In August 2022, one of my colleagues introduced me to the concept of coaching. Everyone knows what a coach of a sports team does, but this was different. He was talking about a coach who works with you in your workplace to become better at what you do. Similar to the “life coach” idea, but specifically targeted to professional development.
My colleague and I have been meeting around once per week to learn more about coaching and what it can look like in a school setting. Through these conversations, and what I have come to understand about coaching over the past four months through books, websites, social media posts, and podcasts, I have come to the conclusion that I would like to become a coach.
I am not saying that I want to quit my job! The training that I would do to become a coach would help me in my current leadership position regardless of whether I actually do become a coach in the future. And even if I do become a coach, it could be something that I do outside of my work hours while keeping my current position.
This is still an idea that I am exploring and not married to, but I have been thinking about it for a long time and I decided that today is the day that I put it out into the universe and see what happens.
This terrifies me because:
- What if I fail?
- What if I am a bad coach?
- What if I do all the work to become a coach and then find out I don’t like it?
- What if people who read this think, “Oh, she would be terrible at that. What is she thinking? How embarrassing for her.”
That’s a lot of noise, eh?
As a part of my research into this idea, I have had two coaching sessions, and I discussed this idea at one of them. My coach expertly guided me through a conversation that explored the caverns of my brain and helped me see the kinds of thoughts that I was having around this topic. She helped me see how my own thoughts might be sabotaging my efforts. She helped me get out of my own way.
I don’t really know if this is the right path for me because there is no way to know that other than to just start down it and see where it leads, so I am going to send this idea out into the universe today and see what happens.
Eek!
