What do you do if you're a coaching leader trying to balance time for continuing education?

As you grow in your career, responsibilities also grow with it. There comes the ability to prioritise the tasks. Prioritising the tasks helps us manage and find time for the ultra important things first.

Be ruthless about prioritizing. Start by deciding what is your area of focus. Is there a particular coaching model that you would like to use in your practice or introduce in your organization? Is it a new certification/accreditation? Is it perhaps something peripheral to coaching (e.g. business development, stakeholder management)? Pick your area of focus and get it done.

Prioritize learning goals: Identify your key areas for development and focus your continuing education efforts on those areas to make the most of your time.

Delegation of every second is important. Once you start delegating your time to your tasks, and have an assessment of the time utilised to finish a particular task with the allotted time then you will be able to see the gaps and will be able to use your time wisely.

Blocking time for learning is important but if you are not intentional about what to do with these blockers you will simply spend them answering emails. Block the time and decide exactly what you are going to do with that time.

Schedule Wisely: Set aside specific blocks of time in your schedule for continuing education activities, just like you would for any other important task.Commit to your learning goals and hold yourself accountable for making progress, even when other demands compete for your time.

Some more ideas would be to ask AI/ChatGPT to summarize something for you, or study a book through a summary service like GetAbstract.

It is very important to maintain appropriate boundaries in coaching relationships. When you are viewed as a trusted source of support and advice, some team members will over-rely on you. Make sure to communicate that when you delegate a task to someone, you are truly trusting the judgment of that person to get the job done. For larger projects, identify milestones for check-ins with you for review and advice on next steps. Make sure your team knows that you trust them and expect them to get to that milestone without overly involving you as the leader. Set clear expectations for the task, ask them what they need at the beginning, and offer your assistance if they hit roadblocks. Then expect them to get the work done and hold them to it.

Sometimes, it becomes easy to learn a skill if you have a mentor in your life. So, always be ready to take help of someone who is already experienced in that particular field or can guide you or train you. Just like, reading someone's biography helps us to learn from their mistakes and failures, the same strategy is applicable when we make someone our mentor or seek help from an experienced person.

Look for opportunities to integrate learning into your daily activities, such as listening to podcasts or audiobooks during your commute or while exercising.

Consider joining a monthly “mastermind” group with other leadership coaches. This is going to help you associate with other high-performing leadership coaches, keeping your own skills and knowledge fresh. Ensure everyone commits to these meetings and refuses to move them schedule over them outside of emergencies. There needs to be equal buy-in and peer accountability. “Dont be the smartest one in the room.” Being around others who are highly skilled and intelligent will afford you continued growth.

You are a leader, so you need to lead by example. Your team will appreciate and will aspire to mirror your continuous development mindset.