Inside the Mind of a Coach. Part 3.

After sharing my core principles for coaching (in Part 1) and the sense-making compass I use during each session (in Part 2), here are three life practices that help make me a better coach and human.

This is the third and final part of an article series which started as an experimental exploration of the ‘inside’ of a coach’s mind - with my own as a case study. It was prompted by my joys and challenges as a coach educator and the realisation that, beyond learning about coaching competencies and models, the true art of coaching is honed in unique ways, as an intricate dance between our minds and our clients’ minds. If you’ve just arrived here, I invite you to start with Part 1 and Part 2 of this article series, where I strive to make visible first the principles and then the unique scaffold that informs my thinking, feeling and choices during every conversation with a coaching client.

Through this series I’ve strived to unpack how this dance unfolds - not to offer some general blueprint (which I know very well doesn’t exist) but to inspire coaches to reflect very intentionally on how their minds make sense of coaching, what their guiding principles are and now, in this final part, exploring what might be some practices that could help us continue growing as a coach (and a human) in the long run.

Before I share my three practices, I first have to share with you an old and personal story. It was the inception moment that led me to later choose learning as my profession and supporting human growth as my vocation. This was both an early (and pivotal) moment of ‘waking up’ and also the birthplace of the life-long practices I’m about to share with you. This is also an invitation for you to consider your own history and how it has shaped your choice to be a coach in the first place.

I was 12, growing up in an East-European country in the first decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall and, with it, the fall of one of the harshest communist dictatorships in the world. All of a sudden, 20 million people who had had no freedom for more than 40 years found themselves free and needing to choose what to do with their lives. It’s hard to think of a more disorienting dilemma for a nation. A mad race to get rich, successful and fulfil the long-awaited capitalist dream ensued. This shift from communism to capitalism would go on for a wild decade, later called ‘The Transition’, with few rules and much chaos.

In this tumultuous cultural context, many parents became obsessed with getting their kids ready for a deeply uncertain future, one where they would have to make daunting choices the previous generation had never faced. This fueled an incredibly competitive educational environment dominated by a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality. Grades (good or bad) were always announced publicly, kids constantly compared with one another, and kids deemed ‘smart’ and ‘high potential’ were pushed extra hard to perform and expected to excel in every subject. There was little interest or concern for building social connection, trust or collaboration skills as part of school life. The classroom was very much reflecting the broader society - everyone ‘climbing’ over everyone else to get to the top.

I was a lucky kid. I grew up in a loving and caring family with science-minded adults, who instilled in me a hunger for learning. Like many of their generation, my parents valued academic achievement over interpersonal skills. I learnt early that good grades and academic prizes were the measure of success, a way to make my family proud and a major source of self-worth. This drove me to become a socially clumsy ‘nerd’ - a teacher’s pet who had trouble making friends.

I got teased by other kids for being too studious and that hurt terribly. I was extremely sensitive and had no idea what to do with my big feelings. I was also tall and physically strong for my age and could not conceive of being a victim, so I decided I could gain respect by imposing my will on others. I’d push back harshly, get into fights on the breaks and settle my disputes with shouted words and sometimes even with my fists.

I became this dual creature - perfect student and dreaded peer - and somehow managed to get away with it for a few years because of my spotless academic record, until a fateful day in grade 5 when my luck ran out. The head teacher decided my behaviour was no longer tolerable and I needed to be taught a lesson. True to the spirit of the times, my lesson came as public humiliation.

In our grading system, there was a special ‘box’ ‘for good behaviour’, where by default, most kids got an “A”. It was only the biggest trouble-makers who got less than that and the consequence of such a sanction was that any academic achievement you might have had would be automatically erased - you would get no academic recognition at the end of the year and bear the mark of shame for years after. A ‘low grade’ in ‘good behaviour’ was seen as the equivalent of being judged and punished in the public square.

On that fateful day, I was made to stand. 30 kids craned their necks to stare at me. The head teacher proposed that the class vote on whether my grade for good behaviour should be lowered. I still remember the intense hammering of my heart and the burning feeling of fear and shame that suffocated me. I was certain my classmates would take this incredible opportunity for revenge. I had slighted so many of them with my abrupt and aggressive behaviour. If I had been in their place, I’d have relished such a chance at payback.

