Dear coach, do you coach yourself?
Posted on November 05, 2013 by Valentina Di Pietro, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
As a coach, I share how I coach myself with my clients. It helps building trust in me and confidence in them.
Buon giorno to all those who plan to make it a good day. I woke up this morning thinking about a question a guest at my restaurant asked me. The guest has observed me running on the floor, doing my pr, directing my staff, solving issues, and so on and so forth. At the end of the night, he approached me, and told me he read the article about me in the Union Tribune.
“So you are a coach too, uh?” “Yes I am” I replied. “I am very curious to know: is your life perfect? Do you accomplish everything so well? Apparently you do, since you have 2 successful restaurants and this other business of yours. Do you coach yourself?”
I must be honest: I asked myself “What are you talking about? Did you enjoy dinner or not?”, but I then collected my thoughts because it was indeed a very good question.
“As a matter of fact, I am the most difficult client I had so far. And I am stuck with myself probably for the rest of my life.” We laughed and starting talking about coaching and the restaurant business. We said good bye and he left.
His question had not left me though. And it is good that it did not because it made think on how I can relate to my clients in a more constructive way, more personal and more human. Clients in fact often come to you thinking that you have all the answers, all the magic tricks to fix things. By the way they talk to me, I can sense that they might think that I am basically perfect. It scares me for 2 reasons: number 1, they might want to pursue perfection — which is not healthy. Perfection is impossible and even if it were possible, it would be still boring! number 2, they might think that working with a perfect person will make them perfect, so their expectations are beyond reason. this is not the point in coaching.
Coaching is about finding a way to be the better version of yourself and to achieve what one thought impossible. Coaching is the eraser that erases the word “impossible” from the dictionary.
So back to the question: do I coach myself? of course I do. I coach myself in so many ways, constantly. It has been always a part of me without even knowing that what I was doing was called coaching. I believe it has been my second nature since I started teaching — back in my graduate school days.
I coach myself because I truly believe in human potential, I love seeing small improvements, I embrace changes, and I admit that the limits I have are there for a reason and can be seen as horizons. Also, I have so much fun in coaching myself: when I stumble, I say or do things that have not much sense…what else am I supposed to do? After the cursing and screaming, I truly need a good laugh. Seriously.
Bottom line: coach & client are indeed a team. We are on the same level, we share that hour of the day when I can simply share the magic of strategies & methods that were successful with the most challenging client of mine: myself.
