In this solo episode, Charlie reflects on first steps in becoming a coach, reflecting both on his experience and those of coaches he knows. Charlie became a coach in 2007, and has had all the ups and downs that many coaches experience. The training, the looking to establish a coaching business, and all of the choices made in the early days. Main topics discussed in the episode:
In this conversation, Charlie reflects on what it was like as a new coach, and how those early days may have shaped the coach and coach trainer he has become. In addition:
He talks about the support that the coaching industry offers to new coaches, and where it could improve
The experience of fellow coaches that he knows and has worked with
The highs and lows of trying to find coaching clients.
Each story shared brings real-life insights that both new and experienced coaches can connect with and learn from.
Useful Links From This Episode:
Transcript:
Charlie Warshawski (00:14.552)
Hello fellow coaches, how are you doing? I hope that you’re really well and that whatever you’re up to this week, that it’s all going well and that you’re getting lots of coaching opportunities or opportunities to talk and think about your coaching. I’m recording this at nine o’clock on Monday morning. So I’ve done little in the week. This is the first coaching activity that I’m doing in the week, but I did find myself a lot over the weekend thinking about these episodes that I’m gonna be recording today and really looking forward to sharing some ideas and some thoughts with you.
What about you? Do you notice that at the weekend? Do you try and have a bit of downtime, a bit of time off coaching, or do you find that as with all things that we care about, they bubble away, they bubble away in your thoughts and your background? I’d be really interested to know, really interested to hear. So today is the first full session in series two, series two, which is all about starting your journey as a coach and those beginning steps. You’re going to hear lots of
reflections from lots of people and lots of observations that I’m making from what I’m observed and a little bit of my own experience. This is the fundamental question that we all need to ask and we all need to have an answer to for ourselves, for our friends and family as well is why become a coach? It’s a question that I thought about a little bit before I became one and an awful lot since I’ve become one and a lot of course about other people becoming coaches.
So why this topic? It is a question we need to address. It’s not a traditional career change, I think, and it’s definitely not something that people start out with their careers and do. So it’s often a mid-career or even a later career question that we have to ask ourselves. I do notice lots of people come to training who say things like, people have said that I would be a good coach or I’ve read about coaching and I’ve found that it really
feels like it’s me. it does often feel like that there’s already a connection that people have with coaching. And that’s really significant, I think really important to be able to just pick up some of those thoughts and some of those ideas. We all plan careers in different ways, don’t we? And I think depending on our age, maybe depending on our family background, our circumstances, our motivation, know, I’m looking at my children range between
Charlie Warshawski (02:36.046)
currently between year 12 and being 29 and married. And I’ve observed all four of those going through their early career journey and what you have to decide about at school and at university and those first four A’s into a career. And I’m in my late 50s and I think about how I did it in the 80s and then again in the 90s. And I think about my mom in the 1950s and my dad just making those decisions.
choosing a career for life and off they go. It changes. And I definitely observe that in coaching, people come to coaching mid-career. Sometimes occasionally we meet people in their 20s, occasionally in their 70s, but mostly it’s a nice sway between the 30s and the 40s and the 50s. So what I thought it’d be helpful to look at is why think about becoming a coach.
and also ask the question, am I becoming a coach and it’s a career change or am I becoming a coach and it’s I’m staying in my job and I’m improving in my job but I’m not shifting to a massive career change. So I’m looking at it in three different contexts. Firstly, I’m looking at it in the context of professional development, in the context of personal development and also in the context of potentially thinking about a way to earn a living.
All three of those things are important. And I do want to make the observation that there may be other things, but I can’t think of many things that you can go away and learn. And either it means a complete career change and giving up your job and starting a new job or setting up your own business. Or learning the same thing could keep you in your job and keep you in your job and maybe enhance your job. I don’t think there’s many things like that where
actually offers those two options. And this is what we observe in training, probably about 70, 75 % of people we work with are staying in their jobs and they carry on doing their jobs. And then the remainder are thinking about or actively ready to change and set up their coaching business. So we work with both groups and we think about both groups.