“Who is in favour of lowering Alis’ good behaviour grade?” the teacher asked. I held my breath. Only a handful of hands went up. I could not believe my eyes.

“Who is against?” the teacher asked again, a trace of disappointment in her voice. 30 hands went up. Almost the whole class.

I remember the sensation of relief washing over me like a tsunami, quickly followed by bewilderment and the most intense feeling of confusion. My mind could not make sense of this reality. Why had they forgiven me? Why had these kids, whom I had tried so hard to put down, chosen to lift me up instead? I felt deep guilt for my behaviour. I knew I was smart, but in that moment I suddenly realised these kids were much wiser than me and in my heart, I vowed to learn what wisdom is. I have been honouring that vow ever since.

Those of you who are familiar with William Torbert’s stages of vertical development might recognise in this story a moment of shift from Opportunist to Diplomat. A moment when my self-centeredness became ‘object’ to me instead of me being ‘subject’ to it and my awareness that others have needs different than my own emerged.

I went home and broke down, telling my parents the whole story. I wanted to know how I could have misjudged my peers so badly. Why did a great student like me seem unable to understand how others think? I needed to learn how to speak my mind without anger, how to listen, how to understand others’ feelings and my own and how to make friends. It dawned on me that there was a whole universe of human mind, heart and connection that I knew nothing about.

That same week my dad bought me the first soft skills book I have ever read - Dale Carnegie’s classic “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. It became the most read, re-read and earmarked book of my childhood. It revealed a whole ‘field’ I had never studied or even known existed, but which suddenly seemed so much more important than all the topics I was striving to learn in school. It sparked my interest in psychology, which later shaped all my future academic choices and ultimately led me to study human development for a living. That memorable day and this first book were the birthplace of my most important personal practice - self-inquiry as a way of life.

The Practice of Self-Inquiry

If you have been reading my articles for a while you will have noticed that all of them are grounded in my daily experiences in some way. I relish finding gifts of wisdom in the mundane and strive to learn from much of what happens to me every day. I constantly observe how I respond to others’ behaviours and I’m always on the lookout for hidden patterns or missed lessons - both at work and at home. It leads me to ask myself lots of questions.

Why did that behaviour trigger me? Why am I annoyed right now? What role am I playing in this relationship? Is this the role I want to play? Why does this pattern keep repeating itself? What are my needs at this moment? What is this discomfort I feel in my body and what emotion might be hidden there? What is my intention? What assumptions am I making right now? What are my values and how might I honour them while respecting the other person’s values in turn? How might I respond more wisely to this challenge?

This self-directed inquiry is the best fuel I know for empathy and curiosity towards others. It makes me probe my mind, constantly questioning my truths so then I can open myself up to learn from perspectives that might be radically different from my own.

The practice of self-examination has been central to my work as a facilitator and coach, as it has made me hyper-aware of how I might project my assumptions onto others and disciplined in examining said assumptions and avoiding projections. This has helped me over the years in myriad ways.

It’s helped me not take participants’ challenging behaviours personally whenever I’m facilitating group work and instead always meet them with curiosity. It’s helped me stay alert to the patterns of transference and countertransference during coaching and strive to be a clear mirror for my clients. It’s helped me examine my own cultural beliefs and hold them lightly while I do facilitation work in extremely diverse cultural contexts. It’s also helped me seek out mentoring throughout my career and welcome all feedback on my coaching/facilitation as a gift that always helps me grow.

In my personal life, self-inquiry has been the most precious gift that never seems to stop giving. It has made me a more present partner for my other half and allowed us to grow together by constantly examining our minds and all the productive and unproductive patterns in our relationship through the years. It is also helping make me a more conscious mother. I have strived to both practice with and teach this practice to my own highly sensitive child from her earliest years. As a result, I’m raising a much more self-aware, tolerant and emotionally regulated child than I was at her age - one who can now easily name her feelings and inquire into others’ simply because that’s something we always talk about. I can only hope she’ll continue to self-inquire throughout her own life.

Journaling has been the most consistent way I’ve supported my self-inquiry practice through the years. I have written separately about this beautiful and (in my view) life-changing habit and the powerful developmental impact it can have. Beyond allowing me to keep on asking myself the hard questions, journaling has also been a powerful way to keep myself accountable over time, as it hasn’t allowed me to forget the big lessons and compelled me to walk the talk. Which leads me to the second practice.

