I recently completed my certification in coaching through the Hudson Institute of Coaching.
Being a Certified Hudson Institute Coach isn't an accomplishment or honor I take lightly. The work of coaching is important and meaningful, more than any other work I could imagine doing (does it really get any more important or meaningful than helping someone be the best version of themselves they can be?).
I've seen the transformative power coaching can have. The return on investment, whichever way you measure it, is significant -- for companies, teams, and for individuals in all aspects of their lives. It was in my own case too.
Getting the certification was a yearlong journey of a lot of learning, in some ways akin to getting a Master's Degree — both a subject and in myself.
There are many different ways to be trained and hold yourself out as a coach. I chose the Hudson Institute because it's widely respected and known to be rigorous so I knew the learning would be both deep and broad, the work would be hard, and it would take a of commitment. It did, and then some. I also chose the Hudson Institute because it's a learning community of accomplished, curious, kind, and supportive people.
I want to share a ten key learnings and reflections about coaching and about my approach from that program:
Coaching is not about fixing. It's not remedial. It's not mentoring or telling or advice-giving. It's about partnering, learning, creating awareness, and about crafting change in way that matters most to the client and the systems in which she or he operates. In coaching we are trying to help the client to see themselves, seeing what arises for them, helping them to see what they don't see and what patterns in their way of being they might not see.
It's not about you, it's about the client. Often, with friends, family or others, our instinct is to teach, fix, offer advice, to rescue, to help. Especially in the contemporary work environment, we often seek the quick fix. But coaching is about partnering, creating an opportunity for the client to do their best work and to really look carefully at themselves and how others perceive them, and to imagine what it might be like for them to make a shift in some behavior or way of being. Going slow to go fast. If you're teaching or giving advice, you are imposing your own individual story on theirs, and you're not letting them own their own aspirational future. The best coaches believe the client is infinitely resourceful.
Change is hard, and…. Change is incremental, and often it requires doing inner work on yourself to understand your own motivations, thought patterns and feelings in order to do the outer work of changing behaviors and how people perceive you. In coaching, we use models, maps and tools to help us with this, but change is really about reflection and hard work. So the partnership between the coach and the person being coached is critical, and the willingness of the client to do the hard work is important and something to be respected.
Awareness is self-correcting. When you're aware of of something, when you notice things -- behaviors, reactions, emotions -- it gives you choice. And when you have choice, you can make change and grow.
Silence is powerful. We all tend to talk a lot, and loudly. In coaching, we ask a lot of questions. We aim to build trust for partnership and to challenge, to create awareness, to design action plans and steps for change. But, silence can be very powerful and gives people the space they need to think through, process, and to be honest with themselves. You should only speak or ask a question if it improves upon silence. And the more you talk, the more you'll be surprised by what you say. So if you let the client speak and resist the urge to speak yourself, that's when the real learning begins.
Who you are is how you coach. One of the great things about coaching is that you get to draw on all of the knowledge, experience, skills, and judgment you have developed in your own life, combine it with some frameworks and models, mix in some curiosity and empathy, and you have your own unique way of coaching others. It's that special blend that makes you uniquely valuable and helpful as a partner to individuals and organizations.
Sorting your own shit out first makes you a far better coach because you get out of your own way. We all have growing we can do, we all get into our own heads. But learning about what triggers you, what your own habits are, how you're perceived by others, how you experience others puts you in a far better, more curious, less knowing, and confident place as a coach. During the last year, I personally worked a lot during the last year on leading more with my heart, leaning less hard into conversations, and prioritizing better the energy I was putting into people and other obligations. Finding more balance in myself, being more truly and fully myself rather than trying to be what I thought others expected of me, is a relief, and opens up so much possibility to do my best work and build my best relationships.
A leader's job is to enliven power in others. This is one of my key learnings about how leaders lead. A conductor in an orchestra is the only musician who doesn't make a sound. Her power comes from the ability to awaken and enliven the power in other musicians. So too in any other context.
The wisdom of our bodies is unmatched. Think of that "sinking feeling" or that tense feeling you get when you get stressed. When we listen to our bodies and actually pay attention, it teaches us so much about ourselves and our environment, yet too often we don’t even pay attention.
Meaningful work means constant, continual learning. Coaching isn't just about mastering frameworks. It's about curiosity and constant learning from our own experience and those around us to move through the world with more intention, attention, and to practice what we want to improve on. Learning means practice, patience, persistence.
Hard work doesn't feel hard if you're part of a learning community and you are curious about the world around you. Getting my Hudson certification involved hundreds of hours of in-class learning, virtual learning, scores of hours of coaching and being coached, coaching labs, taped reviews, in person reviews, reading, writing, and exam-taking. But more importantly, it involved a lot of self-learning and self-reflection. And some wonderful, deep connections with people that will fill me up and last a lifetime.
In short, I learned a lot about how to help others be their best selves, and in the process, I learned more about myself than I ever thought would be possible.