Becoming an outstanding coach in 2020
I want to share something one of my teachers said about being an outstanding coach.
A couple of years into learning about coaching and having completed a lot of coach training, I knew that I wanted to be a great coach (whatever that was). I wondered how I could improve, what I should learn and study or what training courses I should attend.
So, when my teacher said, “There’s one thing that separates good coaches from outstanding coaches,” he immediately had my attention.
I wondered what it was. Great rapport building skills? Great questioning skills? Knowledge of leadership and business? A huge toolbox of different techniques and approaches?
Whatever it was I knew that I would learn it and would make sure I practiced and practiced.
I listened intently with pen in hand, “The thing I see that separates good coaches from outstanding coaches is having done the necessary work on themselves.”
‘Doing the necessary work on themselves’? What does that mean? I’m not even sure that’s relevant for me. I don’t need to do work on myself. Anyway, one of the fundamentals of coaching is that the coach doesn’t need to know lots about the subject matter or the content of a client’s challenge in order to help. Great coaching is about process not content.
But, my teacher was suggesting that coaches working on themselves was about more than dealing with unresolved stuff and understanding different challenges, he was asserting that outstanding coaches have experienced the PROCESS of working through things on a personal level (regardless of what the content might be) and therefore have a ‘felt’ sense of doing the work. This gives them a deeper conviction in the process.
Over the last 15 years I’ve worked with a number of coaches and my teacher was absolutely right, being coached has had a huge impact on my own coaching practice. But, I think it’s something coaches rarely do and it’s the coaching industry’s ‘elephant in the room’. Sure, most coaches have a few coaching sessions while they’re learning or while practicing with someone but, in my experience, only a small number engage in the kind of coaching relationship that we would recommend for our clients with the kind of commitment to develop and growth that we’d expect.
Being coached has given me some really important things:
1. It’s given me repeated experiences of what it’s like to work through something, to start with something that is problematic and may seem impossible and to arrive at the end feeling differently and with new ideas or perspectives. This is a felt sense and an intellectual understanding, which has led to a deep conviction in the power of coaching. Over the years, when feeling challenged working with my own clients this conviction has helped me to stay focused and on track.
2. It has helped me work through things and make progress in ways I wouldn’t have expected. My self-awareness has developed, “Oh, that’s why I always find that difficult…”, “Oh, this is why the same thing always happens…..” This also helps the Coach-Client relationship because it’s easier to recognise what is your own ‘stuff’ and what belongs to the client.
3. It’s shown me what works (and what doesn’t work). I’ve learnt loads about coaching by ‘watching’ how someone works with me. A few things were good reminders of what not to do but many more that were approaches I could use myself. The toolbox I was seeking appeared indirectly through this.
I’m curious how many coaches actually work with a coach themselves. I’m not suggesting that everyone should always be having coaching but, when it comes to becoming an outstanding coach, I think being coached is often not considered to be that essential when, in reality, I believe it is.