Charlie Warshawski (05:27.63)
I think before we get into this as the topic, I have had a couple of reflections myself about what brought me to coaching. And I’m really clear that what brought me to coaching is not the same as what keeps me coaching all these many years later. I think what brought me to coaching was, as with many, many other people, I was at a transition point in my life. was early 40s and I’d been working in a school for six years.
working as a learning mentor and greatly enjoying it. But we had some life changes that my wife and I moved from living very near to our school to living about 10 or 15 miles away. We’d just had a baby and the year group that I was working with was just coming up to the end of year 11 and graduating. So I was sort of ready for a bit of a change. And I also, I think was
ready to stop being employed and had a bit of an eye of autonomy and independence. My older children were a bit young and I loved the flexibility of being able to be at the school gate when possible. So I started looking around for work that might help support me be a bit more autonomous. And it just so happened that a friend of mine who was running a training company needed someone to help do some of the admin and also run the training course with students in schools.
studies girls, that sort of thing. That quite appealed to me. And so I started doing that work with him. And then within about six months, he’d merged his company with a coaching business. And he was training to be a coach. And I looked at it for about a nanosecond and said, oh yeah, I’ll do that as well. And it looked interesting. So I sort of fell into it. And it was great and it was exciting and it was new, it was 2007. It was relatively early days, I think.
And I greatly, greatly enjoyed it. That’s what took me into it. What keeps me in it all of these years later, I think it wasn’t those early drives for independence and autonomy. It’s actually this idea that it’s a wonderful thing to learn and it’s a great way to contribute to wellbeing generally and greatly enjoying all the coaching work that I do. But now these days, much more supporting other coaches. That’s what keeps me in it.
Charlie Warshawski (07:47.511)
if we train on average 100 people a year, then that’s, and they all have four five people they work with, that’s 500 people getting good coaching experience. That’s a wonderful thing. That’s a huge contribution. So that’s what keeps me in it, I think, all these years later. But what about you? The people who listening to this, you might have already gone down this pathway. So you might have made some of these decisions and faced some of these choices, but you might not. You might be really thinking about it. So perhaps think about,
What’s sparking your interest? know, what’s making you interested in coaching? Is it because you’ve been coached? Is it because someone said to you, do know what, you could be a great coach or is it just that you’ve come across it and you’re thinking, maybe this is a thing for me? Okay. Let’s start looking at some of these areas. I talked about professional development, personal development and potential income. So start about professional development.
Not everyone comes to coaching, learning to be a coach, because they are looking for career development. As an example, we work quite closely with the Salvation Army, and we’ve trained about 40 of their people. Some people work in learning development, some people run what traditionally I think we would call ministers or vicars in Salvation Army.
They call them officers, people who run churches. And a lot of those people, what I get struck with is that they definitely want to coach and want to coach well to support their colleagues and to support their communities. But it’s not like some career aspiration. It’s not like that they’re gonna move up to a more senior level. And I think we see that pattern time and time and time again, that people, it helps them do their job better. It helps them be better, but they’re not necessarily using it
to shape and to shift their careers. So what I think the professional aspect of learning to be a coach is that the skills of being a really good coach are so congruent with the skills of being a good person, being a good listener, being a person who cares, being a person who holds back from giving unnecessary advice. For a person who can give a friend or colleague a bit of space to be able to talk through,
Charlie Warshawski (10:14.004)
something positive or something challenging. It is a wonderful skill to have. And I think that I can’t think of many jobs where having coaching skills wouldn’t enhance. Perhaps there’s some jobs where there’s so much decision making to be made and it’s like 24-7 decisions, like, I don’t know, an air traffic controller or something like that. The idea that coaching would be so far away from anything you would possibly do in your day job, maybe it would get in the way.
But for most jobs, certainly when we get into any type of leadership contest, most jobs, the idea of being able to create a listening environment is incredibly important and really, really helpful. So I think from a professional development, it’s almost inevitable it’s gonna make you better at your job, almost inevitable. And that’s a wonderful thing. That’s a joyous, joyous thing to see.
And I often hear this. I’m often told by people who’ve learned to be coaches, they say things like, I am a better leader. I’m running my meetings better. I’m giving my colleagues more time and space. When I talk about an open door policy, I really mean it. I welcome people in now. I haven’t got half an eye on the clock. And these are busy, busy, busy people, right? People who have very little time, very little discretionary time, and yet they’re finding this time to coach well.
Charlie Warshawski (11:52.495)
So on the very micro level, learning the skills of coaching, I think is incredibly useful for professional development. And I think it’s likely to add value, whatever shape or size your organization is. If you are someone who people know you’re a coach or you know how to coach, they’re likely to seek you out or they’re likely to know that if they’re having a conversation with you, that it’s going to be of a certain time, it’s going to be that.
Quite challenging perhaps, but quite joyous that you’re not going to ram any advice down their throats, but you’re going to give them the time and the space to come up with their own thoughts and their own ideas. And even to the point we often find and hear that the colleagues of coaches start working out the problems and the solutions for themselves because they think, well, what would Paul have asked me? What would David have asked me? And they realize that they can start doing a little bit of self-coaching.
