In this solo episode, Charlie draws on his experience of seeing over a thousand people train to be coaches, and talks about why people are drawn to learning this skill In this episode, talks about how people gradually go from being interested in coaching, to becoming passionate about it
Main Topics Discussed in the Episode:
In this conversation, he reflects on what we can learn by thinking about what coaches love about coaching. He also talks about:
[Main Point 1]: the moment when coaches start feeling confident and realising they can coach well
[Main Point 2]: when coaches see the impact of their coaching on their clients
[Main Point 3): how more experienced coaches are able to use coaching skills in different parts of their lives
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 (00:04.6)
Greetings fellow coaches. I hope you do well. hope you’re having a good week and that whatever you’re up to in your world of coaching that all is going very, very well. What coaching thoughts have you been having this week? I’ve been having interesting times. We’re at the stage in a whole group of coach training programs where the coaches start to feel confident. We’re getting to the end of module two of three modules and we start to notice this change when they realize that they can coach and they can.
hold the space and they can use the structure well and some of the early worries are starting dampening away. It’s a thing. It’s a really nice thing to get to that stage to see what that’s like. What about you all? What’s going on with your coaching this week? Whatever you’re up to, I hope it’s all good and it’s going well. It’s very apt that I’m talking now about this idea of coaches getting a bit more confident because today’s episode is all about what do coaches love?
about coaching. Lots of people come to coaching for all sorts of reasons. So I’m very mindful of not generalizing, but I wanted to talk about my observation about why people love coaching, why people love wanting to become a coach and becoming coaches and then making coaching a part of their life and their practice. So let’s look at that. I’ll share what I’ve observed. I’m not going to talk really about myself today about why I love coaching. Save that for another.
time, but I’m going to talk about what I observe in other people. Clearly, the place to start is for yourselves, your coaches, if you’re listening to this, I’m imagining. Why do you love coaching? And do you love coaching in the same way today, however many months or years you are into your practice as you did on day one? Maybe the excitement that you had on day one has increased, that maybe it’s diminished a bit because of the struggles.
to grow a coaching practice and all the ups and downs of all of that. But I’m hoping that that passion, that that fire of really wanting to be a great coach is just burning so strongly for you. So I’m going to talk a little bit in the first half about coaches who start loving their coaching and training. And in the second half about coaches when they are qualified, when it’s all going well. So.
Charlie Warshawski (02:24.78)
Settle down and enjoy some of these thoughts. If you agree with me, great. If you don’t agree with me, great. It’d be really, really interesting to hear your thoughts as well. So let’s talk about new coaches. Let’s think about people who are new to coaching. They have come across coaching, often people come across coaching because they’ve been coached because someone in their environment, in their organization, or maybe a friend or a colleague or even a partner.
Her is coaching and they’ve had some coaching sessions. So very often we see that people turn up in training wanting to be coaches because they’ve been coached and they really enjoyed being coached well. Sometimes it’s the opposite. One of my colleagues, Sue, she came to coaching after she’d been coached really badly a number of times and started to think she was a really bad coachee if there’s such a thing.
before she had some good coaching and turned it around and then realized that coaching can be incredibly impactful thing. So what I see with coaches who are just signing up for coaching, firstly, there’s a early enthusiasm, maybe even before they get in the training room and when they’re in the training room and going relatively quickly, I’m going to say going through that pain point of the first practice session. Now that seems to be a real watershed moment when
when someone is all worried and all nervous, can they do it? Can’t they do it? Are they going to be any good? Will everyone else in the group be better than them? To then calming out and the sense of relief at that moment when they get through their first coaching practice and realize that not only did they not make a mess of it, but they’ve done it pretty well. that the coachee is saying nice things about what they experienced and they managed to relax into it.
I think that’s a really important moment and I’m sure we can all remember that as coaches, can’t we? That first coaching session that went well. And I definitely remember too badly those early coaching sessions that didn’t go well. And it’s really important to go back to those ones that did go well. So I think that’s a really big thing, a big early moment. And then after that, then there’s a settling, isn’t there? There’s that settling phase of, okay, this is a skill I can learn and I can work. And…
Charlie Warshawski (04:47.041)
They start working on their coaching practice and start practicing with other people in the group and start practicing with their practice clients and start seeing that not only can they do this, but also it’s a good thing to do. And they start getting lovely feedback from their coaches, telling them what a good job they’re doing and how impactful the work that they’re doing with them is. And so they’re realizing that coaching is having an impact on other people’s lives.
And suddenly it’s a bit of a game changer. Suddenly people can say, okay, this skill that I thought I was learning for whatever reason actually is making a real difference to people in their lives. And we’re lucky here at Love Your Coaching, most of the people that we train tend to work in one or other of the more altruistic caring sectors of society. We work education and health, charity sector, local authority.
Not really in the for-profit sector. We have the odd person, but not many. So these are people who are pretty mission led, people who really want to add value to society, wants to make a contribution. So it’s probably speaking to the jobs that they already do. You know, if you are a teacher or if you are working in HR or working in learning and development, you’re likely to have already been doing this type of work. You’ve been already helping people improve their lives. So
It probably fits really well into their narrative of how they like to work with other people. And that’s really important. So I think all of that allows people to see that coaching is a really useful thing. Why else do people, coaches at those early stages, really, really like their coaching? Excuse me.
