3 Reasons to Work With a Professional Coach

Being coached has helped me in ways that I expected—and in ways I had never considered before

Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

Working with a professional coach is a great way to face the daunting task of personal growth and evolution. As adults, we face innumerable challenges in finding the necessary coherence between our emotional and rational selves.

We deal with issues in our relationships. We struggle along our career paths. We worry about our finances and supporting a family. We are always looking for ways to be better.

We start to think about how to make this happen:

• In the face of these challenges, how can we go about training ourselves to handle and learn from them?
• Practice is important, but how do we know we’re practicing the right things?
• We need to be reflective on our work, our actions, and our emotions, but what can we do to build the necessary awareness?
• Improvement sounds great, but how can we objectively measure the progress of our process?

Working with a professional coach myself, I have certainly found that they can really lighten the load of this otherwise heavy endeavor. I have felt heard and been inspired to open up more. I have been asked questions that I would have never thought of on my own. I have learned things about myself that I might have otherwise avoided even thinking about.

Here’s how…

1. Feeling Heard Can Be Transformational

Let’s face it, listening is a skill that the majority of people lack. Our narcissistic natures tend to force us into some level of self-interest that blocks deep hearing and empathy. As a result, most conversations we have don’t end with us feeling heard.

Coaches are trained to listen. They practice listening skills and focus on their ability to hear deeply. In a conversation with a coach, we feel understood and seen by a person truly listening to us. This feeling alone is a unique and valuable part of what makes coaching so effective.

Coaches let us drive the priorities and the changes needing to be made, based on what is most viable for our present learning needs.

• Coaches are paid to focus on you and only you for the time you are together. They won’t pick up their phone to check a text, and they won’t check out the waitress as she walks by in the bar. They truly create a space of presence and attention. It is in this space that we can explore our thoughts and speak those thoughts to someone who is actually listening.
• Coaches are trained to listen and understand through an undivided mind. As a person with no previous connection to us and thus much less bias in the content of what we share with them, a coach is far more capable of objective reception of what is said. They are far less likely to be triggered or to have an ego reaction to what we say.
• Coaches employ the power of hearing deeply. One of the core concepts of coaching is hearing deeply. The coach hears deeply by creating a clear space for hearing. This deeply hearing allows them to gain complete learning and understanding, identify tools for change, and help expand learning.

In my experience being coached, the simple ability to think out loud and share my thoughts has been helpful on its own. If nothing else were to happen, being able to discuss my experiences without interruption or distraction allows me to hear myself say things. When someone is deeply listening to me, I feel the freedom to say more than I would in any normal conversation. The more I say, the more I learn.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

— Stephen R. Covey

Questions we begin to ask ourselves when we feel heard:

• How much of my authentic self am I able to bring to the conversations I have?
• Do the people I communicate with allow me to say the things that I need to say?
• In sharing my challenges or issues with people, what do I hold back?
• How often do I actually feel understood by the people I communicate with?

2. Powerful Questions Lead to Self Exploration

A coach understands how their presence can enhance a conversation and ensures that intentional attention is at the forefront of their work. As deep listeners, coaches have training and experience in hearing beyond the surface of our words. The presence a coach offers us allows them to remain aware of our processes — and ask powerful questions that draw on what we say and how we say it.

As I train to become a coach, I recognize the value of self-inquiry. Being able to ask myself questions and answer honestly leads to a much greater sense of self-awareness. In working with a coach during this process, I have been asked questions I would have never considered asking myself. I have been learning to ask myself deeper questions and, as a result, hearing answers that I really need to hear.

A coach can sit in the passenger seat and help navigate our thoughts as we drive the process of our learning journey through self-inquiry.

• Coaches cultivate the skill of curiosity. Curiosity is a skill and coaches train and learn to be curious about the people with whom they work. It is through this curiosity that exploration happens. A coach is interested in the deep and important things in their clients’ lives, which naturally drives a conversation filled with exploration.
• Coaches use powerful inquiry to facilitate understanding. The powerful questions a coach asks can help us understand ourselves better. In that understanding, we can begin to figure out what limiting beliefs, systemic challenges, or available opportunities for growth exist within our process.
• Coaches learn from us and use that to help us learn. A coach’s questions are highly customized. They connect with, focus on, and reflect on what the coach has learned from the conversations they have. A coach relates what they have deeply heard to what their clients are trying to achieve. These inquiries look forward instead of backward and invite us to engage in new learning.

Coaches let us drive the priorities and the changes needing to be made based on what is most viable for our present learning needs.

“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters — don’t wish to seem knowledgeable.”

— Epictetus

Questions we begin to ask ourselves:

• What beliefs are leading me to feel or act in a certain way?
• What are the emotions that are driving my actions or responses?
• What are the sources of my anxiety, and how do I deal with that anxiety?
• What is my role in creating the problems that exist in my life?

3. Learning Happens Over Time

Learning is a lifelong process. Growth takes time, it takes patience, and it takes work. This is where a coach can really bring exceptional, long-lasting value. A coach holds us accountable for the reflection and change required for learning outside of sessions.

We can certainly find substantial benefit from exploratory conversation, but learning is a cumulative effort. It happens through focused analysis, mindful experience, and deliberate reflection over time.

As a coach, I have had clients ask me for advice. I have been asked for answers. In not giving them, I have learned that we all have an immense capacity to learn and have seen people realize this capacity in assigning their own desired learnings. My job as a coach is to identify patterns, dissect belief systems, and open the doors to facilitate a greater understanding of one’s self.

When committed to the work on themselves, I have seen that people are capable of making the changes necessary to reach any goal or solve any problem they may have.

• Coaches listen cumulatively. A coach is trained to not only connect the dots necessary for learning within one session but also over the course of many. A coach takes the understanding gained through what they’ve heard to help us generate the type of learning that leads to our desired changes.
• Coaches ensure our learning is intrinsic. The coach isn’t there to teach or give advice. Instead, they offer partnership in designing goals, actions, and accountability measures meant to integrate and expand new learnings. The most powerful learning comes from within.
• Coaches hold us accountable. In helping create sustainable change, a coach holds their clients accountable for the real-life ways in which the things they learn are implemented into future experiences. The real work that a person does, even when they are enlisting the services of a coach, happens between the sessions, on their own.

As our work continues, a coach serves as a guide in integrating new awareness and insight.

“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”

—Winston Churchill

Questions we begin to ask ourselves:

• What limiting beliefs have I uncovered, and where can I practice testing the validity of those beliefs?
• Who can help me make the changes I seek, and who may be making my growth more challenging?
• What habits do I need to create or break?
• What are my values, and where do they show up in the decisions I make?

Final Thoughts

Our emotional maturation and path toward becoming our best selves takes time and deliberate effort. It will come with a lot of ups and downs. I am not saying you can simply go out and hire a coach and poof, you’re no longer struggling with life.

But, if we want to grow and intentionally take on the work it will take to do so, a coach can be an amazing resource on the inevitably long, arduous process.

Coaching conversations offer us the space in which to think out loud. We feel more open to exploring our experiences, beliefs, and desires without interruption or unsolicited advice. It is in this space that we can begin to ask ourselves questions. Where we can begin to understand ourselves and our systems. Where we can begin to learn about ourselves and look within to determine what we need to move forward, change, or evolve.

So far, I have learned that…

• Space to listen is rare, and a coach is committed to being present for us to feel heard and understood.
• Curiosity is necessary to explore ourselves and better understand our challenges from multiple perspectives.
• Learning happens over time and requires reflection, awareness, and the evolution of beliefs.

And a great coach can offer you all of these things.