday to me. Thank you.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, 45. He will always be younger than I am, and I will hold that against you.

Kevin de la Motte:

Yes, she will.

Sari de la Motte:

Kevin also, he coaches private clients, but he also coaches in our membership. Well, I guess doesn't call it membership anymore, we call it the H2H Playground.

Kevin de la Motte:

Yeah, Playground.

Sari de la Motte:

And we're going to talk about how y'all need a coach. In fact, it's so important that trial guru, Rick Friedman once said and gave me a quote, "All trial lawyers need a coach." He said, "Athletes have coaches, trial lawyers need them too." First, before we get going, quickly, what's the difference between coaching and therapy?

Kevin de la Motte:

Coaching is dealing with past, or sorry, therapy is dealing with past and healing, and coaching is dealing with a present focus. It's all about becoming a better observer of yourself so you can make better decisions and live the most fulfilling life possible. Present focus, coaching, some in the future, but every once in a while in the past, but really mainly present. Therapy is past and healing.

Sari de la Motte:

Yes, so something's broken and you need to heal it. It's not that we never heal things in coaching, but coaching is really a way to rewire your brain, that's how I look at it, where some things cannot be rewired, unless they're really looked at in-depth, and that's where therapy comes in.

Kevin de la Motte:

Most definitely.

Sari de la Motte:

All right. Number one reason why you need a coach, my trial lawyer friend, is to get your mind right. What do we mean by that and why is that so important?

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, it's the first piece that we work through in the Playground, and its mindset is, you need to get your mind right before you can be a lawyer, before you can be an attorney, before you can do this thing called Life. But especially you attorneys that are in such, lack of better way to say it, some really big shit most of the time. You're always, you're in the thick of it in a lot of big stuff, a lot of good stuff. But if your mind's not right, you get, Sari's talked about saboteur comes in, all these limiting beliefs, and then how are you showing up? How are you showing up with your client? How are you showing up in trial? How are you showing up in your day-to-day life when you have all of this shit in your head that's pulling you down, keeping you back from being the best version of yourself?

Sari de la Motte:

Fear being the big one.

Kevin de la Motte:

Oh yeah, big time.

Sari de la Motte:

Fear being the big one. In the H2H Playground we have twice a month where people can come and have sessions with you. It's group, it's not individual, but that even makes it better in my opinion, because people are like, "Oh my gosh, I'm not the only one." And we, as you said, mindset is a cornerstone of the H2H method, because we believe that you cannot do all the fun, cool things with content and delivery that we're teaching you if you don't have your mind. The question is, how does coaching get your mind right? And that brings us to number two reason why you need a coach is it helps you get out of your own way.

Kevin de la Motte:

Oh, yes.

Sari de la Motte:

What does that mean?

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, just like I was saying, I mean, think about when you're in front of a jury and the juror says something and all of a sudden you have a thought like, "Oh, that's going to kill my fucking case. This juror is going to kill my case. And I remember the last trial that juror that said a similar thing totally crushed everything, and I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do." And all the while you're breathing high and you're in front of the jury and you look like you're about to shit your pants. That's getting in your own way.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, shitting your pants would definitely get in the way. And trial. I talk a lot about how, and this is true of everybody, not just trial lawyers, that most of our suffering is self-created. And that we talk a lot in the membership, I keep saying the membership, in the H2H Playground is what we're talking now-

Kevin de la Motte:

Yeah, we have to change our dialogue or verbiage.

Sari de la Motte:

Exactly. Because it's so fun to play in the Playground now.

Kevin de la Motte:

It is.

Sari de la Motte:

But we talk a lot in there about how whatever you're feeling is based on a thought. If you do not want to be feeling that, you got to clean up your thoughts, right? Because thought creates emotion and emotion creates action, and your action gets you your result. We're all about getting results, but we reverse engineer it to go, "Okay, why are you getting that result?" And we come back to, "Oh, it's a thought. It's a shitty thought that you're thinking." And so there is true suffering that we have no control over about. But what we do have control over is how much unneeded and unnecessary suffering we create for ourselves by all the thought patterns that we're holding in our brain. And so coaching is a fantastic way to rewire your brain, because it helps you create new neuro pathways so that you can fucking get out of your way.

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, and it's interesting that you said thought clutter, because that's what we work through so much in coaching is that you have all these thoughts going around in your head. And our brains are constantly thinking all these different thoughts, but when there's a lot of this clutter of shit from saboteur, limiting belief, things that are really dragging you down, what we do in coaching is we pull all that stuff apart. We separate that, we look at it, we observe it, and then we can start making it so that we have clear thinking. That's a huge part of coaching.

