One common denominator found in almost every great leader is they are investing in a coach. Whether that’s a business coach, life coach, or one of the hundreds of differentiations that exist, the bottom line is they are hiring someone to help them get better in an area of their lives.
It makes sense right? You aren’t surprised when a professional athlete has several coaches. There are team coaches, nutrition coaches, fitness coaches, and a host of support systems surrounding the players. They thrive at the elite level because they know they need support. No one expects them to know everything.
So why on earth do we beat ourselves up when we don’t know everything about how to manage our lives? What if we didn’t always have to learn from our mistakes, but could avoid many by using tools and resources we didn’t know existed?
The best leaders in companies around the world invest in coaching for many reasons, but here are a few:
- They want more
They are dissatisfied with the status quo. They want to live beyond what has been normalized and create a better life
2. It’s a safe and collaborative safe
Sometimes you just need someone you can trust to bounce ideas off of. You will create better results if you are sharing your challenges with someone who specializes helping you overcome
3. It’s a dedicated space to step out of living reactively
Most of our days are spent reacting to what is happening around us. Whether it’s children, people on our team, clients, friends, or current events, much of our day is spent responding to the circumstances around us. Coaching provides a window of time to mentally step out of the weeds to envision more for yourself. It allows you to think proactively, not reactively, so you can realign your decisions based around the bigger picture
4. Different Perspectives
A picture cannot see its own frame. We cannot see how we are boxing ourselves in, so it’s important to get another perspective.
Our own thoughts are often the most limiting factor in our lives. We like to think it’s circumstances and situations, but most of us are holding ourselves back by the stories we tell ourselves. Having someone else to look at your thoughts and help you discover what may not be true, or what could be a missed opportunity, can change everything.
5. Develop a Strong Mindset
Over and over again, I hear of how clients have taken the concepts we worked on in one area of their lives and applied it everywhere else. You may start coaching to become more successful or productive at work, but the changes that help you improve there, often also make you a better friend, partner, parent, sibling, etc. You’ve probably heard the saying “The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” When we improve our mindset, we improve every single area of our lives.
Personally, most of my greatest shifts in life have come on the other side of an incredible coaching call. It’s what motivated me to get into this line of work.
I have been working this year with a phenomenal leader. She came to me because she felt like she was always at the bottom of her priority list, running around with her hair on fire, and needing to create a better work-life balance.
Most of our calls have centered around the pain points of leading a team of over 70 employees and the temptation to always work way too many hours each week. However, in just a few months, she has also noticed an improvement in how she is showing up at home, in her friendships and with herself.
As she learns to become a better leader than she already is, the greatest benefit has been the improvement in how she leads herself. She is re-thinking every environment she’s walking into.
If you would like to live beyond the status quo, have safe conversations, live proactively, get a different perspective and strengthen your mindset, schedule a time to chat with Sophia.