As health coaches, we cannot always expect each of our clients to maintain a consistent level of motivation, no matter how great our support. While it’s part of our job to be optimistic, unreasonable expectations can be dangerous.
Personal circumstances can change at any given moment, and can have positive or negative impacts on lifestyle behavior. As health coaches it is our mission to develop a motivational environment in which an individual client will feel the inner drive to make healthy lifestyle choices.
Unfortunately this goal is rarely achieved consistently with everyone, not because health professionals don't want to intervene and assist, but rather most often do not have the time or resources to effectively achieve this task.
Throughout the professional relationship of a client and a health coach it is critical that open communication is available. This key component allows professionals to offer assistance and feedback that will help move individuals in a positive direction due to faltering motivation.
How does a health coach keep tabs on a large list of clients without working 24/7? Naturally we expect our clients to meet us halfway and provide updated information on their current status and behaviors.
Unfortunately, we know that gathering information this way, in our rare opportunities to interact directly with each client, gives us inaccurate and incomplete information with which to work. This process is also extremely time-consuming, and therefore is neither efficient nor effective.
I joined this team (the Nudge Team) to solve these health coaching challenges - to develop a product that can be easily implemented to give health professionals quick and accurate data to identify those individuals who have stopped the positive momentum due to motivational changes.
The platform is designed to offer actionable client insight at a quick glance allowing identification of individuals who are out of balance in their lifestyle.
Moreover, the health professional can simply select the individuals who fall in that category and look deeper into the reasons behind the imbalance.
It is at this point that the health professional can support to the client in need by sending individualized positive and motivational feedback within a secure, HIPAA-compliant messaging tool, right within the Nudge Coach platform itself.
It is common for individuals to lose their motivation over time. It is, however incumbent upon the health professional to address this issue and respond in a way that will stop this negative cycle from repeating.
It is the job of the health professional to find a way to quickly identify at-risk individuals, decide what feedback is individually specific to them, and quickly and simply get that information to them so they can immediately improve their chances for long-term success.
These are the challenges we face in our profession, and this is why we look for any way we can to arm ourselves with the tools that enable us to help more people, with better feedback. Technologies like Nudge Coach can help each of us to motivate more people to live healthier, and that's an outcome that's good for everyone.