Sari de la Motte:

Absolutely, absolutely. Which brings us to number three, which is the reason why you need a coach. It creates or helps you become a better observer of yourself. How does coaching do that, and why is that so important?

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, coaching does that because you can come into a coaching session and have an issue that you're working through, and you have somebody that's with you to articulate everything they're hearing, to shape the conversation in a way and point things out that you're not even noticing. And then it helps you, it trains you to start noticing better, observing better. Then when you go out into the world and that similar thing or other things start happening, you're able to observe it in real time. And that's what makes coaching so powerful is that you can start to dissect these things in real time and start getting your mind and getting your brain around the things in a proper way, in a more organized, clarified way.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, there's a couple reasons for that is because there's a skill that we use in coaching that we're trained to use, which is called articulating what's going on. Often when the client comes in and spews forth what they're thinking and feeling, the coach can then reflect back, "This is what I see." Now, the coaches aren't always right, but oftentimes they are when you're trained correctly. And then the client go, "Oh, wow." Because we just take what we're hearing as this observer and we say it back to the client and then they start to see it, and they start to now recognize their patterns. And when you recognize your patterns and you're a better observer of yourself, you make better decisions. And as we know, better decisions make better lives. The coach can also, once you have developed a relationship with a coach, they recognize your patterns and they can call you on that. Go, "Wait a minute, that's your," in my case, "black and white thinking, sorry." Or whatever it may be. And "Oh, yeah."

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, and that's what a coach does. A coach really focuses on your big agenda and what's going on in your life, your goals, your hangups, maybe patterns that are tripping you up. And we're able to be this observer that says, "Okay, remember this happened before. Or wait a minute. It's kind of like where it seems like we're steering off the wrong direction. I thought this was a particular goal you had and now you're talking about something else." We're there to be the witness, but also to be the organizer, to be the observer of what really matters to you, and remind you of that.

Sari de la Motte:

Yes, that's such a great point. And this is a great place to talk about how it's so different, and then therapy. You and I both have therapy, so we know the difference, but it's a much more collaborative-

Kevin de la Motte:

Very collaborative.

Sari de la Motte:

... very energizing. It's not just you're talking and then for 20 minutes, and then the therapist asks you a question and you talk somewhat, right? And you're really processing through all your stuff. It's very like, "Well, what if we did this? And how about that?" And it's very exciting to-

Kevin de la Motte:

..chasing residents and coaching. When you hear the client comes in and they're down and they're really trying to process through something that happened, and then as you hear their resonance, their energy, their excitement start to go up, you chase that and build it, build it, build it, build it. And then all of a sudden you're in this brainstorming, excited space. And that's our job. Our job is to really look for that and guide that, shape that, make that happen in a way that is the most fulfilling way for you.

Sari de la Motte:

Which brings us to number four. The fourth reason why you need a coach is the coach gives you clarity. So often we come in to a coaching session and we train our clients to come in with a topic, so they're thinking about what they want to talk about out. And they're like, "Oh, I'm going to bring this to coaching." And they come in many times in confusion or in stuckness. And so, coaching can offer what we call new perspective, a way of not looking at something before. Anything else you want to say about that?

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, yeah. I mean, they come into coaching and you can help them. You facilitate a process where they can start looking at things in a different way. It's called balance coaching. And I don't want to go all deep into it, but really what it is you're in this current perspective that's not serving you, and it's downright shitty. And we work towards looking at things from different angles, looking at different perspectives. And then you start finding a way to choose the perspective that serves you. And then it trains your brain and trains you that in your regular everyday life you can do this.

Sari de la Motte:

You have choice.

Kevin de la Motte:

You have choice. You can choose a different perspective.

Sari de la Motte:

Because that's the big one is a lot of people think, "I have to. I have to." And so this type of coaching where we offer you clarity and new perspectives really makes you see, "I'm not looking at this from all the different angles." And that I think is a huge benefit of coaching. It also will help with trial lawyering, because you can look at other things from different angles. You-

Kevin de la Motte:

Helps with storytelling too.

Sari de la Motte:

Absolutely. Number five, big picture thinking. This is huge. Coaching helps you not think small. When you're too close to you, you see things so myopically and so small, and coaching just widens that lens. Talk a little bit about that?

