How do I know if I need a coach?

Let’s face it, very few people wake up in the morning and think “I think I need some coaching”. Most of the time, we’re running from one thing to the next, trying our best, juggling life and work challenges, keeping our head above water. Throw in a global pandemic, and no wonder we’re all surviving rather than thriving.  

If you’re reading this blog, I’m sure you’re pretty interested in personal development and understanding yourself better. We follow the experts, share inspirational quotes, buy a bunch of self-help books, which we may or may not even get around to reading. We might even attend some classes and webinars or take an online course, all in an attempt to figure out this thing called life.

By the way, this was (and still is) me. And don’t get me wrong, all those things are great, and they’re a brilliant source of inspiration and support. But eventually, there comes a point where you realise there’s only so far you can go on your own.

This moment for me was back when I’d decided to take voluntary redundancy. I was so excited about the next chapter, coupled with quite a lot of fear and a strong case of analysis paralysis. I remember thinking, who can support me through this? Friends and family were brilliant and great at cheering me on, but I instinctively knew that I wanted to dive deeper.   

When I first spoke to my coach, the first thing she asked was “What do you want to work on?” After an initial conversation, we agreed to focus on embracing the uncertainty that lay ahead, as well as untangling some unhelpful patterns of behaviour that I felt were holding me back.

Often people think that coaches can only help when you’re looking to overhaul your whole life or change careers. Or others believe that only senior leaders and CEOs who want to improve their performance get a coach. But it can also be much more than that – they can help you see yourself and others more clearly, work towards the goals you’ve set, or act as an excellent sounding board. 

Here are some of the other ways a coach can support you:

You can’t see the wood for the trees:  No matter how experienced, we all have blind spots. Sometimes we just need to shine a light on those thoughts and emotions, change our perspective, or shift our mind-set. A coach can challenge your thinking so you see things more clearly, helping you work out where to focus your energy so you can move forward. 

You feel like an imposter: Perhaps you’ve got a new job or a recent promotion and you’re terrified you’re going to get ‘found out’.  You’re lacking confidence in your abilities and you’re convinced you’ll f*ck it all up. A coach can help you reflect on your previous achievements, identify your underlying strengths and support you to quiet that inner voice and overcome those limiting beliefs.

You probably need some boundaries in your life: Are you a people pleaser, where you find it hard to say no? Are you someone who always take on too much, finding yourself overworked and overwhelmed? Learning to communicate our needs is so hard to do, especially when it comes to work and loved ones. But it often leads to underlying resentment when we don’t speak up. A coach can support you to get better at this; plus how to deal with the reactions from other people when you start to change the dynamics.

You want to embrace your uniqueness: Do you feel like a square peg in a round hole? Like you never quite fit in, or that people don’t really understand you? Perhaps you don’t feel aligned to your values, or you feel like you’re always trying to find your ‘way’. A coach can work with you to get clear on what you really want, and then work out how to ditch some of those expectations and what we feel we ‘should’ be doing.

You need some ‘mental maintenance’: It’s always better to troubleshoot before system failure. Often people wait until crisis point before they ask for support, whereas having a safe space to talk through your thoughts and feelings before they escalate is better than picking up the pieces afterwards. A coach can help you navigate the ups and downs of life, increase your resilience, and enable you to put coping strategies in place.

You’re not even sure exactly what it is you’re bothered about: Modern life is hard, and confusing. We have information overload, too many distractions, a love/hate relationship with technology and so many things demanding our attention. No wonder we all feel exhausted and tired most of the time. If you’re feeling a bit ‘meh’ and you don’t really know why, working with a coach can help you to unpick what’s draining you the most, and give you a fresh perspective. 

If this resonates and you’re ready to explore, how do you find a good coach? Here are some tips:

Ask around: Recommendations and word of mouth are the best way to start. Set up intro calls with a few different people to get a sense of their style and approach. Chemistry and feeling comfortable are the most important things.

Do some of your own research: Places like the Life Coach Directory give you access to a whole list of coaches with different styles and approaches. Check out their websites, read their blogs or look at their social media to get a feel for their personality. LinkedIn is also a great place to search; start with ‘Coach’ and then filter by ‘People’ and ‘Connections’ to see if there’s someone in your existing network.

Consider their background: A well trained and experienced coach should be able to coach anyone. Remember, it's the quality of the relationship that underpins the success of the coaching. But it can often help to work with someone who is one chapter ahead of you – a person who’s been through a similar journey themselves, or has experience in your industry. While a coach doesn’t give you advice (that’s more of a mentor relationship), just knowing that they ‘get you’ is an important part of the chemistry.

Coaching leads to incredibly powerful conversations. I can still remember the discussions with that first coach, even 4 years on. And we’re still in touch. We have an ongoing relationship, we check-in regularly, and I recently attended a group coaching course she launched, where I met other like-minded people.

It’s amazing how one conversation leads to so many more.

 “If [you] transform just one outmoded belief and update it to something more powerful, then the brain ripples this new information through all of its files and reorders and updates accordingly. One assumption that is challenged will require thousands of stories stored in the mind to be updated. One behaviour bought into plain sight will require a whole sequence of other behaviours to adapt in its wake. Any change therefore impacts [you] at both the micro and macro level, as [you] move forward on life’s journey (Source: What does a transformational coach do)

If you’d like to explore if coaching is right for you, let’s have a chat. No pressure, I promise. Book here.

Or for more insights and reflections, you can sign up to my newsletter ‘The Untangler’

Back to homepage