Six Steps to Success with a Professional Coach

Here are six key reasons that a professional coach can make you more successful. Professional coaching has become increasingly recognized since the 1990s, to the point now where many individuals know that working with a coach is an advantage.

This assumed knowledge means that today we do not often spell out the compelling benefits of professional coaching and that our coaches are often approached by individuals who already have a clear idea of what they expect from the relationship.

Six ways a professional coach can help you.

But should your company not offer it to staff, how would you motivate them to receive professional coaching? Or say your company does offer it but you are not sure whether the required time investment will be worthwhile. This article sets out six compelling reasons why your success could be helped by working alongside a professional coach.

1. A professional coach can help you see yourself.

There are many instances where we see ourselves reflected in relationships – sometimes through what our children say or how they act. Other times by our responses to circumstances. Yet studies show that we do not get a clear picture of ourselves, because our impression is influenced by our internal filters.

But possessing accurate self-awareness is both valuable and important, especially in any leadership role in which you may serve. Having a truthful and concise awareness of who you are at work correlates to an organization’s effectiveness and profitability. Teams often prefer to follow leaders who understand themselves and are willing to share their perceptions. People respond to sincerity and truthfulness.

A good professional coach will collect input about how others see you and share it with you. It is also often beneficial for coaches to categorize feedback into themes to increase the clarity of how others see your strengths and areas of growth.

The coach will share their views and observations of you as you interact with them and others. In addition, she will teach you how to build a set of skills to see yourself more clearly so that you will be able to question yourself, fuel your curiosity about your strengths and growth opportunities, and learn to see yourself with as much due impartiality as possible.

2. A professional coach can help you see others more clearly.

How often have you seen a leader hit a barrier because of the inability to accurately assess those around them? In these situations, good employees lose faith in the leader as they feel their abilities or support is not recognized, or they see the leader retain poor employees due to a mistaken view of their competence. It may directly affect their career as well.

A good professional coach has a more trained, neutral, and accurate perception of those around you than you do. They will be able to share these perceptions with you, and likely draw from other work they are doing within the organization. A professional coach aims to teach you to operate effectively without them. They will enable you to apply the same mental skills you use to see yourself, to assess others.

3. Being able to choose different ways to respond.

We sometimes think that if we put enough time and energy into something positive results will follow. This is not a sure formula. A professional coach will help you realize that while different people have various capabilities and responses to situations, and sometimes these are quite set, the same response is not ideal for every situation.

The tools that you employed to face the complexity in one context may not work in another. Perhaps you are that person trying what you know to the best of your ability but not achieving the results you need.

It may be that you need to know more so that you can apply that knowledge and measure the results. It may be that you need the assistance of a team, or to become better at working with difficult people. A professional coach will be able to analyze your situation and give you advice and tools you can draw on to take the next step.

4. You can learn how to leverage your strengths into superpowers.

The benefit of a professional coach is not only their ability to train you to have a clear view of yourself and others or help you select the appropriate tools for challenging situations. They also help you understand your strengths better.

What we consider to be a perfectly ordinary ability may be seen by others as exceptionally valuable. Consider a team member who can diffuse stress and build unity teams during high-pressure projects by the way they speak and the words they use.

Or perhaps someone can understand what customers want and how this applies to the products of the firm. We all have strengths, and a professional coach can show you what yours are, why they are unique and valuable, and how to use them more effectively to benefit the team and the organization.

5. You can build more effective relationships.

A common strength of leaders is the ability to communicate and connect on a personal level with a wide range of people. However, it is not always the case, and the effectiveness of a leader can be hamstrung by their inability or hesitancy to only cater to the kind of people they are used to dealing with.

Everyone finds it easier to build relationships with others of similar personalities. Yet, many differ in their background, gender, race, beliefs, working style, and more. A professional coach will help you to recognize your tendency to stay in your comfort zone at the expense of progress.

They do this by helping you notice and examine any limiting assumptions you may inadvertently make about different people, and by giving you various tools to help you build stronger working relationships with a wider variety of people.

6. A professional coach can help you achieve your goals.

A successful engagement with a professional coach will be measured against whether she helped you to achieve your goals. The coach will enable you to clarify your goals and dreams and reveal what you can do to achieve them. The professional coach also provides a powerful and effective support system as someone who knows you well and wants what is best for you but remains a neutral party.

Being equipped with new ways of thinking about circumstances and opportunities, as well as a new toolkit to draw on that is more suitable to you as you move toward your goals and career ambitions. To make a success of working with a coach keep in mind that not only must the professional coach be good, but you have to be coachable.

With an increased demand for coaches, there is a growing supply, but this does not mean they are all excellent – so buyer, beware. By recognizing that you will benefit from a coach you acknowledge that you are not only not an expert in some areas, but may even be a novice.

You need to crawl before you walk, and like any beginner, there will be a learning curve. Only by being willing to go through the process will you maximize the opportunity to learn from a professional coach.

Next steps.

Just like any new partnership, there will be times when working with a professional coach will be challenging and even scary so be courageous, committed, and curious and you may find, like many others do, that your professional coaching relationship may be the next step you need to take.

Browse our online counselor directory or contact our office to schedule an appointment. We would be honored to walk with you on this journey.