10 Reasons To Work with a Coach

Coaching is hot. But how do you know if coaching is for you?

As I talk with people about coaching, a question that often comes up is, how do I know if coaching is for me? Read on for 10 reasons to work with a coach.

In Brief

In short, working with a coach helps you reach your highest potential – in your life, your career, your business or organization – by helping you bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. A coach will partner with you to help you get clear on what you want and then help you plan and take strategic action to make it happen.

Sounds simple, right? But if it were that simple, wouldn’t we all be doing it already?

Why work with a coach?

In my experience both in working with clients and working my own coaches over the years, partnering with a coach can be the difference in actually creating a more purposeful and even extraordinary life versus writing, talking and dreaming about it. A good coach helps you get clear on what you want and then works with you to take intentional action which is a critical tool for positive change.

Coaching is also powerful in helping you move past blocks and self-sabotage that may have tripped you up – or flat out stopped you in your tracks – before. And while coaching is generally focused on where you want to go, it also involves taking an honest look at where you are and what you can shift or change in order to move forward more quickly and easily.

With that in mind, there are many different types of coaches – from health coaches to life coaches to leadership coaches to relationship coaches. I will focus here on success coaching since this is the work I do and what I know best. That said, many of these criteria can be applied to other areas you may be looking for guidance.

Here are ten reasons you might choose to work with a success coach:

1. Clarity: You need to figure out what you want and how to make it happen.
2. Guidance: You’re trying to move forward with a major goal, maybe to re-energize your career or build a new business or make time for an important personal priority, and you want sound guidance.
3. Clear Hurdles: You want to make changes in your business or your life and are willing to do the work necessary, but you feel stuck and need some help breaking through common blocks like fear, inertia, procrastination or lack of clarity.
4. Sounding Board: You want someone that’s experienced to help you think through and process your thoughts, feelings, thorny challenges and next steps in a safe, confidential, and non-judgmental space.
5. Balance: You need help balancing the realities of your day-to-day life with the big picture so you don’t lose sight of those things that are most important.
6. Big Decision: You are trying to make a big decision and need help sorting through information or identifying and weighing your options.
7. Project Management: You want someone to help you keep track of all the different components of your work and your life; to help you break down overwhelming projects or tasks into small, manageable steps; to help you organize and order the desk of your life.
8. Action & Accountability: You want to go beyond talking and start doing—taking inspired action to create sustainable changes in your life. You want someone to hold you accountable for accomplishing those steps.
9. Teammate: You want a partner—you don’t want to go solo as you work through a challenge or transition and are looking for someone to support and champion you and to share the journey.
10. Champion: You want someone to inspire you to go beyond where and what you thought you could – in work and in life – and to help celebrate your progress along the way.

Success coaching is designed to give you clarity, support, confidence and accountability to create the business, career and the life you want. It challenges you to focus your time and energy to do what you want and need to do to get there.

In success coaching you’ll typically design a plan together with your coach, based on your unique vision for success, and then break that plan down into small, manageable steps. This plan may be entirely focused on your business or it may (more often) incorporate other goals as well. Your coaching partnership will help you follow through on those steps, break through obstacles that sabotage your path and keep you stuck, and make adjustments as you keep moving toward your goals.

And while the work is not always easy, it’s not always serious business either. It can be incredibly rewarding to find clarity, start building momentum and to move forward – often quite quickly! – on those things that are most important to you. It can also be fun. There is humor and joy and celebration in the journey – and it is truly possible to find an efficiency of effort that supports greater ease and flow throughout your day.

Here’s something important to keep in mind whether or not you work with a coach: When you’re making changes or moving toward a big goal, you need a combination of reflection and action to succeed. Making some space for reflection helps you get clear on what’s really important and what your vision is while taking inspired action helps you get there. Although this may seem like commonsense, it’s easy to find yourself focused on one without the other.

In our busy modern lives, finding time for the deeper work of reflection alone can be a challenge – and many of us were never taught effective processes and tools to guide us if and when we do carve out some quiet space. Then, in order to take inspired action, we often need a combination of productivity tools, day-to-day systems and possibly a few new paradigms (or a few less limiting beliefs) to move past the obstacles and hurdles that have held us back or tripped us up in the past.

More information, please

My coaching process is designed to help make sure you are doing a combination of the above effectively. I use proven tools to gain greater clarity on what you really want as well as looking at the day-to-day habits and practices that shape your workday and your life. If after an honest look you’re feeling stuck in overwhelm or procrastination or paralysis by analysis, or maybe you’re living on autopilot more than you’d like, pursuing someone else’s dreams or finding life’s challenges are pulling you off-track, coaching may be for you. It can provide greater clarity while accelerating your progress through more focus and awareness of the tools and possibilities that exist to create the work and the life you want.

If you enjoyed this post and want to learn more, you can read about me, read more of my blog, download free tips to create a business and a life you love, check out the stories of people who have worked with me, or contact me directly to see if you qualify for a complimentary strategy session.