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, and it happens all the time. Client will come into a coaching session and they're just mired in so many details and frustrated. And I'll just say, "Let's pull back." And we'll work on looking at the bigger picture. And even when it comes to a case, when they're looking at all, they're trying the other side's case and they're looking at all the things that they're going to throw at them, the pullback is, "Okay, well, what are the real principles here? What's the reason why you took this case on in the first place?" Even maybe go as far back as, "Why did you even want to become an attorney?" But it helps you pull back and look at the big picture of your life, big picture of your cases, instead of being mired in those details, devil's in the details, saboteur's in the details too. And yes, you're looking through the life through a lens, this tiny little scope, rather than looking at the big picture, the full life.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, two clarifications there. Coaching is not consulting, so you're not talking about how to frame your case.

Kevin de la Motte:

No.

Sari de la Motte:

But where it does help is like you just said, what's the bigger thing here? What are you really trying to do? So that, for example, if someone is in the Playground, they can go through a session with you, whether they remember and they come back to why they're in the first place and why they took this case. And then they can go with Coach Jody in a case workshop and really be focused. That's why mindset is so big on that. The other clarification is-

Kevin de la Motte:

And that's why the Playground is the full package.

Sari de la Motte:

Absolutely. And that's why all of our things are focused on mindset first. It all starts with mindset.

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, it's threaded all the way throughout too.

Sari de la Motte:

You also use the word saboteur, which some of our listeners may not be familiar with. Some people who've been with me for a while definitely know what it means. But if you're new to us, the saboteur, we have several, many of us, is a collection of voices that we have created throughout our lives that are, their function is, keep us safe. But once they've fulfilled their function they tend to hang on. And then they continually try to prevent you from doing anything that may be risky. And they do that through normal... At first, they get sneaky, negative talk about why you shouldn't do A, B, C.

All right. Number six. I keep saying though, "This is the big one," but they're all big one. But number six, the reason why you should have a coach is fulfillment. To have fulfillment in your life. Why is this important, and how does coaching help with finding fulfillment in your life?

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, I mean, even as simple as when you're a trial attorney and not celebrating your wins-

Sari de la Motte:

We're getting to that in a minute, so don't go there.

Kevin de la Motte:

I'm sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. But so many clients come to me and they're like, "Okay, I want to work on limiting beliefs and I want to be a better trial attorney. I want to work on how I show up in court. I want to work on all these things. Let's do all this." And we start there. And generally we start looking at, "Okay, well let's look at the rest of your life. Let's look at how things are affected in your life as a whole." And we start looking at the way that their hobbies, the travel, we look at all these different places.

Sari de la Motte:

What hobbies and travel? They're not doing any of that.

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, that's the problem.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah.

Kevin de la Motte:

A lot of what's getting in your way is if you don't have a full, whole life and you're not a whole person, you're just a trial attorney, you don't have balance. Fulfillment is what brings that balance into your life. And you start fucking having fun again in trial.

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, it doesn't always have to be with trial though, is my point.

Kevin de la Motte:

No, yeah, and it doesn't, but-

Sari de la Motte:

But we tend to think, "Well, if this helps me in trial, then I'll do it." And what we're saying at H2H is, "Your whole life matters."

Kevin de la Motte:

Your whole life matters.

Sari de la Motte:

Trial lawyering is just a piece of the pie. We always talk about this. What is the most terrifying question that we can ask in a coaching session?

Kevin de la Motte:

What's your dream?

Sari de la Motte:

And people say, "That's not terrifying."

Kevin de la Motte:

Second most terrifying is, "What do you want?"

Sari de la Motte:

Exactly. I mean, we'll have people just freak out, "What do you mean my dream? What do you mean what I want? I can't have what I want." And we're like, "Ah, that's why you're in coaching." This whole piece, I think that's what makes H2H actually different is that, "Yeah, we're all about trial skills." And I mean, we train the most elite trial attorneys in the world. Yes, and they know their shit, and they're kicking arse at trial, but we want them to have awesome fucking lives.

Kevin de la Motte:

That's right.

Sari de la Motte:

You don't have to sacrifice one for the other.

Kevin de la Motte:

Nope.

Sari de la Motte:

And so this fulfillment coaching in coaching is huge.

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, and isn't it interesting that if we ask, what's your fear? Or what are your fears? Or what are your limiting beliefs? They can go off for an hour, but when it comes to what's your dreams, what do you want, what are your hopes? That's one that gets them pretty pissed off-

Sari de la Motte:

That being our listeners, so you, you gets pissed off.

