Grow Your Inner Coach

“begin to think of yourself…
as becoming the person you want to be.”

– David Viscott  

Self-Coaching for Leaders: Growing Your Compassionate Inner Coach

(Part 1 in a three part series)

Ironically, high-level leadership sometimes brings with it a relative absence of high quality feedback from people skillful and insightful enough to truly challenge and support us to keep growing.   While seeking out and nurturing these kinds of relationships is vital, we can also attend to our own ability to self-generate learning, and to coach ourselves into ever increasing levels of awareness, insight, and action.

To get really good at self-coaching, we need two things: curiosity, and compassion.

Most of us have an internal self-coach already.  What does yours say?  In what ways is yours a true ally?  Where is there room for growth?

It is time to get curious.

First and foremost, great coaches are excellent listeners and observers.  So start by growing the observer muscle. 

Imagine having a video camera on your shoulder, so that you are both moving through your thoughts and your day, and you are also the camera, observing your thoughts, choices, actions, and the impacts all of these have on the world around you.

Next, add compassion.

Cameras don’t judge or berate; they simply observe.  For a time, your camera may well ‘catch’ you  judging or berating yourself!    No worries.  We just need to add compassion.

When we notice ourselves caught in a thought or behavior that we want to change, this is the moment for great shift:

We can either beat ourselves up about it, or we can celebrate that we are awake, aware, noticing, and able to choose again.  We can shift our thoughts, we can shift our choices, and we can shift our actions.

 None of us are perfect.  Even the masters have their shadows.  The question is how we will use the immerse power of our attention.

By shifting from judging (and contracting) to noticing, learning, and choosing again, (and expanding) there is more available to us.  More wisdom, more gentleness, and more capacity for right action.  Most importantly, we open to an accelerated, self-generating learning path.

Mastering this skill of compassionate self-coaching, we become capable of exponential learning.  We can access wisdom, and not just intelligence.  We can set ourselves free from a cycle of blame and judgment (both of which make us smaller and more contracted).  We gain far more ability to course-correct with gentleness and accuracy as we navigate through life.

So turn your imaginary camera on. Just get curious.  What do you notice?

Parts 2 and 3 to follow:

Part 2: a sailing story about learning and growing a compassionate inner coach.

Part 3: Practices for growing your compassionate inner coach.