Coach first

Or, how I learned to stop coaching to be able to love coaching.

The challenge when working with a client is to build them up so they get the most of from the work we are doing, and it took a personal mental shift to realise why.

I am not really here to build anything.

Coaching can be a strange space to work, because you enter it wanting to help everyone you meet. You have an intrinsic understanding that everyone is amazing and full of huge potential. You want to help them find it and revel in that joy with them. It is intoxicating to have a moment and celebrate it with them, and as a coach we want it to see a huge thunderclap that will carry the client on, towards their future dreams and goals.

The reality is often very different, and as a coach it took me a little time to realise this. During the time when I was finding my feet as a coach, I could feel myself wanting to make it happen. Trying to ignite a spark and generally being disappointed. This was my failing, my misunderstanding of what I am there to do, but I could see all these amazing skills and energy within the person and just wanted to pull it out and show them. I was coaching for me, thinking that is what my clients needed. It was not.

I finally realised in my own thunderclap of reflection what I was doing.

Mid-session I could hear my inner thoughts wanting to highlight all the amazingness that my client had discussed, when I looked and was able to see them and the truth. They needed to find what I saw at their own pace, to find what I saw, in themselves through our work together. I needed to coach first. Everything else was to secondary to that. My purpose was not to tell them of their greatness but to help them rediscover it themselves.

This changed how I coach immediately, and although I still occasionally feel that urge, I know, looking at my client I need to be the coach first. The thunderclap may not come suddenly but build like waves on an incoming tide, which is the way it needs to be.