When is a Coach not a Coach? When they're a client.

Because coaches are coaches who do lots of coaching, they don’t need coaching from other coaches, right?

OK, I know, I know, never start a sentence with because, in this case however, I’ll compromise my grammatical standards for the greater good.

You could assume (rightly or wrongly) that as coaches, with our training, our knowledge, our understanding and our experience of helping others, we would have our s*%t together when it comes to making changes in our own lives.

I absolutely believe that in a lot of cases, that is 100% true, not just for coaches; anyone can make change in their lives of their own volition and under their own steam, if I didn’t believe in that, I wouldn’t be a very good coach.

However, the decision to leave the security and routine of full time employment and start out on my own as a self-employed coach was one that I needed to work through over time with an objective thinking partner; in this case another coach.

As this was one of the biggest life decisions I’ve ever made, I needed to ensure that I approached it in the best way possible. For me that meant looking at the benefits and risks, the different ways I could approach the decision, the driving purpose for making it, playing Devil’s advocate, clearing out the self limiting thinking and articulating what I wanted in the future. Ultimately, I worked with my coach to get to a point where I could make the decision, own it and be happy with it.

As a coach, I do self-coach and often to great effect. However, as I have such a wicked external frame of reference, taking time to verbalise my thoughts; to rattle them around out loud and have an objective voice challenge my thinking, is hugely useful.

Interestingly, when I hear my internal thoughts out loud, it’s like someone else is saying them; they make more sense and provide more clarity and that often makes me pay more attention to them. This is where my ever-present external reference preference creeps in, but in this scenario, it adds real value.

It’s not to say that my coach as the actual ‘external voice’ made suggestions or gave me guidance; all of the thinking, exploration and ideation was my own. Just having the time and space to say what I’d been thinking, but out loud, is something I found and continue to find tremendously helpful.

It’s also not to say that I only pay attention to what my mouth is saying out loud either, my gut instinct also plays a large role and often feeds into what my heart and head are trying to say too. Again, getting all these thoughts and feelings articulated is really what helps me push my thinking along towards action.

Paradoxically though, I don’t have an audible preference. It’s not the hearing it out loud that helps, it’s the externalizing my thinking that is the key. When my thoughts and feelings are released into the coaching space, then watch out, as for me that’s when the magic happens! 

I’m able to harness my visual preference and start joining things up. For anyone who has coached me before, they’ll testify to the fact that I spend a lot of time looking around as I make connections, explore new thoughts as they zing into my consciousness, pause to ponder and gradually start marshalling my thoughts and formulating a plan. It's like I'm building some sort of star map or constellation of my thinking as it's being though. For any coach trying build rapport through maintaining eye contact with me, it must be quite the challenge!

So, what does all this mean? Well, the point I’m making is about the value I find in working with a coach; time, space, no judgement, tactical provocation and purposeful enquiry to name but a few of the key elements present. 

Through working in a formally contracted coaching relationship as well as shorter ad hoc sessions at co-coaching practice group I attend, I have worked through and progressed my thinking on my purpose as a coach, narrowing down my area of interest, my social media reservations and my pricing structures amongst a number of other subjects.

Ultimately, I’ve done some of my best thinking when working with a coach, despite being an experienced coach myself.

So, when you wish to enact some change in your life, or you just want to rattle something around for a while, and doing it solo has gotten you far, but you wish to take it further; what value could you get from being accompanied and witnessed by another whilst doing so?

Tom – Kellenva Coaching