As we explore the coach’s journey to mastery, we are compelled to turn to cultivating the greatest, most versatile, and often enigmatic tool that we possess as coaches: the self as coach—that is, the whole, cultivated, managed self that we bring to the coaching experience to inspire and help effect change. Although students of coaching may, in the first instance, look at this as something they should (or must) do for their clients, the truth is that the awareness of self is an ongoing awareness (almost a way of life) that we owe to ourselves and individuals and then to our clients if we are to live our own lives of possibility and be truly effective in opening our clients’ hearts and minds to change.
Self as coach is a challenging and sometimes elusive concept somewhere between reality and possibility. It embraces who we are, who we want to be, and who we need to be in order to be of true value to our clients. It requires us to be fiercely aware of our strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. It demands that we call forth our talents, address ever changing challenges, and constantly self-correct.
Understanding self as coach well is the step in our personal and professional growth that allows us to move beyond simply using learned tools in the way an actor might to play a role and to come to a place that models balance and the ability to change. Without it, we are wildly diminished, personally and professionally.
Consider some examples that we explore in the chapters in Part Two:
Simply thinking about these questions, whether or not these specifics hit the mark for a particular coach, should highlight the possibility that something in the self of a coach can either promote or undermine clients’ ability to achieve the changes they so richly desire and deserve. The goal here is simple: to understand our inner landscape with the gifts and the challenges inherent in our particular selves as coaches and to call forth the best, meet the challenges, and, above all, balance our strengths and weaknesses in a way that makes each of us a balanced and unbiased presence in serving our clients and builds our capacity as coaches to deal with the widest possible range of challenges.
To begin, we must start on the most human side: the coach’s understanding of her own interior—the inner landscape—and all that is required in this domain to become a great coach. We term this self-as-coach work. It refers to the interior dimension that requires continual cultivation in order to bring our most authentic, agile, and capable self to the work of coaching.
The coach’s commitment to working the inner landscape of self is central to building the capacity to masterfully coach a wide variety of clients in a broad spectrum of situations. This self-as-coach work requires us to face our own limitations, blind spots, rough edges, and beliefs in order to strengthen and extend our capacities. This is often experienced as rigorous and challenging work. Early in the coaching journey, it is surprisingly easy to overlook the power of our own capacity (or lack of it) and view the client as our challenge—perhaps we view her as resistant, unwilling to examine difficult issues, or talking in circles—at times making it difficult to bring the engagement to a successful conclusion. Yet, truth be told, in most cases, the coach’s own work on the inner terrain is what allows for something very different to occur during the coaching engagement. It takes courage and commitment to true mastery for any coach to work the territory of self in order to engage at the highest levels.
A client needs considerable capacity from us as coaches in order to be fully open to the work of making an important change. Fundamentally an individual approaches coaching because there is something she wants or needs to tackle that is beyond her current understanding and capability. An individual knocks on the coach’s door when something in life is unsettled, unknown, in motion, or drifting away. Change naturally stirs anxiety and unease, and the nature of the relationship between the coach and client is pivotal to the success of the engagement. The client’s list of needs includes these:
This is a formidable list for any coach. In order to attempt to meet these expectations and strive to engage at a masterful level, a coach needs to continually engage in learning about herself from the inside out—strengths, raw edges, fears, and aspirations. Organizational development consultant and psychologist Ron Short (1998) writes about our human challenge in this regard: “Our biggest, yet least visible problem is that we think the world is outside of us, distinct and separate from us, this perspective is a simple human reflex” (p. 22). To operate from the inside out and develop a deeper inner dialogue, coaches need to become highly skilled at observing the inner states that drive their outer actions and responses.
Many of us come to coaching assuming it’s all about acquiring tools and techniques to support our work. Instead we find that the most important tool is our self, and this requires a sincere willingness to explore the layers of one’s inner landscape. Master Coach Doug Silsbee often says, “We do the work on our ‘self’ in order that we might be granted the privilege of working with our clients,” implying that the coach’s work on self provides a deeper empathy and honoring of the challenges of a client given the coach has authentically traveled this road as well.
The exploration of how coaches cultivate the self-as-coach domain in order to build capacity in their work with others is the focus of the balance of chapters in Part Two.