Why coach?
Yesterday a new coachee asked me why I coach. I fumbled to provide the best answer I could.
On reflection, a few things come to mind:
1. Coaching keeps me focused on what matters. It eliminates the banal and sharpens what is most important. There is no fluff in good coaching.
2. Coaching broadens my perspective. For 90 minutes each month my coachee and I step back from the fog of battle, let the dust settle, and take a look at the landscape with clear eyes. New insights and paths forward emerge for them. I get educated in what life looks like through another person’s eyes.
3. Coaching keeps me on my toes. The rules of the game are simple: have a conversation that helps someone. But the process is fluid, unpredictable and complex. Each session is different. No matter how experienced and well trained you are, at any moment you can fall flat on your face.
4. Coaching requires humanness and heart. I remember sitting alongside a girlfriend in the playground at high school whose parents were getting divorced and how it felt to help her just by listening and caring. These are important qualities in an age of information.
5. Coaching is inherently unifying. At our core we are all the same and coaching surfaces this. An important quality at a time of division.
Perhaps above all, the world needs better leadership right now… don’t you agree?
Why do you do what you do?
