What Coaching Does for Me
TL;DR: I share here my personal experiences with being coached and how coaching has helped me personally. I explore what coaching can do for you, how it happens and how it feels to be coached.
I thought I would start off the year and get back to writing by sharing what my experience and journey through coaching has been like for me. I am officially outing my coaching practice this week, which is quite a vulnerable space for me, for many reasons. But I realized that for people new to this space, it might help to know how coaching has and continues to impact my life in hopes that it helps you understand what this truly is.
There are a lot of descriptors out there about how coaching is not therapy and is focused on the future, rather than the past, etc. And on this page, I explain the process itself, in detail. But it's hard to express the benefits without making it personal so I will share how this has been transformative for me.
My upbringing circumstances have made me very resourceful and resilient. While that's helped me grow immensely as a professional and has exposed me to many incredible experiences, it also makes me somewhat of a loner and I often try to address my problems alone.
My exposure to professional coaching outside of my career, which was focused on teams and organizational coaching, started when a friend and colleague was going through his own coaching certification journey and became my coach. I then started my own certification journey where I partnered with the most incredible mentor coach.
What exactly does coaching do for you?
For me personally, it provides a space for me to explore things that are important to me. Sometimes it's something that I am experiencing in the moment, like "I am feeling anxiety over presenting to this group of executives". Or it can be something that presents an ongoing challenge that I want to start looking at more deeply - "I continuously say Yes to people even when I don't want to do something and it's now making me feel run down".
What happens during coaching in both of these situations? I would typically just muscle through both of these situations and for the first one, end up shaming myself for doing a poor job and the second one, just keep on trying to please others at the expense of my own wellbeing and health.
But in coaching, I am offered the space and time to explore what is happening. And it can take many forms - maybe we explore what is making me feel anxious about presenting. Is it the people, the presenting, feeling unprepared, or something else that is causing this angst? In an amazing end to that story, I was able to realize that my fear was that I would be judged as incompetent but there was so much evidence to the contrary. With that self-reflection and gentle prompting, I've been able to move confidently forward and rarely get nervous now when presenting. By all standards, that is an enormous achievement.
In both of these situations, I did all the self-work. No one can make me feel less anxious. I had to look at myself to uncover what was happening to me that kept making me feel incompetent at times and unworthy at others. But we rarely get there alone and coaching helped me step into the space where I could ask those questions safely and nudge me toward healing.
How does that happen?
The qualities and behaviors that coaches possess to help you uncover insights that lead to action are heavily practiced by quality coaches. Here are just a few:
Coaches are compassionate and empathetic. Many coaches have experienced similar situations and can directly empathize with you. But really good coaches, don't have to have a similar history to empathize. Neither of my coaches can relate to my history at all but both showed enormous compassion and empathy for me. They did not question why I felt the way I did, they did not challenge my perceptions. As a minority and a female coming of age in the 80s and 90s, I am well accustomed to people negating my experiences or explaining to me their account of what happened and how I should feel. Without ever stepping foot in my shoes, they showed empathy and compassion and created a human connection for me that made it safe for me to share my experience.
Coaches create a trusting and safe space. No judgment. Let's face it, it's amazingly difficult if not close to impossible to support your friends and family without some judgement when you are close to the situation. Even if it's for all the best intentions - we want to protect those we care about, we want to help them out of a situation. But sometimes, that is not what we need. We need someone who can remain objective and not always look at our side of things. A coach creates a judgment-free zone where we can explore things through our own lens and not the lens of others, who are trying to help but are too connected to the outcome to be unbiased.
Coaches empower you toward personal growth. As part of our coaching sessions, I was prompted to think about how things could be different for me (that's why we are talking about this, isn't it? We want something to change!). What was in my power to change the situation? What could I do differently? Or specifically - what would support me to feel more confident in presenting?
Coaches help you uncover what's beneath the surface. What I love most about coaching is that it creates the space for us to go deeper. For many years, I've just suffered through public speaking and presenting. I literally become a giant ball of mush, then powered through the event and beat myself up after. I manage to get praise and positive feedback, but focus on the one word I said that didn't sound right. My issue was definitely not my presentation skills, nor the lack of expertise. My issues were much deeper than that and coaching allowed me to explore that more deeply and pulled me out of the cycle of extreme self-criticism when I present (which is often, by the way). We went a little deeper than fear of public speaking or speaking in front of executives to delving into my own feelings of self-worth, and objectively looking at evidence of what was really happening rather than the stories I was telling myself.
Coaching creates a human connection. With all of our inventions and the pace of technology to support our ever-expanding needs, we are moving away from fulfilling our need for connection. When I experience coaching, even on Zoom or on the phone, I can feel this field that is created between the coach and myself and there is nothing else there. Just humans supporting each other. Some of us call it witnessing. We all desire to be witnessed in our full glory. We don't need someone to give us answers and a coach can't take away your suffering, but coaches do celebrate your humanity. How many times did you just need someone to listen? Nothing else. Just listen.
So what does it feel like to be coached?
Until I experienced it myself, I could not explain this. I am told that I make other people feel this way during the course of my work and interactions with people, and I have experienced this at times with some people in casual conversations. Coaching surfaces feelings that I normally ignore. Sometimes, it's inspiration or excitement about getting past a challenge. Sometimes, it's joy and elation because I am reminded that I am whole and have great things to contribute. Sometimes, it's sadness or anger that is the right expression at the time. Some of us don't know how to express anger and sometimes that needs to come out.
A coach creates a space structured to make it OK for you to be present with what you are experiencing. I come out of most sessions excited that I either have more clarity, a path forward, or at least a little opening to explore more. Coaching isn’t necessarily work that ends up with a task list. This isn't a productivity challenge, in fact, it may be that you need permission to do less. It really depends on what you need and the right coach can help you connect what you do with what you personally need.
So what about both of my situations?
There's no magic bullet for a lot of these deeply engrained behaviors, some that are steeped in negative childhood experiences or maladaptive repetition. But over time, I've become more confident in presenting and the negative chatter has decreased to almost none. As for my other cited challenge, it's most definitely a work in progress for this people-pleaser. But I have managed to clear my calendar some and become more discerning about where I spend my time. And that is truly progress for me.
Feel free to comment below or ask questions. I thought it would be good to share what it feels like to be coached as we start the year and look for the things that are most meaningful and impactful for us. Would love to hear your thoughts.
