Why you don't need a coach - 3 secrets of coaching yourself to success

Let’s face it – a good coach can be expensive. Very expensive. Many people really want to take their skills, their careers and even their overall experience of life to the next level. But they simply cannot afford it. So, what do you do when you don’t have thousands of dollars to invest in coaching but you still want to improve yourself and your skills? In this article, I will share with you three tips for coaching yourself to success.These tips are a distillation of the core skills and techniques I have used in my coaching over the past years. I know they work because I have seen them work for my clients. And they can work for you too. Let us begin.

The value of a good coach

Good coaches are a phenomenal resource. They provide expertise, mentorship, motivation and accountability to help you reach your goals faster than you could ever do on your own. Having a good coach in a specific aspect of your life is probably the most efficient way to improve that aspect. This is why most top performers in all spheres have at least one coach as their secret (or, these days, not so secret) weapon. But coaching really boils down to some essentials. And a good coach is a person who has taken the time and applied the effort in mastering these essentials to deliver the greatest value to you.

Let us look at these essentials and see how you can begin to use them for yourself – for free!

Questioning – prescription she wrote

Imagine you walked into a consultation room to see a doctor. This is your first appointment – no referral, no prior case history, nothing. You are going in cold. You walk in and sit down. A few minutes later the doctor walks in. She is neatly dressed and very well groomed. She greets you and then sits silently writing. After a few more seconds of silence and scribbling, she hands you the sheet of paper she has been writing on and then leaves. You look at it and realize that she has handed you a prescription for some medication, ordered you an x-ray scan and recommended three days off from work to help you recover. All with little more than a "hello" between you.

Now, aside from the three days off work, most of us would take real issue with this. Would you? If the answer is yes, then why? Why would this annoy you? The answer to that question is at the heart of this essential coaching technique.

Coaching is about helping the other person – the client – overcome a barrier to reach a goal. A lot of people make the mistake of assuming they know what those barriers are and they know the solutions. Just like our doctor. But a good coach, like a good doctor, never assumes – a good coach asks questions. And the quality of good coaching can often be traced to the quality of questions the coach asks.

How to use this to coach yourself

Ask yourself deep, penetrating questions. One of the reasons a lot of people seek out coaching is because they do not have clarity on what to do or are paralyzed by fear in some way. Digging deep into those areas can be uncomfortable – we are forced to see our own flaws or inadequacies. Most of us just turn a blind eye and continue our hamster-wheel existence often blaming others, blaming circumstances or blaming pseudo-causes for our lack of improvement. Whether that improvement is for our productivity, our presentation or some other aspect of our lives. But a fearless and honest question to yourself can break you out of this circle.

Why it works – again with the brain

Your brain is a relentless question answering machine. Every time it is faced with a question, it jumps into action seeking out answers. That sounds good enough. But there is a caveat. Your brain does not discriminate between questions. It will just as readily mine you out an answer for the question “why am I so stupid?”, as it will for the question “why am I so brilliant?”. Even if you asked the two questions within mere seconds of each other. Amazing thing the brain.

What has stopped me from already achieving what I am trying to achieve?

Therefore, as earlier stated, ask high-quality questions. Ask questions that reinforce your positivity and not diminish your power.One question that is almost always a great starting point is this – What has stopped me from already achieving what I am trying to achieve?This leads us into the next essential for coaching yourself – listening.

Listening - hearing you out

A question is not much value if you do not wait for the answer. And even after the answer comes, you need to consider and carefully parse it out. A good coach will do this seamlessly in conversation with you often challenging your assumptions and biases in a bid to achieve clarity on the real issues. But you don’t have to have a coach if you can do this for yourself. It just takes some discipline and practice.

How to use this to coach yourself

You will need to cultivate mindfulness to be able to use this coaching essential for yourself. Create some space – mental and physical – for yourself. Create mental space by doing this early in the morning or after a long nap. Create physical space by making sure you pick a location and a time when you will not be disturbed. Then have an inner dialogue with yourself. Ask good questions and listen quietly for the answers. Then question the answers and again, listen.

Don’t be discouraged if you hear nothing – just keep listening. Or change the question – make it more specific. Usually, within a few minutes, answers will start to come and you will be on your way. Take action on those answers – plan out a strategy and get to work incorporating the insights into your life.

And this brings us to the third and last coaching essential that you can adopt for yourself.

Systematization—making it real and repeatable

This is perhaps the most powerful skill a good coach can develop. Some coaches do this naturally, others learn it over time and with practice. But, without doubt, the ability to create and deploy systems that are easy, practical and repeatable is essential to good coaching. Often a good coach distills countless hours of research, study, practice and trial and error into a few key steps that the client can deploy.

With a good coach, this is really what you are paying for. You probably don’t want to spend the time, effort, energy as well as suffer the losses and frustrations that come with learning. This is why the coach is there to provide you with a system (hopefully, a tailored one) to help you achieve your goals quickly.Now even though a good coach would have dedicated a lot of time and energy to a method of creating systems for the client, you can use a simplified version to coach yourself to success.

How to use this to coach yourself

My approach to creating systems for change and improvement is dependent on three things. One is a knowledge of yourself. The second is a knowledge of your environment. The third is to create a process based on the first two.

When I work with clients, these are the areas I aim to clarify. All are necessary to creating any lasting change or even just learning a new skill.For you, coaching yourself means that you look at yourself honestly. Also, look at your circumstances. What are you honestly capable of given your circumstances? How much time can you dedicate? What activities can you give up or scale back to make space? What blocks of time can you consistently carve out to do the work necessary for growth?

Determine – Draft – Deploy (repeat)

Next, determine what the easiest and most sustainable process is for you. A process involves steps. Identify the steps. Next, arrange the steps logically. In other words, create a draft of your plan. I call it a draft as it will often need tweaking as time goes on. Third, deploy the plan.

Other qualities of a good coach

There are many other qualities of a good coach – empathy, tact, humour, good judgment, insightfulness, professionalism etc. These are important but can vary widely between coaches depending on their coaching style. Some score very high on empathy but are no fun at all. Others are fun to be around but lack tact in discussing sensitive issues.For you, these are great qualities to incorporate into your life and they will help you make the most of your relationships as you press towards your goal in coaching yourself.While these qualities are strong enhancers, the three abilities discussed here are at the core of good coaching. That is of course given that the coach has expert knowledge to begin with.

No more excuses

Now that you have a workable system to deploy, there are no more excuses to not producing your best work and presenting your best self. If you really want to make a change, start using these world-class coaching techniques for yourself to coach yourself to success - whatever that may mean to you.Until the next post, be your best and do your best.