The Practice of Walking the Talk

Matching your words and your actions is at the core of walking the talk and something I’ve written quite a bit about. As people grow in their vertical development, their capacity to notice when they are incongruent - when they say one thing and do another - increases. So does their sense of discomfort at not walking the talk.

I see walking the talk as a practice you can get better at over time and with repetition. In my family, it’s a practice both myself and my husband value and it’s at the core of our approach to parenting. When our daughter was born we committed to keep our promises and to not lie or deceive her, even when a small lie would make our lives easier. Promises are always followed through in our house - that keeps both adults and our kid accountable and has spared us all a lot of disappointment over the years. And if we know we can’t follow through on a promise, we choose to not make it in the first place, even though that might lead to disappointment sometimes.

We also strive to always speak the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. When our child was very young and we’d go to the doctor to get an injection, we’d always be honest about what would happen and the pain she could expect. She wasn’t happy about it and it might have taken us longer to get out of the house than if we’d told her we would go to the park instead, but once in the doctor’s office, she always faced the moment with more courage because she knew what to expect. And most importantly, she always knew she could trust us. Over the years, this has meant she’s been much more inclined to own up to her mistakes and be honest with us in turn, even when it’s hard.

Professionally, walking the talk means I am very careful with the promises I make and the commitments I take. I say NO to projects that don’t feel aligned with my values or skills and when I do say YES, I give it my all, every time. I am also honest with my clients - both in 1:1 coaching and in corporate projects, even when what I say might not be what they would love to hear. I often point to the elephant in the room in group workshops and strive to create a safe space where people can speak to that which had not been said before. I challenge my coaching clients to look in the darker corners, as I believe that’s where growth most often is.

This has led to forging deep relationships of mutual trust with my clients over the years, allowing us to create projects where we’ve taken risks, tried new approaches and walked the path of collaboration and co-creation as true partners.

Walking the talk also means I am actively striving to be true to myself in every context of my life and I’ve actively avoided building a professional ‘persona’ that is distinct from my day-to-day identity. I’m the same human whether I write this article, respond to an email, speak at a conference in Australia, facilitate a workshop in the Middle East or coach an executive 1:1. I abide by the same values whether I speak to a CEO or interact with hotel staff in organising a corporate event. All while knowing that my Self is made up of many parts - some wiser than others.

I strive to own all my parts at home too, while acknowledging it’s so much easier to fallback into less mature behaviours in the safety of your family - and when that happens I strive to use it as a springboard for self-reflection and growth.

I believe that walking the talk is an incredibly powerful practice for any one of us who works in the space of education or leadership, as people learn much more from how we show up than they learn from our inspiring words or clever models, tools or frameworks. This is not an easy practice - it can be exhausting to maintain a witness perspective on yourself and systematically catch yourself being incongruent.

It can also make you feel vulnerable, as it unavoidably challenges you to show others the rougher edges of you, the less polished, less wise, less mature parts. However, in doing that, I find that often creates openness, and trust and even permits others to be more fully their own imperfect selves. And that, in our performance-driven, perfection-obsessed workplaces, is such a precious gift!

To cultivate this practice, it’s not enough to be self-observant and introspective. You also need trusted people to be mirrors for your blindspots and show you what you might be missing. This brings me to my third and final practice: cultivating your truth-tellers.

The Practice of Keeping Truth Tellers

Truth tellers are the trusted people in our lives who say it to us as it is. The people who deeply care about us and who are not afraid they might hurt our egos if they give us candid feedback.

I first realised the importance of truth-telling in my early 20s when one of my best friends pointed out to me that she believed I was ‘too nice’.

“You always strive to be so nice to everyone.” she said. “You never challenge me in any way, you always seem so concerned with protecting my feelings. But friendship is also about discomfort. I need you to call me out on things. I need you to tell me what you think even when I might not like it. I cannot fully trust if I believe you’ll always tell me what I want to hear”

That was very hard feedback for me to hear, but, true to her point, made me trust her so much more. I had spent the previous decade getting so good at ‘reading people’ and cultivating empathy. I liked to think of myself as the very opposite of my feisty, blunt 12-year-old self who blurted out her judgements without regard for others’ feelings. I was now kind, caring, and likeable. But in the process, I had stifled my capacity to speak my truth, lest it offended people. I would not lie, but I would focus only on the positives and would actively avoid telling people things that might upset them. I had learnt the lesson of supporting others, but not the lesson of challenging them so they (and I) could grow.

