How to get the most out of working with your coach.
Coaching is an incredible vehicle for personal and professional development and a significant investment of both time and money. The good news is the return on that investment can be life-changing. However, what you get out of coaching depends largely on the energy and intentionality you bring to the engagement.
Here’s how you can get the most out of it.
The first thing to attend to is your mindset. In coaching, we often talk about developing a “player” as opposed to a “victim” mindset. The player mindset acknowledges that we are on the field of our own lives and we have the agency to impact the results. That’s not to minimize the reality that we can also be the victims of others’ behaviors–it’s just to acknowledge that we are often prone to over-externalizing the cause of our experiences.
If we consistently adopt a victim mindset that fails to acknowledge that we do have agency, we also remove our ability to be part of the solution. Another way of saying this is the consequence of innocence is impotence.
We also talk about the difference between a “fixed” and a “growth” mindset. When we adopt a fixed mindset, we tend to think of ourselves in binary terms–we’re either “crushing it” or failing. This forced binary can mean that, on the one hand, we maintain an uncritical (perhaps even delusional) self-view that we’ve got it all together, or, on the other, that we fall into a sense of self-contempt that tells us we’ll never be as good or successful as we wish to be. More often, we may oscillate between these two extremes depending on outward circumstances. Furthermore, if we adopt a mindset that assumes we are what we are and can’t change, we’ll expend a great deal of energy trying to change everyone else around us.
On the other hand, a growth mindset assumes that we are in fact dynamic, changeable beings. It is less prone to blindspots because it assumes that we always have room to grow. And it’s less prone to shame and self-contempt because it doesn’t presuppose our brokenness when we’re faced with our own imperfections. The growth mindset says, “I’m not broken. I’ve just got some strategies that have worked in the past but are insufficient going forward and need to be updated.”
As we mentioned in earlier segments, coaching is like spending lots of time observing yourself both “in the game” and on the practice field. Practice is an incredibly important concept here. When we practice, we develop habits and rhythms that support our growth and better performance.
The specific practices that support your coaching are the practices of self-reflection. Here are a few that can accelerate your growth as a leader and as a human being in general (during your time in coaching and for the rest of your life):
Lastly, we’d encourage you to think about how you manage your time before and after coaching sessions, creating the mental and physical space necessary for the learning and insights to stick. Many clients have found it beneficial to block off time before the coaching session to get centered and reflect on what they’d like to talk about with their coach, as well as after the session to reflect back on what was discussed. Even a 15-minute window before and after the coaching session can go a long way. For example, a walk around the block before you jump into your next meeting will give you the chance to breathe, reflect, and take note of your commitments to action going forward.
The Reboot Podcast with Jerry Colonna, Team Reboot, and Startup Leaders
Follow us on:
Follow our Medium publication for reflections on leadership and resiliency.