Insecurities of a coach – how to avoid them sabotaging your success 1
In this weeks guest post Charlotta Hughes shares her experience and knowledge.
Insecurities of a coach – how to avoid them sabotaging your success
By Charlotta Hughes
Being a coach, may that be life, business or corporate coach, is a wonderful profession. As I hope you agree!
It can, however, also be challenging. Business wise and emotionally.
Let’s quickly explore the business challenges faced by coaches today. Contrary to many training providers message to aspiring coaches, the market is very competitive and many coaches struggle to find enough clients to run a sustainable business.
There are a number of reasons for this that I’ve experienced and witnessed; both personally and in my coach mentoring clients. They include that:
- The market is pretty flooded with coaches. It’s sold as an inspiring and easy way to earn money, on your own terms. Whilst it’s incredibly inspiring when you work with great clients, it’s pretty tough if you can’t get them!
- Coaching isn’t yet a regulated profession meaning the market gets even more flooded as individuals with no relevant qualifications nor experience are free to call themselves coaches.
- The lack of regulation also challenges the reputation of coaching, and some are skeptical about its effectiveness due to a bad experience with a cowboy or cowgirl, or simply have heard of bad experiences by others.
- Great coaches are not always great business people. For some, their emotional sensitivity can act like a saboteur of their business mindedness and focus. Whilst it’s part of what makes them fabulous coaches, it can leave them a little vulnerable to the competitive, hard nosed reality that many experience.
Some or all of the above hurdles, can result in self-doubt. Self-doubt around whether you’ve chosen the right profession, whether that ‘calling’ you enjoyed early on is to be trusted and maybe even whether you’re actually any good as a coach.
Such a spiral of negativity and self-doubt can, if left uninterrupted, result in any manner of self sabotage.
Whilst self sabotage is a concept many coaches have knowledge of and regularly help clients recognize and overcome, ironically, it’s also a concept that many coaches themselves accidentally fail to recognise and address in themselves and in the development and maintenance of their coaching practices.
Here’s a few tips on how to ensure you stay in control and don’t allow yourself to inadvertently sabotage your own success or enjoyment:
1. Accept that you’re selling a service not YOU. When identifying what you offer as yourself, rather than a service, you may feel inflated pride when someone buys your services. This feeling can be very seductive! However, the flip side to this is that you’re also vulnerable to feeling rejected when someone says no thanks. You then find yourself taking an emotional nose dive! Too extreme a high and too severe a low. Reframe your thinking and consider it as you would an offer of a free coffee – if you turn it down, it’s not personal to the coffee shop. You’re just not in the mood, you don’t know how delicious their coffee is or you haven’t got time to stop. The same goes for coaching.
2. Don’t expect yourself to be perfectly happy and confident always. Just because you help others maximize aspects of their lives doesn’t mean YOURS has to always be perfect. After all, we accept there is no such thing as perfect and wouldn’t expect our clients’ lives to be. So why set ourselves up to fail like this?
3. Don’t knock a little bit of self doubt. It’s the thing that might ensure you keep learning and listening. It’s what makes and keeps you great and it could be key to your success. If you had none, ever, always knowing you’re right and excellent, you’d run the risk of becoming pretty unbearable. It also helps you relate to your clients, increasing your level of empathy and ability to coach them effectively. Keep it in check though – it needs to be at a healthy level!
4. Are you uncomfortable networking and marketing your services to your contacts? Do you worry they might not respect coaching? Remember, you’re not contacting them for validation but to let them know what you offer. They don’t need it? That’s fine! Like it’d be fine if they don’t need new paper to a paper salesman. S/he’d rather you bought some but s/he’s not personally affronted that you didn’t.
5. Insecure about justifying the value of coaching to those who are successful without it? There are people who complete a marathon without much training. It doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have got a better time, or wouldn’t have enjoyed the run more, with the right training
6. Don’t confuse wisdom with common sense. Often intuitive coaches feel their insights, deductions and conclusions are obvious and therefore undervalue them. In the words of Brian O’driscoll, “knowledge is knowing tomatoes are a fruit. Wisdom is not to put them in a fruit salad.” You have the knowledge and wisdom and you’re a great coach because of the very fact that they feel obvious to you.
If some or all of the above resonate with you, try having them nearby as a reminder to call upon whenever you feel the self doubt creeping in along with the classic avoidance techniques (or self sabotage if you will) such as procrastination, missing deadlines, avoiding the calls to potential clients or spending time on negative self talk. Use them as a way to centre yourself, pull yourself out of autopilot responses and crack on with the next positive thing. Make your coaching practice the wonderful experience it truly is, for your clients and yourself!
About Charlotta Hughes
Charlotta has been coaching professionally for over 12 years and in March 2013 she won Life Coach of the Year, awarded by the national body Association of Professional Coaches, Trainers and Consultants.
Her background is within Human Resources and she started her busy coaching practice, be me life coaching, in January 2007.
Charlotta specialises in coach mentoring, confidence, direction and entrepreneur coaching.
Her academic qualifications include professional Life and Corporate Coaching qualifications. She also has a BSc (hons) in Psychology & Computing, an MA in Human Resources Management and she is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Ch*******@be**************.com
+44 (0)7720 839773