That marked another turning moment in my growth. The friend who gave me this piece of feedback was one of my first truth-tellers. She still is one of my closest, 20 years later, and I like to believe I did become a truth teller for her in turn.

Truth-telling is a gift and an art form. It’s not judgment. It’s not putting people down. It’s not harsh. It can be painful. Truth-telling is speaking from a place of love and unconditional positive regard and, from that place, voicing those things that are hard to hear. Truth-telling is more than just feedback. It is becoming a mirror that allows the other to face whatever they would rather look away from.

As a coach (or facilitator), being a truth-teller can be the highest form of service to our clients. To do it well I believe we first need practice in hearing the truth ourselves.

I have seen many people say they would like to hear the truth but then recoil, deflect, blame or push back when they hear it. To keep your mind and heart open and your mouth shut when you receive the truth from another is one of the hardest things to do.

Most recently, another very good friend whom I have been also working with on a common project gave me her truth after a period of silence and some distance between us, when our project didn’t go as planned. It turned out that both of us had been making quite a few assumptions about the other but didn’t quite know how to bring them out in the open. Then the day finally came when she took the plunge and spoke to me about what she had been thinking and feeling, how some of my actions had impacted her and how she felt stuck in our work together.

As she was speaking, I noticed the constriction in my heart and all the thoughts and judgements flooding my mind: “This is not true!”; “That was NEVER my intention!”; “I only did that thing because YOU didn’t do the other thing!”; “You’re too sensitive!”; “Why didn’t you talk about this with me sooner?”…

It was quickly obvious to me that all my thoughts were self-protective. They all sought to keep me away from feeling guilty. The feeling of guilt is such a painful one - I’d rather feel righteous anger than face the reality that I might have let a friend down. Luckily, after all these years of self-examination, I’m not a stranger to those edge emotions anymore. They’re not pleasant (nor will they ever be), but I’m aware enough now to not react to them immediately. I strove to stay open and truly listen to my friend’s perspective. She pointed out things that I had been blind to. I also noticed self-blame kicking in and chose to let it go too.

Once she spoke her truth and I managed to listen without interruption, I found myself feeling compassion for both her and myself. I had learnt important things I hadn’t been aware of before. In turn, I too had things to share that might illuminate her blindspots. I then spoke my truth not as a defense or reaction to hers. I didn’t try to tear down her reasoning. I just noticed I had my reality to share and strove to voice it lovingly and honestly.

By the end, we both shed some tears and both felt incredibly relieved. Our friendship not only survived but got to a new level of depth from this truth-telling conversation. And our project together got a new start.

“I really appreciate you hearing me out without defensiveness” she said.

I appreciated her gifting me her truth and enabling them to speak my own in turn.

Keeping truth-tellers isn’t easy. We’ll always feel the impulse to defend ourselves, to cast blame and reject the truths we don’t want to hear. But pushing ourselves to listen can be an incredibly powerful way to both gain insight into our own shadow (which otherwise would stay invisible to us) and to forge precious relationships grounded in trust, compassion and candour.

One of my clients, the CEO of a large company, once told me:

“Do you know why senior leaders choose to work with coaches? Because it’s so hard to get the truth from your own team”.

I often work in organisations where team members complain their leaders don’t want to hear the truth. Leaders in turn complain their teams are not forthcoming with honest feedback. I have come to believe the issue goes both ways. It takes a lot of psychological safety for truth-telling to become a habit in a team.

People need to practice telling the truth from a place of genuine care and they also need to see leaders modelling non-defensiveness when faced with the unpleasant truth. That might help build trust that candour can be well received and won’t put one in danger. In turn, leaders need to learn that hard-to-hear feedback is not a reflection of their worth as human beings, but merely on their behaviour and blind spots - a gift to learn from rather than an attack to defend from. And all of that learning takes time and practice.

How easy is it for you to be a truth-teller? How do you balance being candid with being kind? And what are you doing to keep your truth-tellers close?

This completes (for now) my inquiry into the mind of a coach, which is ultimately the mind of an imperfect, growing, evolving human being. I wonder how my three practices for life-long growth land for you. What resonates? What doesn’t? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments.

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