Here’s how I transitioned from coached to coach

This past fall, after two years of working together, my professional coach told me she thought it was about time we wind down our official coaching sessions.

Next to working with her in the first place, this recommendation kicked off one of the most remarkable growth periods—professional or personal—of my life.

When we started working together in the fall of 2021, I felt a frustrating gap between where I was in terms of my work and impact and where I wanted to be. I felt I’d stalled after an inspired run in the 2010s, and I had the distinct sense that I needed to activate something within myself to get motoring again.

I described this to my coach during our first meeting as searching for my ruby red slippers. Like Dorothy in The Wiz(ard of Oz), I possessed the solution but needed to embark on a journey of discovery to figure out how to activate it.

That’s where she came in. In the time we worked together, my coach did the deep and empathetic listening, and asked the thoughtful and powerful questions, that helped me define for myself the person I wanted to be and take decisive steps toward self-actualization. She helped me quiet the judge in my head and identify and break free from limiting narratives. When I occasionally asked for it, she also shared her ace professional advice.

Yet I still faced challenges for which her coaching uncovered paths forward that I hadn’t arrived at on my own. When she told me, “I think I’ve taken you about as far as you can go at this stage” in an official coaching capacity, I trusted her judgment—she has never steered me wrong—but I was still curious about how I’d solve the types of problems for which I’d relied on her guidance.

Of course, my coach knew exactly what she was doing, and the wisdom of her timing has become clearer by the day in the four months since that conversation. (She also assured me that she wasn’t going anywhere. I can still reach out to her as a mentor and friend.)

I’ve since met and bonded with a new coach who is sharp, wise, and knowledgeable in her own way. That new coach is me, and these are the steps I took to develop my self-coaching skills:

1. ?? Embraced a break from my coaching schedule. I’d just emerged from a long period of intensive coaching (sessions with my Media Transformation Challenge Program coach, the awesome Danyelle White , were also winding down) and thought a brief recess was in order. I dove back into the flow of life while allowing myself to reflect, organically, on the progress I’d made. Relaxing my active coaching routine while staying mindful of what I’d learned allowed rich insights to surface.

2. ?? Kicked off a self-guided coaching regimen. Informed by my experience with my coach, I began a schedule of written reflections, regular self-coaching sessions, and coaching challenges in early January. I have those sessions during my weekly reviews on Fridays, when I reflect on the past week and plan my week to come. They’re on my calendar and I am as committed to them as I was to showing up for sessions with my coach.

3. ?? Identify moments to employ self-coaching insights. I do so prolifically, equipped with objectives defined by my weekly self-coaching sessions. It’s a habit that moves coaching and its benefits out of sessions, notebooks, and Google Docs and infuses them into daily life. It fuels an ability to learn from life—all of it—and accelerates the progress I make during the “official” time I spend coaching myself. I often whip out my phone and jot notes about these realizations on the go. My husband, who is my unofficial coaching adjunct, gets an earful of these breakthroughs.

Among other outcomes, this work has resulted in me freeing myself to work towards a more expansive and daring vision of the impact that our company, Angle Content & Strategy, can achieve. And there have been smaller tactical wins, like overcoming my longtime reticence to share experiences and insights in a public forum. As I’ve alluded to previously, the fact that I'm publishing these posts at all is the result of self-coaching assignments two months in the making.

My coach knew I was ready to keep making progress on my personal development goals without a formalized coaching relationship, and she was right. This period has made me sharper, wiser, braver, more strategic, and more fulfilled. I still miss our official sessions, but I now see that graduating from this phase of her advising was necessary.

The kicker: The progress I’ve made since our last session has called exciting new opportunities and challenges into my life. While self-coaching has been fruitful, I foresee myself being well-served by another round of professional coaching in the near future as I rise to these higher-level challenges, especially in terms of bringing more collaborators into my vision for Angle and inviting them to co-create it with us.

So: I’m hoping that Corinna Calhoun has room on her calendar this fall ???? because I’ll be ready and eager to sit in the coachee’s chair again.

?? I know a lot of lifelong learners, including people who do some form of coaching or other development. These are transformative experiences at their best, and the transformation doesn’t need to stop when the experience ends. Intentional self-coaching is a way we can maintain momentum, integrate what we’ve learned, extend our development, and own our progress.

? Coaching is one of the best investments I have ever made. If you’d like to learn more about my experience and how you can maximize your coaching experience, I’m happy to trade messages or chat live—just inbox me.