Kevin de la Motte:

Exactly. And it's, yes, we can dive into our fears and we can work through that, but so much of what coaching is all about is really finding fulfillment in our lives so that we are a whole person, not just a trial attorney.

Sari de la Motte:

Number seven, accountability. Why is accountability so important? To have someone that's holding your agenda? I think when we say accountability, people will often come into coaching. And when we design in the first session, I'll say, "What do you think coaching is?" And I had one client say, "You tell me what to do, and if I don't do it, I get in trouble."

Kevin de la Motte:

Yeah, I've heard that a lot.

Sari de la Motte:

And so that's not what coaching is. Talk a little bit about what we mean by accountability?

Kevin de la Motte:

What we mean about accountability is that we are a witness to what is going on in the coaching session and what is going on in your life. When you say have we call it homework, or as a coach, you'll say, I have a request for homework. If you go out and you come back after two weeks and you haven't done it, you're not accountable to me, you're not in trouble, you're accountable to yourself.

Sari de la Motte:

That's right.

Kevin de la Motte:

Yes. And that's the big difference. But I'm there to witness and say, "Okay, well, what can we learn about?"

Sari de la Motte:

You said you wanted this.

Kevin de la Motte:

"You said you wanted this." We can learn just as much from not doing it as doing it.

Sari de la Motte:

That's right.

Kevin de la Motte:

And I'm not there to be mean teacher and say, "No, well, you didn't do that." No, no, no, it's all about learning.

Sari de la Motte:

Well, this is why I love proactive coaching so much, which is what you and I are both trained in and certified in. And our coaches at H2H, same thing is that they talk about how your number one job is to hold the client's agenda. It's not your agenda. It's not what you think is right for the client. And as you just said, sometimes the client doesn't know what the fuck they want. So, so much of coaching is figuring that out and then holding that agenda for them. It's your dream. What do you want your life to be like? And getting them to even talk about that or recognize it couldn't happen, and then holding them to that. If they change their mind, we change our mind too.

Kevin de la Motte:

That's true.

Sari de la Motte:

Not about us.

Kevin de la Motte:

But we're also there to be like, "Hey, hey, hey, wait a minute. You said this is what you really wanted and now you're going this direction." Is this saboteur motivated? What's going on here? Let's talk about that. And it could change their mind. And then there's times where it is being motivated by the saboteur, but I'm the witness to point that out.

Sari de la Motte:

That's right, that's right. Number eight, I think is also huge. The reason why you need a coach is for support. We talk about, at least in proactive coaching, how there isn't a top-down model. It's a collaborative thing, it's coactive, where you and I come together and we create this third thing and we empower this third thing, which is the relationship between us, between coach and client. And that relationship, and I always say this in my design sessions, and I think it really resonates with people, is functions as a charging station of sorts. You don't get your charge or your support from me, you get from this relationship that we both create together. And so you can view your coaching sessions as a place to come in and recharge. You've had this experience many times. I've had this experience many times where people will arrive at a coaching session and they're just at the bottom. They're just hit bottom. They're just like, "Ugh, my day, my life." And they will leave 50 minutes later like, "Oh my God, every-

Kevin de la Motte:

"Oh my God, I'm going to write that book."

Sari de la Motte:

Yeah, exactly. And so talk about how important that support is, especially for trial lawyers?

Kevin de la Motte:

One of the things that us as humans, we may not say that we need it, but we want to be seen. Being seen and heard is huge. It's so important. And when you have another person to see you, hear you and help you along the way to find or be on track of the things that you worked together with in this third thing that's the coaching session, it is just, I mean, it's downright magical. It's so important. And just being the witness, just being the witness. There are times where I will spend in a coaching session almost half the session being the witness and just giving them a chance to decompress and air it out.

Sari de la Motte:

It's so huge that I would consider my coach one of the most important people in my life.

Kevin de la Motte:

Me too.

Sari de la Motte:

And it's not a dependency. It's because we create this thing together, and it's magic on that phone call every time. Number nine is, it allows you to process your losses. And I don't just mean trial, I mean deaths. I mean things that didn't work out, failures, mistakes. It's really a place that's safe for you to talk about that. We're going to have a podcast coming up on trial trauma. We'll talk about loss in a much bigger way, but coaching is really a place for talking about that. And you do that a lot with your clients.

