Why you should consider getting a coach and be a coach yourself

For the sake of this article let's opt for this definition of what coaching is:

Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to maximize their performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them. - John Whitmore

Contrary to being a teacher (teaching an instrument etc., teaching a subject matter to someone else) you are trying to understand the context a person is in without necessarily having more domain expertise.

I heard a lot of jokes throughout my career about coaching:

If you can't make it in life, become a (career/life) "coach"

The more senior I got in my professional life the more I realized though that I need help in certain areas that no book or workshop really could provide and I started a couple years ago to book my first coach.

The seniority/leadership trap - Issues we don't like talking about

Titles, your external image (like your LinkedIn Profile), societal expectations, and peer pressure drive us to signal an optimal picture of our skillset. These factors lead to inherent problems and behaviors that seem to amplify when becoming more senior in a field but they rarely tend to get talked about:

• "I cannot admit to not knowing": The problem with not admitting to shortcomings is that you rob yourself of a growth opportunity. You also prevent yourself from asking your peers that might know better for valuable feedback.
• It's lonely at the top: While it's relative to what you understand with "being at the top" the quote refers to that the higher up you are the fewer friends you will have. I interpret the quote as also naturally getting less and less feedback about what you do from your peers the more you climb the ladder, and this effect starts earlier than you think. This can create critical blindspots and unrealistic expectations.
• Impostor Syndrome : I don't deserve to be where I am. I'm a Fraud. According to a synthesis done on 62 studies on the topic the syndrome affects between 9% - 82% of people depending on how you interpret the cut-off. While that's not a very helpful range it's safe to assume that it is a widespread issue in the professional world that is linked to?anxiety, depression, and a higher likelihood of burnout.
• "I need to work more and more to keep up with expectations towards me": With more seniority come usually more responsibilities, less guidance from above, and consequently higher expectations from your surroundings but also yourself to perform. If you never learned how to properly manage your time, prioritize and delegate you might be tempted to just work more to get more done so you feel adequate.

All of these issues make your life unnecessarily more difficult to grow and often land people in situations where they can't progress anymore or even worse, they invite mental health issues in their wake.

How to overcome your own shortcomings

Good coaching the way I understand it offers an approachable solution to deal with those issues:

• Trust: Because everything is confidential between you and your coach, you need to be honest with yourself and your coach. Knowing where you simply suck at without having to fear that it has an impact on your performance review or social status can help ask the question "How can I overcome or manage this?". A good coach will also see where you might have blind spots that you missed and challenge you on them.
• Vision: Where am I going? What is my ultimate goal? The typical answer to this is not "I want to be a CEO" or "I want to make more than 200k a year", I more often heard things like "I want to be good at what I do, genuinely good.", "I want to love my job, I'm so unhappy and stressed"
• Goal-Setting: Setting realistic, achievable intermediate goals is the way forward to reach your vision. You have to put in the work in areas you might not enjoy (hence you're not good in them) so success might be slow. But slow and steady wins the race.
• Come with a beginner's mind: We tend to have an impulse to impress our peers, especially when we are being challenged and no coach is perfect. While not every challenge from your coach will be perfect or bring you forward you certainly do not want to miss a chance to grow because it was more important for you to push back. Criticism is valuable from everyone, not just people who are above you on the career ladder.
• Learning how to fail and disappoint: You are responsible for your work-life balance and while you cannot control everything that is thrown at you - knowing how to strategically fail at things has been for me the biggest game-changer. No Time Management system will save you, it will only give you a temporary illusion of control. At some point, the fact that there is always more work than hours in a day will catch up. Great prioritization means removing things from your list entirely so you can execute what's important. A great book in this regard is 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman . A good coach can help you identify things that need eliminating.
• You don't have to be perfect to kick ass: We are all winging it to some degree. Instead of putting impossible standards on yourself focus on what you do well and manage your weaknesses. Good coaching helps focus on realistic expectations.

How to find a coach: You will be surprised how many people offer help if you just ask them, there's no certification needed for it, and websites like Mentoring-Club are a great source. Even though it's not necessary I suggest finding something with a similar background. If your first experience is not good, keep trying again.

Being a coach can be awesome

Initially, I got into coaching with people (mostly other product managers in tech) who asked me specifically for it because they saw posts I made on social media. I noticed relatively quickly that not my experience as a product manager was the biggest asset for them but my relative bluntness in calling things out and having an honest conversation with someone external.

Why I still prefer to coach other product managers rather than everyone: Being a product manager myself helped me to understand the daily issues a product manager is facing and how the machine runs, but I don't know more than any of them about the respective fields they work in.

The mindblowing part though for me was the things that coaching other pms gives me back:

• I slowly started to learn from an internal perspective about different industry sectors I never worked in, what their customers are dealing with, and their unique challenges. I broadened my domain knowledge by teaching others.
• I had to completely engage different about very basic concepts. Explaining those again to someone that's quite junior made theoretical gaps visible which I missed myself because I never encountered them. I had to reread some concepts/frameworks to give practical advice on them. This makes me a better teacher.
• I saw how other people are being managed by their leaders from a very honest perspective, what they do better than myself with my team, and where they fail. How it affects my coachees without any filter. This is a unique view that can broaden your own leadership skills.
• The conversations you have can go to a personal level, very quickly. Some people deal with serious mental health issues, like depression, anxiety, and so forth that you would never suspect. It's not talked about enough and it certainly made me more sensible about the topic. You never know what battles someone is fighting behind the curtain. Disclaimer: I don't advise a coach to take on the role of a therapist but encouraging others to seek additional specialized help can help someone consider it when they are ready.

Ultimately, seeing your coachee enter a call and tell you excitedly how they succeeded in something that you talked about is one of the most amazing experiences in my professional life. Seeing people grow with your help is nothing short of amazing and it also motivates me to keep growing and become a better version of myself.

How to become a coach yourself:

• Engage publicly in a discourse that you are passionate about and clearly state in your profile that you are open to coaching others and in which topics you feel confident.
• Register on the Mentoring Club as a Mentor / Coach. It's free so there is no pressure to perform from that angle.
• Don't wait because you think you're not good enough to coach others. Listening, challenging, and offering an honest perspective is often the most important thing. The worst that can happen is a learning experience that it's not for you (yet). Put yourself out there.
• Offer to coach people at work on topics you are passionate about.
• If you feel there's not a good fit between you and a coachee, end it quickly and move on.
• You will know when to charge for your services. It helps to check how other coaches are doing it, but usually when you have to start declining people because your calendar implodes is a good time. I usually have between 4 and 5 coachees at the same time which I see individually every 3 to 5 weeks for an hour-long call. It doesn't need to be a full-time profession.

In Summary...

I hope the above words convinced you to consider looking for a coach if you have never done it before or to even try coaching yourself. Becoming the best version of yourself or helping someone else to grow is an incredibly fulfilling thing and I wouldn't trade it for anything.