You can permeate through the organization and can start to shift how other people work just by the nature of you being a coach. I think that’s really important and really helpful. And I think the other thing is, although it might feel quite challenging, for example, to go through a coaching qualification and do study and assignments and observations and feedback and all that jazz, actually, one of the wonderful things is that most people, when they get a bit of experience, realize
that they already have plenty of coaching skills. And I’m always at great pains to point this out, that I don’t believe that coaches have these sort of special magic secret skills, you know, wrapped up in, enshrouded in mystery, the way that it can be presented. I think these are the everyday skills of good people, of good conversationalists, of good colleagues, good friends, good parents, good siblings, good offspring. Maybe we’ll use it.
Slightly differently, as coaches, we definitely don’t see ourselves as equal conversation partners talking as much as the other person. So maybe we talk less and listen more, but nevertheless, these are skills that we can all access, which is wonderful and it’s great. The last thing I want to say about using it for professional development is that I think it really does enhance credibility. And even if we’re not doing it for credibility, people know.
Charlie Warshawski (14:17.816)
So I think of a few examples. One example is Independent Association of Prep Schools. We work with them very closely, have done for years, and they fully fund for 24 serving head teachers each year to earn a coaching qualification. They’ve done this since 2020. It’s a wonderful and unique thing that happens in the education sector that’s going on here.
Each of those 24 head teachers has to get permission to go and study this master’s level coaching qualification from their chairs of governors. And the chairs of governors agree and they sign it off. say, yes, please do go ahead, go and learn a coaching qualification. We know it would take time, but it’s really worth it. So that’s one indicator of professional credibility. Recently I saw or was told about two job ads, two job ads for
headteachers of schools. in West London, one in South of London. Both in primary schools. And what was striking about these ads, and I’ve never seen this anywhere before, is that both of the ads said, we’re looking for the successful applicants to either have an ILM Level 7 coaching qualification or be prepared to work towards one. Now that’s a bit of a game changer, isn’t it? The idea that
To be a head teacher, you might be asked to have a coaching qualification. That might seem a bit harsh because head teachers have so many other things to learn, so many other skills. But I think it indicates a little bit, certainly in these schools, the direction of travel. The idea that coaching is seen as a really important bit of professional development and a great thing that you can have people bring to this role. I remember about 10 years ago,
A pal of mine who works in HR recruitment said it was happening in HR at director level and we’ve trained loads of very senior HR people and that’s what we’re seeing. in HR, yes, you need a coaching qualification when you advance your career. So we can see professional credibility as well as a capability of you within your office.
How are we doing? How’s this today? Is this helping you think perhaps in your own job, how you would be able to use your coaching skills and benefit from having advanced coaching skills to be able to support colleagues, influence your organization and help things run a bit more smoothly? Or are you thinking about becoming a coach to leave your organization and start your own work? Well, we’ll get into that a little bit in the second half.
Let’s take a little break and have a cup of tea and I’ll see you in a while for the second bit of this episode.
Charlie Warshawski (17:26.563)
Welcome back to this episode where I’m talking about the idea of becoming a coach and addressing this question, why become a coach? The second sub topic here is all about personal development. And it’s a really thorny one, I have to say. It’s one that I thought about so much over the years. And in fact, later on in this series, I’m gonna do a whole episode all about, all about coaching and personal development, because there’s a great debate. There’s a great debate in coaching whether
whether coaching has to be about personal development or not. And so I can only really talk about my experience and what I observe. I think that it’s almost inevitable, even if the coach training you do isn’t focused and isn’t centered on personal development, actually it’s almost inevitable that you will get caught up in a personal development cycle.
And that might fill some of your hearts with joy and for others, perhaps with dread. Who knows? Who knows? Certainly, if I think about it, when I started to learn to be a coach in my early 40s, I had a bit of an awareness of psychology. I had a bit of awareness about what makes people tick, but probably not very much. And when I think about it, my first depth of reading anything really sort of substantial about
What makes a mind work was when I started to coach. The first time that I ever did a psychometric tool, a Myers-Briggs equivalent, was when I started to be a coach. The first time that I ever really started thinking about different personality types in a way of understanding it when I became a coach. The first time that I started thinking about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, about growth mindset, about learned optimism, and many other aspects.
when I learned to be a coach. So personal development is definitely part of coaching and definitely part of the development of us as coaches. Why? Partly because we are trying to understand ourselves and understand well.
