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Mar 05, 2023

Self-Care for Coaches

Water by iezalel williams 48697635152

Coaching is a very fulfilling activity, and I feel lucky to spend all day, every day working with leaders in this capacity. But it's also very demanding, which is why I try to take good care of myself--and my practice--in a variety of ways. This certainly includes the basics: mindfulness, exercise, sleep, reducing chronic stress. [1] But more specifically, there are four self-care practices for coaches that I follow myself and recommend to colleagues.

1. Get a Coach

There are a number of obvious reasons why every coach should have a coach. Just like our clients, we encounter difficult situations that test our capabilities on a regular basis, and coaching is a reliable means of augmenting our strengths and addressing our weaknesses. Further, guidance from a seasoned fellow professional can help us to consider new possibilities and overcome blind spots. As I've noted before, coaching isn't just about asking questions, and advice and feedback play valuable roles in the process. [2]

But being in a formal coaching engagement also offers something of special importance to the coach-as-client: empathy. As coaches, we're used to being in the position of having others come to us with their problems and challenges, and forgetting what it's like to be on the other end of a helping relationship can be an occupational hazard. Being coached reminds us of what it feels like to be a client--and that invariably makes us better coaches. [3]

My initial exposure to coaching came as a client in my first leadership role after business school. A mentor on my board of directors advised me to invest in myself and get a coach, and I went back to one of my Stanford professors, Mary Ann Huckabay, and asked if she would take me on as a client. Thankfully she did, and our work together not only transformed my approach to leadership, but also helped motivate me to launch my own coaching practice in 2006. Three years later I realized that I needed a coach in order to be the best coach I could be--I returned to Mary Ann's practice, and we've been working together continuously ever since. If you don't have a Mary Ann in your life, I hope you'll reach out to your network of colleagues and find one. [4]

2. Talk About Money (with People You Trust)

As an independent coach working solo, I wear two hats: I'm a coach who cares deeply about my craft, and I'm also the CEO of a small business who must ensure that my business remains profitable. It's easy to find people who want to talk about the soulful art of coaching but who don't know much about running a profitable practice. It's also easy to find people who are eager to sell you their services to help you build a practice but who don't seem particularly soulful, to say the least. In my experience the key is building relationships with colleagues who share your commitment to craft and who are also willing to discuss the financial and logistical aspects of running their practice. [5]

For many of us there's always some discomfort in discussing finances, and that can be exacerbated if we're reluctant to think of coaching as a profession. But a coaching engagement is both a personal relationship and a business relationship, and the integration of both halves makes it successful and sustainable. Acknowledging and attending to the financial needs of our practice is critical in that process and ultimately in the best interests of our clients.

Collegial relationships in which we can have such candid conversations are built on trust, which often starts with a willingness to be vulnerable. (This may be yet another reason to work with a coach.) And note that it may be easier than you think. I sometimes have occasion to talk with aspiring coaches who are just starting out, and at a certain point in the conversation I generally say, "Let's talk about money"--and they are invariably relieved that I've taken the initiative to broach the subject.

3. Manage Your Assets (and Say No More Often)

When wearing my CEO hat I have to be mindful that my small business has two (and only two) assets: my time and my reputation. I'm the sole steward of those assets--if my time is wasted or my reputation suffers, no one pays a price but me. Further, other people may well have very different ideas than I do about how to employ my time or build my reputation. So it's essential for me to manage these assets with great care.

I'm not suggesting that there's one best way for you to manage your own time and reputation. One person's wasted hour is another's sound investment. And what qualifies as a "good use of time" or provides a boost to your practice's visibility or your personal brand will undoubtedly change during the course of your career, so any guidelines in these areas should be revisited regularly. But it helps immensely to establish such guidelines in the first place, even if they're provisional and open to experimentation.

I suspect that running your practice with an eye toward managing your time and reputation with care will eventually require to you say "no" more often. Nearly a decade ago, I wrote about the necessity--and the difficulty--of this transition:

Success is often built on a reflexive habit of saying "yes" to opportunities that come our way. We’re hungry for any chance to prove ourselves, and when we're presented with one, we take it, even--or especially--if it seems daunting. A lesson I learned years ago was to say "yes" to opportunities that made me feel nervous because the anxiety was a sign that I'd learn something useful. We may also tend to say "yes" out of a fear that turning down an opportunity even once sends a message that we're not interested, and we'll stop getting additional chances in the future.

But success tends to attract bigger and better opportunities. As we succeed, a key challenge becomes prioritizing the many opportunities that present themselves. We often try to do this without saying "no" definitively--we still want to keep our options open. Inevitably, though, this results in a lack of clarity and overcommitment, and we wind up disappointing people, exhausting ourselves, or simply failing. To prevent this we need to learn to say "no" gracefully but firmly, maintaining the relationship while making it clear that this is one opportunity we're choosing not to pursue. [6]

4. Live a (Somewhat) Boring Life

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert advised Gertrude Tennant, a friend and patron who later edited his correspondence, "Be regular and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work." [7] I don't think of coaching as artistry, nor do I aspire to be "violent and original," but I do find Flaubert's underlying principle highly relevant and seek to apply it in a number of ways.

By committing to a "regular and orderly" set of routines, both professional and personal, I make it possible to do my best work every day on a sustainable basis. I'm not recommending any particular set of routines--I think each of us needs to determine for ourselves the practices that will best meet our individual needs. In my case, I generally get a lot of sleep, wake up at roughly the same time each day, see clients at predetermined timeslots with ample time in between sessions, take several walks a day, and have a quiet evening at home.

To be clear, I don't think it's necessary to strive for some sort of "perfect attendance record," nor am I suggesting that you need to impose a rigid set of rules on yourself. [8] Routines that feel unduly constraining are fragile, not resilient, and usually fail to be become habitual practices. Every once in a while I feel the need to stay up late, drink too much wine, and watch an old movie--although that's as wild as I get these days. But by giving myself permission to make exceptions, I make it easier to sustain the (regular, orderly) routines that constitute a typical day.

 

Footnotes

[1] In The Art of Self-Coaching I devised the (admittedly cheesy!) acronym MESSy to highlight the importance of mindfulness, exercise, sleep and reducing chronic stress. For more on these topics:

Mindfulness

Exercise

Sleep

Stress

[2] Coaching, Advice and Feedback

[3] See Chapter 3 in Edgar Schein's Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help (2011), entitled "The Inequalities and Ambiguities of the Helping Relationship."

[4] How to Find (and Choose) a Coach

[5] While coaching isn't therapy, one of the most useful resources I've encountered regarding the management of a practice is Sheldon Kopp's Back to One: A Practical Guide for Psychotherapists. A few of the topics he covers are unique to therapy, but much of the book is equally relevant to coaching.

[6] Learning to Say "No" Is Part of Success

[7] Oxford Reference

[8] I make one exception: I expect to be early and fully prepared for every single coaching session, every working day. A coach's first job is showing up.

Photo by iezalel williams.