The Experience of Being Coached

You may take this post as an unabashed marketing ploy for me to sell my services. Although I’d like it if that happened, it is not my intent. I have seen how much of a difference coaching can make in an organization – all the way to faster, better results – that I’d like you to learn from my experience and consider learning and using the skills yourself to help others in your organization; leaders who do so are simply more effective than those who don’t.

I hire coaches for myself often yet I still remember my first experience of being coached because it was so dramatically opposed to the world I was dealing with at the time. I was working in a corporate position that had a culture of punishing employees who made mistakes. This kept them from speaking up when they should. Backstabbing and ambushing were relatively common, and I had been the recipient of those bad behaviors on more than one occasion.

After a few years of major change (including two large mergers and one acquisition), the organization I worked in had very little dialog going on. What little conversation occurred happened only amongst allies, avoiding the healing that was needed between warring factions. On top of it all, we were looking ahead to becoming acquired by a much larger company with a reputation of taking no prisoners in their acquisitions. I was exhausted from it all, yet I always believed things could be better.

I was also pretty sure that my position would be considered redundant in the upcoming year. Personally and professionally it was hard, and I really needed to talk to someone who understood the world I worked in and would be able to listen and ask questions that would help me to deal with the stress of what was happening.

I hired an executive coach in hopes of having a thinking partner to help me through the rough patches and get ready for what was next. The following are some of the advantages that I experienced while being coached:

Freedom to say what I wanted to say without fear. This was huge for me. The ability to say out loud what I had been thinking (or even to discover new things from my subconscious) was a big deal. I felt a burden lift.

Discovering new ways forward. I didn’t want someone telling me what to do (I’m pretty stubborn that way) and wanted to find ways to move ahead that were my own. The coach did not work in my world and she allowed me to fashion my actions in the way that worked for me, while reinforcing my self-confidence.

Accountability for the commitments I made. I’m pretty self-motivated, but the coaching put my priorities front and center and helped me to gain the clarity needed to focus on what was best for me and everyone I would interact with over the next year or so.

Actions that were well thought out. I learned to think better. I know that sounds odd, but the coaching did provide a regular venue to think out loud and reflect later on the actions I took. This helped me to hone my actions so I got better at them.

Although I know each person has a different experience, I do know that when it is done well and with the right intentions on the part of the coach, many can learn and get better at what they do when skillfully coached. Leaders who bring coaching into their tool kit can do this for their staff, while improving their organizational capacity.