Kevin de la Motte:

I do. And just to be clear, it's not therapy, it's process coaching. So, I'm the witness and I'm listening and I'm guiding you so that you can be with that. And we're not doing the past and the therapy healing stuff, but what makes this so therapeutic is that you're not just pushing through your life. You're not just tamping things down. And I'm there to listen and to guide you through this process that is very, very hard that you went through. Just recently I had a client and we spent most of the session processing through, her dog died, and it was really, really hard on her. It's like 14 years you have a pet, like a family member. So we processed through that. And then from that point, she was able to open up. And usually how it works in coaching is if you're processing through a deep emotion, a loss, and you get to a certain point, there's a dip, a rise, and then all of a sudden there's resonance. The reason why is because you were able to expel that thing and there's new resources that open up all of a sudden.

Sari de la Motte:

And I was going to say travelers, but I'm just going to say people in general are not good at that. We don't want to feel our emotions. Again, we're going to talk a lot about this in the trial trauma podcast. We don't want to feel our emotions, so we shove them down, but they come out.

Kevin de la Motte:

They do.

Sari de la Motte:

And so, coaching is a place to process through it so that you can move through it and get on with your life.

Kevin de la Motte:

That's right.

Sari de la Motte:

It's a fantastic way to learn how to be emotionally intelligent-

Kevin de la Motte:

Very much so.

Sari de la Motte:

... quite frankly. Number 10 is the opposite, which is, coaching is a way to help you celebrate your wins. Which we do not do enough in trial lawyering, for sure, but in life. Someone along the line just came by and said, "You're being too arrogant or too vain to celebrate your loss or your wins." But why is that such a big deal to celebrate your wins?

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, I hear it all the time from clients where it's like, "Yeah, I won. We're due at a trial debrief and yeah, I won."

Sari de la Motte:

Onto the next thing.

Kevin de la Motte:

"Onto the next thing. Let's onto the next thing." And then even they'll even say things that they've read, or a mentor will say, "Yeah, 24 hours, I spent a little time of celebrating and it's time to move on. Next case." And the thing is that if you just move on, you don't celebrate, you don't take a time to really soak that in, you're not living your fucking life. You're not ever taking a chance to be with your wins, even be with your losses, but we're talking about wins right now. Celebrating is you actually being present in your own fucking life.

Sari de la Motte:

That's right. Again, because it goes back to that whole thing of, this is what this trial lawyer is about. It's just hard and it's just stressful, and we're constantly telling our clients it does not have to be that way. There is fulfillment that can be had, and part of that fulfillment is recognizing the great moments and celebrating them. Same with my clients. I have to stop them and go, "Wait a minute. What you just said is huge. Let's just like be with that for a minute."

Kevin de la Motte:

Well, and so many times a client will definitely recollect a loss and they'll bring that into trial with them, or it'll come up in a coaching session. But you mark that one, but you don't mark something that you're celebrating. So, you're not bringing any of that into trial, you're only bringing the shit that's going to bring you down.

Sari de la Motte:

We hope that we have convinced you to hire a coach, but if you are not convinced and or are unable to afford a coach, then I'm going to invite you to join the H2H Playground, because in the Playground, Coach K is in there twice a month. We also have two other coaches in there. You're going to be getting mindset training and all of the coaching that we just talked about. Yes, it will be in a group format, but you will still get what you desperately need as a trial attorney. And then if you want to hire a coach, you can definitely hire one of our coaches in H2H. If you are not going to join the H2H Playground, you can still reach out to us and hire one of our coaches or get some recommendations. Again, I recommend CTI or Co-Active coaches, not because I think everyone else sucks, but because I know that CTI, what they do and how they are trained, because we are both trained in that and certified.

And so I know that I can strongly suggest and refer CTI coach to you. If you need help finding a coach, contact us. We can share one of our coaches or other coaches. But you will get coaching in the H2H Playground. And by the way, many people are in the Playground and also have a coach. Because they want more coaching. Because once you have coaching, you'll never not have coaching. It is that powerful.

Kevin de la Motte:

Yes.

Sari de la Motte:

The Playground is going to be opening next week, so make sure that you get on the waitlist at sariswears.com/play. We'll talk soon.

Join me next week for an exclusive live training, The 3 Key Areas You MUST Master to Win at Trial. You must register to attend, and you can do so at sariswears.com/mastery. I would love to have you in the audience at this training. It's never before seen content from me, so go sign up now.

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