One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Cultivating Self as Coach Builds Heat for the Work

Heat is a potent cauldron connecting head, heart, and gut in a mixture that creates an opening for meaningful breakthroughs—the sort that connect the dots, linking who we are today with our past, our narratives, our early attachments, and the scripts we crafted in our early years that no longer serve us as well in our current lives. Heat creates the possibility for new insights and epiphanies. With well-constructed practices and supports, these breakthroughs lead the way to our own vertical development.

Chapters 3 through 9 focus on the six dimensions of Self as Coach and include conceptual links to the foundational theories explored in Chapter 2. The following chapters examine how, as coaches, we can create heat through our use of self and provide practices to begin to incorporate new ways of being into our own sense of the self as a coach.

The six dimensions of Self as Coach are: Presence, Empathy, Range of Feelings, Boundaries and Systems, Embodiment, and Courage (see Figure 3.1). Our most worthy goal as a great coach is to remain at the edge of our growth, always feeling appreciative for where we find ourselves in our development, and simultaneously leaning into new layers and emerging opportunities to deepen our capacity as coach.

In this model, there is no arrival point and there is no perfection. Instead, great coaches share a willingness and a commitment to meeting one’s self at the edge of the boundaries of one’s development. Each of the six dimensions of the Self as Coach model appears as distinct but, in reality, we utilize various dimensions to different degrees and in overlapping ways with each leader with whom we work.

The greatest, and at times most enigmatic, tool that we possess as coaches is a well-developed internal landscape. This is our Self as Coach”—the whole, cultivated, managed self we bring to the coaching experience to inspire and help effect change. The cultivation of self explored in the following chapters is a never-ending unfolding that we owe to ourselves and to the client systems we serve in order to do our very best work with a developmental focus that ultimately changes who we are as human beings.

That said, Self as Coach is a challenging and sometimes elusive concept somewhere between reality and possibility. It embraces who we are, who we want to be, and who we need to be in order to be of true value to our clients. It requires us to be fiercely aware of our strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. It demands that we call forth our talents, address ever-changing challenges, and constantly self-correct.

Understanding and using Self as Coach as the most important tool in our work allows us to move beyond simply using learned tools in the way an actor might play a role and to come to a place that models true development and supports the ability to change. Without use of our self as the most important tool in our work, we are wildly diminished, personally and professionally.

Without Self as Coach, we are left to wonder:

• What if our presence is so overpowering and dominating that a client is reluctant to share her real anxieties and concerns?
• What if our attachment to tools and resources and our tendency to lead with these diminishes our connection with the client?
• What if our tendency to emphasize the positive and veer away from the darker side makes it almost impossible for the client to explore what is most at stake – dark as it might be?
• What if our own raw edges make it difficult to slow down and build the all-important working alliance with our client?
• What if our own fears make us unwilling to help a client pursue a daring alternative?
• What if our own level of development is still in that early socialized stage of either/or thinking and we are unable to go with the client to where their focus needs to be?
• What if our aspirations are so strong that we fail to recognize that our client wants something much simpler, more direct, and more achievable, at least in the short term?

These haunting questions highlight the possibility that some elements in the self of a coach can either promote or undermine our clients’ ability to achieve the changes they so richly desire and deserve. Of course, the list can be endless and you might even craft your own version, but the overriding message in these questions is that in order to do great work as coaches, we need to be thoroughly engaged in our own work with self at all times.

Early in the coaching journey, it’s surprisingly easy to overlook the power of our own capacity (or lack thereof) and view the client as our challenge, perhaps resistant, unwilling to examine tough issues, or talking in circles. This attitude can make it difficult to bring the engagement to a successful conclusion. Yet, in most cases, the coach’s own work on the inner terrain is what allows for something very different to occur during the coaching engagement. It takes courage and commitment for any coach to work the territory of self in order to engage at the highest levels.

Self as Coach work requires us to examine our own histories, our narratives and scripts, the natural limitations, the inevitable blind spots and rough edges in order to strengthen and extend our capacities. Delving into this dark woods is not for every coach, but if you are a coach willing to take this leap and are ready to engage in developmental work with clients that is enduring and often life changing, this is a path to being a great coach. At times tough and challenging, our heat experiences deepen us and enlarge our appetite for engaging in developmental coaching.

A Coach’s Heat Helps the Leader Grow

Fundamentally, a leader approaches coaching because there is something they want or need to tackle that is beyond their current capability, but still important in their leadership role and equally important for the stakeholders in their organization. The leader knocks on the coach’s door when something in life is unsettled, unknown, in motion, or drifting away. Change naturally stirs anxiety and unease, and the nature of the relationship between the coach and leader is pivotal to the success of the engagement.

The leader’s list of needs includes:

• A need to feel a strong sense of respect and unconditional positive regard.
• A need to experience a working alliance and sense of chemistry and partnership with the coach.
• A need to have a sense of partnering together instead of operating in a hierarchical arrangement.
• A fully engaged, committed, and present coach.
• A coach who has made our work a priority that will not get shuffled about or cancelled at the last minute.
• A coach adept and skillful in providing feedback, even when it isn’t easy to receive.
• A coach willing to respectfully challenge the leader’s thinking.
• A coach willing to share a perspective different than mine, perspectives the coach is not attached to persuading me about.
• A coach with a clear and transparent ethical compass.
• A clear contract that resonates and holds the leader accountable for reaching the finish line!

This is a formidable list for any coach! In order to attempt to meet these expectations and strive to engage at a masterful level, a coach needs to continually engage in learning about one’s self from the inside-out: strengths, raw edges, fears, and aspirations alike. Organizational psychologist Ron Short (1998) writes succinctly about our human challenge in this regard: “Our biggest, yet least visible problem is that we think the world is outside of us, distinct and separate from us, this perspective is a simple human reflex.” In order to operate from the inside out and develop a deeper inner dialogue, the coach needs to become very skilled at observing the inner states that drive their actions and responses.

The Potent Combination: Heat of Coach + Leader

Many of us come to coaching assuming it’s all about acquiring tools and techniques to support our work, and instead we find that the most important tool is our self, and this requires a sincere willingness to explore the layers of one’s inner landscape. The late master coach, Doug Silsbee, often said, “We do the work on our ‘self’ in order that we might be granted the privilege of working with our clients.” This statement implies that the coach’s work on self provides a deeper empathy and honoring of the challenges of a client given that the coach has authentically traveled similar roads.

So just how does a coach cultivate the Self as Coach domain in order to continually build capacity in their work with others? That is the focus of Chapters 4 through 9 of this book; each chapter will focus on one of the six elements of Self as Coach. I will describe the concept, explore the concept in case examples and stories, and end each chapter with practices for further development. As a coach, you might find it helpful to read one chapter, take a few notes, engage in some practices, and return to the next chapter in a few days in order to allow some time for your own reflections to emerge on this journey.