It sounds like a silly question when you ask it out loud, but it’s a question that has lurked in conversations I’ve had with potential new coaches over the last 10 years. People want to become life coaches but feel that since their lives aren’t perfect, they probably shouldn’t consider it. Or they feel like maybe someday they’ll become a coach, after they do a lot of work to get their lives in perfect order. Some new and even established coaches are held back due to lack of self-confidence or self-esteem because they are overtaken by their own perceived imperfections.

Early in my coaching career, I thought, “Wow. I want my clients to have balance, success, abundant life, and more, and I want to have integrity myself in these areas.” It was intimidating. I was tempted to feel that striving for perfection was necessary as a coach. However, at that time I called myself a recovering perfectionist, and I was so aware of the active gift of grace in my life. Making “perfection” the goal did not line up with my faith and what I saw in scripture. But I wanted to walk my talk as a coach.

For me, I had to make peace terms with my coaching terms. I had to think through what integrity, balance, abundant life and success truly meant to me and reconcile that through prayer and scripture, and with my faith and understanding of grace. This helped me to develop my own personal understanding and practice of what it means to me to walk my talk as a coach.

I’ve developed an ecourse out of this experience, to help anyone else who wants to work through this process. It’s free and I invite you to sign up for it here.

My Friday Reports documented my business projects, challenges and accomplishments for the week. Every week I’d submit my report to my mentor coach for accountability. The reports helped keep me focused and highlighted opportunities to celebrate. They became a tool (from coach training, recall the term “structure”) that ensured my moving forward.

This practice illustrates the value of mentor coaching – of coaching in general really. In theory I could’ve written reports and “submitted” them to myself, but I wasn’t likely to do that. The structure established by the coaching relationship fueled the success of my Friday Reports and contributed to propelling me forward.

I’ve passed this tool along to many of my mentor coaching clients and here are a couple of creative ways they have managed their reports:

• One client opens the report document on her computer at the beginning of the week and adds to it throughout the week. On the day she submits her report it is already completed and ready for her to email to me.
• Another client works a four day week. On the first day of her week, she writes the report as she wants to see it completed on the fourth day. (And isn’t this an awesome use of vision-casting and “closing the gap” to achieve that vision!) She refers to the completed report throughout the week and uses it to guide her.
• Friday reports were my thing. I have clients who do Monday reports, Thursday reports, etc. It’s all about what works best for the client, right?

What would your best version of “Friday Reports” look like? How could your version of “Friday Reports” propel you forward?

What is mentor coaching?

Traditionally, a coach hires a mentor coach to be coached in one or all of the following focus areas:

• Personal coaching for the mentee
• Starting and building a coaching business or ministry
• Developing coaching skills further beyond coach training

However, when a coach is applying for credentials with the International Coach Federation (ICF), the required mentor coaching is to be focused on developing coaching skills.  For more on the ICF mentor coaching qualifications, click here.

Why would a coach hire a coach?

On the same day we had this discussion in the Q & A, I came across an excellent post called “Why Coaches Need Coaching.”  It says the answer to “do coaches need coaching to be great?” is a resounding “yes.” Mentor coaching is all about learning and progressing as a coach.

Andrea Sharb, author of the post, says that when new coaches experience coaching they “learn what it is like to partner with a coach. They learn about opening up to what they often describe initially as vulnerability. They experience the power of coming up with their own solutions without someone telling them what to do. Through this practice they learn to be coaches…”

To learn more about Ms. Sharb’s personal journey as a new coach being coached read the article here.

Linda Hedberg is a mentor coach in the areas of personal coaching, coaching business startup and coaching skills development for prospective and new Christian coaches. She is a member of the ICF Mentor Coach Registry. She is the author of The Complete Guide to Christian Coach Training – 2014. Contact Linda today if you are interested in working with her as your coach.

Sample life satisfaction worksheet instructions:  “This worksheet provides an opportunity to consider your level of satisfaction in various areas of your life. Rate each of the following areas on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 means you are completely dissatisfied – this is an area in which you desire drastic change. 10 means you are completely satisfied – you are entirely pleased and can’t imagine a change that would truly add to your satisfaction. Of course satisfaction changes from day to day. However, use this worksheet to indicate your general sense of where you are in each of these areas right now.  Skip anything that doesn’t apply to you. Add anything that makes sense to you.”

 

Sample life satisfaction areas: 

 

Immediate Family Relationships	Career/Employment
Extended Family Relationships	Financial
Recreation/Relaxation/Fun	Relationships with Friends
Pace of Lifestyle	Spirituality
Physical Environment (living space)	Church/Ministry/Religious Life
Physical Health	Community/Civic Involvement
Mental/Emotional Health	Other
Marriage/Romantic Relationship

 

Sample life satisfaction tool:  “Graph of Life” on page 355 of Gary R. Collins book Christian Coaching: Helping Others Turn Potential into Reality, Second Edition (NavPress, 2009).

The Life Satisfaction Tool is useful in a variety of situations:

If you are considering becoming a coach: Assess satisfaction in your own life and identify an area or areas in which you want to improve satisfaction. Then learn what it’s like to be coached by working with a coach on making the improvements you desire. It’s advisable to work with a coach and learn what coaching is from personal experience before you decide to make a career change or invest money on coach training.

If you are now in coach training: Use this tool to help surface issues in your own life that you can bring to your practice coaching labs and class coaching demos for those times you are assigned the role of coaching client.

If you are already coaching clients: Use this tool to help new clients consider what areas of their lives they want to address in coaching.

If you are already a coach and speaking to a group on a life-satisfaction-related topic: Include it as an activity in a presentation when you speak to a group. Have participants take the life satisfaction assessment, choose the area in which they want to make the most change and ultimately identify the next best step that will get them closer to satisfaction in that area. Walk the group through the process and/or work with an individual volunteer as a coaching demonstration for the group.