Charlie Warshawski (19:44.504)
what it is to be a human being, but then what it is to be a human being in front of that other person, noticing how we’re going to manage ourselves and manage ourselves well so that we do the best job as coaches. But probably, and probably slightly more controversially, I think personal development and understanding, for example, things like personality types and traits is likely to influence what we understand about the person opposite us. It’s likely to have us think a little bit about,
What’s going on with this person and why is that person reacting that way to that thing, whereas someone else would react in a different way. There’s a risk here, of course, isn’t it? Suddenly we get into thinking we’re the expert in human behavior, rush around diagnosing everything. I’m not saying that we should do that. But I’m saying, I think that if you’re interested in how the mind works, if you’re interested in your own internal narrative, if you’re interested in your personal growth and development, then
then coaching definitely draws you into that world. And you may be in that world for a number of reasons. By the time I started to learn to coach, had three children and then a fourth. And so I was very interested in parenting and very interested in child development. Of course, I was still working in schools and still doing a lot of work with teachers about various aspects of learning. So that was a shared and a common interest.
And I, as many others have been, I’ve been on my life’s journey. I’ve had my own ups and downs and each of those times that I’ve had a down in particular, I think I’ve taken to the literature, I’ve taken to reading, I’ve taken to understanding myself. It’s a bit Marmite, I’m going to say in Britain, the mind, body, spirit and the psychology sections of the bookshops can be rich and fascinating. And for some,
can be slightly too esoteric, can be a bit too sort of quirky. So we have to make our own peace. If this is of interest to you and you’re thinking about it, you’re mulling over it, listen to the episode that’ll be later in this series all about, should coach training also consist of personal development? The jury’s out on that one, certainly in my head as well. So that’s the second aspect I think that we need to think about when thinking about why coaching.
Charlie Warshawski (22:09.795)
thinking about the personal development aspect of it. And the third one, and probably the one that is the most challenging and perhaps the most worrisome, but also the one that can really make us navigate our lives in a slightly different way is to answer this question, can I make a living from coaching? And you’re gonna get all of series three is all about that. It’s all about growing your coaching business. So I’m just gonna touch on it because the…
The question probably that most of us would ask ourselves if you’re going to pack in your job and set up as a coach is, can I make a living from coaching? And my very, very simple answer is yes, but it’s hard. And very rarely does anyone make a full living and pay their mortgage from coaching. There might be a few of those types of powerhouse alpha coaches out there.
But most coaches that I know, including some of the most experienced in the country, make a living from a hybrid approach, coaching and training or coaching and supervising or coaching and keeping hold of a previous day job, supply teaching or running yoga classes or all sorts of other things. So there are five people I know who are making a living paying their mortgage just from coaching, but there’s a thousand who aren’t.
You will hear that message many times on this podcast. But the idea of engaging and thinking that you can set up a coaching business or maybe a coaching and also a training business is definitely possible. It’s definitely possible and it can be a career next steps. I think you have to tune into wisdom. The wisdom that I didn’t tune into when I first started, I sort of believed the narrative of
this isn’t hard, just get a book of clients and off you go and blah, blah. How naive I was. Most people I know aren’t so naive and in our world, we always tell people, know, what I’ve just said, that message that I’ve just said there. But it is possible and it’s certainly possible if you’ve got a little bit of an entrepreneurial experience. And nowadays, I think if you have a bit of knowledge and a bit savvy around marketing or prepared to learn it.
Charlie Warshawski (24:32.973)
the idea that you can go and have a next phase of your professional life running a coaching business. And there’s all sorts of varieties of that, all sorts of variations on the theme of with on your own, with other people, during an organization as associate and so on. That is definitely, definitely possible. And it’s worth considering. And the other bit of career development is that coaching
becomes like a significant, very visible part of your day job. So you might be, for example, as we have with our colleagues at Ofcom, they have, they have, can I say proper day jobs, know, very complex day jobs in this regulator, but they also, 30 or so of them are coaches and they, they’re part of the coaching pool and they meet and they have professional supervision and they, they
have clients that come to them internally within Ofcom and they work in that way. So they work as coaches. Other people in a lot of commercial organizations, some universities now, you have internal coaches, full-time or part-time jobs. Your job is to coach. You do your coaching hours by staying in a job, getting a salary, but coaching. That’s a wonderful thing. Or some jobs like some of the leadership.
jobs that I mentioned earlier on where you have a substantial day job, like as an HR manager or as a school leader, head teacher, but you are coaching and you have coaching clients. You might be doing it on the side as part of your job. You might be doing it in the very, very tiny amount of spare time that you have available, but nevertheless, you’re doing some extra coaching work.
So there are lots of options. There are lots of possibilities and I think lots of compelling reasons to become a coach. And I’ve talked about, I’ve broken it down into three areas, haven’t I? I’ve broken it down into the professional development, the personal development and the potential career development. And for each of us, it’s very different.
Charlie Warshawski (26:50.285)
And probably what is like an overarching idea around all of those is the idea of doing good. And I’ve thought about this an awful lot. When I was trying to career change in my 30s and then in my 40s, I was a bit lost and I was a bit clueless and I couldn’t work it out. And I used to, when people say, well, what do you want to do? And I used to say things like, well, I’m not really sure, but I know I just want to help people.
And I would get a lot of eye rolling and my dad shaking his head and that type of thing, because it was nonspecific. And how do you go and look for a job in just helping people? It’s confusing. But I realized here 20 years later that actually that’s what coaching is. It’s definitely not the only way. There’s many, many, many wonderful ways of helping people. Of course there are, but it’s a good way. I think it’s a wonderful way and it’s a great way. The rewards that we get
from coaching. The word that I hear more than any other word from coaches is the P word. Coaches say it’s a privilege. It’s a privilege to sit in a room with someone where they share openly, vulnerably, and where I support them to get to a different place. I’m sure it’s a very similar feeling that many, many, other professionals have, certainly. When I listen to my wife, my wife’s a teacher and
Definitely I get that same type of idea of seeing people grow and flourish because of the support you’re giving them. Coaching is quite rare in a way because I think we provide lots of support in not very many hours. We don’t work like teachers, for example, 30 hours a week for 39 weeks for many, many years to help change someone. We’re just doing a tiny bit. So we can’t ever claim ever that
The reason that someone has grown or developed is because of the coaching. We’re part of the support group. I often see that, I often think when I work with a head teacher, I think that the coach, the partner, the leadership team, the colleagues, the friends and family, they all go to contribute, some more than others, to how this head teacher is growing and changing. And it’s joyous to be part of that team.
Charlie Warshawski (29:15.989)
even if it’s only for a few hours. So I think overarching everything that I’ve said becomes this idea that we have an opportunity to make a positive contribution to society, one person at a time. And that’s what really fills my heart with joy, I’m sure. So fellow coaches, I hope I’ve given you food for thought. Perhaps if you’re planning on going down this route and you want to be able to have the conversation with your
loved ones with your family to say why become a coach? I’ve given you a few things to think about. No magic, right? No magic answers are guaranteed to pay the mortgage. None of that. But the idea that this could be something for good. I haven’t even talked today about how much coaching I think can improve our personal relationships. That’s for another one. There’s definitely a whole episode to be done on that with a guest. And if you’re thinking about this, if you’re really thinking about is coaching the right thing for me,
One of the great things I think is that you can do a little bit of try before you buy. You you can come and do a short course, you can do a taster, you can get an accreditation that doesn’t take too long and then just try out coaching. I see this a lot for people who come and do, for example, a level three program. It takes time and effort, but they can stick in their job and then they do some coaching and they grow in that way. So there’s always a possibility a little bit of try before you buy.
I’d really encourage you to talk to a coach. Talk to a coach that you know. See what they say. Everyone knows a coach these days. Of that, I’m pretty convinced. If you have no coaches in your world, or even if you just want to, get in touch with me, charlotteloveyourcoaching.com. I’m always, always up for talking to coaches or, or wannabe coaches. Very, very happy to talk and share. Love to hear your thoughts about today. I’d really love to hear about your journey, about how much of this sinking you did before you came into. coaching and decided to be a coach or where you’re thinking is right now, if that’s the journey that you’re on. Whatever you’re up to this week, fellow coaches, have a good day. Know that you’re out there helping people. Take care and happy coaching.
About Charlie:
I’m Charlie Warshawski, a UK based coach, coach trainer and supervisor. Coaching has been my thing since 2007 and I’ve been keen to start this podcast, to help fellow coaches navigate the difficulties of running a coaching business or practice. Most of my coaching takes place in education and I love coaching school leaders. And most of the supervision I do is with coaches who are starting their coaching practice.
Since 2019 I’ve been supporting new and experienced coaches with resources to help them grow their business – our free The Sustainable Coach programme is available to all coaches, and over 200 coaches have accessed these resources.
Away from coaching, four children, three pets, a poor table tennis and cycling schedule and a thirst for language learning all keep me busy.
Love Your Coaching Resources:
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- Contacts: charlie@loveyourcoaching.com | hello@loveyourcoaching.com| 01306 264026 | 0774 8515189
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