Charlie Warshawski (06:47.777)
The next thing I want to talk about here is the skills. It’s quite simply the skills that people already bring into coaching, but they improve. Most people who come to coach training are good conversationalists. They know how to handle themselves in a conversation. They know how to listen. They know to ask questions, to engage, to use their body language well. They know all that type of stuff. But of course, coaching takes all of those things and
and uses him in a different way. You know, we might know how to be a good conversationalist, but a good conversationalist who only speaks for 20 % of the time is different, isn’t it? We might know how to listen well, but we might not know before we’ve done coach training that listening well means not then when the person stops telling your own story, offering your own perspective on it. And the idea that gradually people use their existing skills to make the conversation all about the other person.
And for us to be like the real vessel of that other person’s thinking and feeling and growth and development. And that’s an incredibly powerful thing because it doesn’t happen very often. You know, it’s a rare moment, think, in outside of coaching style of relationships, when you get that, you know, most conversations are 50 50 or something of that nature. So I think realizing that they not only can.
hold the space, but also that they like holding the space. I think that’s a really big thing. And I mentioned that watershed moment a couple of minutes ago when they, when coaches do their first practice session and it works really well. think there’s another watershed moment. And that’s a moment when people realize that they really are listening. So what I observe is when we do a listening practice, maybe in the first module, lots of people come back.
from their first listening practice and saying, it’s definitely listening, but I really wanted to say something or I was, was, you know, sitting on my hands while chewing my fist or biting my lip or that type of thing, you know? So yes, they’re listening. Yes, they’re given the space, but there’s still this sort of itch to say something. When that goes away, when that slows down and coaches get really comfortable in that, in that approach of like, not only am I not just…
Charlie Warshawski (09:08.585)
self-managing and holding back, but actually I’m really enjoying the idea of giving you the space. And that’s a wonderful moment and it happens at different times for many of us, but I think it’s a really powerful and a really important moment. For some people, it takes ages to happen. It takes years. If you’re sitting there having been a coach for three years and think, well, I still haven’t reached that moment. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. When I first…
started coaching, I met someone who said, well, I’ve been coaching for 20 years, but because I’ve got a specialist in this area, I always probably share a bit and share a bit too much. So some people maybe don’t get there for a long time. wherever we’re at is absolutely fine. So I’m talking about the skills that coaches have and they can start using. And there’s two other things I want to say about these skills. One is that people realize that the coaching skills don’t just
get used in the coaching room. Often people say, I’m finding myself using my coaching skills in all sorts of conversations, you know, maybe running a meeting and I’m, and I’m asking questions more than giving my opinion. Maybe when someone’s done that classic knock on the door and say, said, Jane, have you got two minutes? It’s never two minutes, is it? and rather than rush to a solution, listening, you know, listening and taking the time.
And I think people really like that, really like the idea that these coaching skills are not just for those special coaching sessions with ring fence time, but actually can be used loads of the time. I’m sure all experienced coaches out there know there’s a little bit of a caveat to that because sometimes people push back, know, particularly our nearest and dearest, you know, sometimes our loved ones say to us, stop doing that, you know, and my wife will sometimes say, could you just stop blooming coaching, please? It’s annoying.
so we have to accept that, don’t we? We can’t always just embrace that. a, in training recently said he did exactly what I’ve done, which is try and use your, your, your coaching skills when you’re having dinner or having a walk with your wife. And, and he said he was trying all of these types of techniques and his wife looked him in the eye and said, darling, could you just be normal? so there was a terrible warning. Don’t use your coaching skills all the time. But I have heard this.
Charlie Warshawski (11:30.798)
on the other side of it. I don’t want to, I don’t want this to sound at all immodest on behalf of the coaches, but I hear coaches say things like, I’ve become a better person. I’ve become a better husband. I’ve become a better wife. I’ve become a better parent. And I would never put that like on a, you know, on a glossy flyer or on an Instagram post or something like that. But people do say it, you know, they really say it. They really say, I’ve just learnt to listen better.
and to slow down and give my child the attention and put my phone down and not interrupt and all those things. And when you hear this is deeply moving, of course it is. It’s a wonderful thing. And it’s inspiration, know, it’s inspiration to all of us. So I’ve started really talking about and really reflecting about coaches in training and why they love coaching. I also observe that people love the training process, you know.
They’re working harder than the sales. Often people come to coach training when they haven’t done a lot of professional development for a long time, because they’re quite senior. Their last bit of CPD was five or 10 years ago, or the last time they wrote a masters or something was a long time ago. So just engaging in a learning community, sharing with other people, having that type of peer experience, I think is really important as well. And it makes a big difference.
So fellow coaches, coming to halfway. And I wanted this first half to really reflect on that early months or years of people coming along to coaching. I’m not trying to paint it as like a panacea or a Pollyanna and everyone’s delighted 24 seven because of course we all have the ups and downs of this type of thing. But definitely coaches in training and new coaches really seem to love their coaching. What about you?
What about you? Can you go back to your first year? Can you really think about that beating heart, that passion, that care for coaching that I’m sure you had when you first started? Hopefully you still got it. Have a little reflect on that as you go and put the kettle on. Think about that. then we’re to come back and we’re going to talk a little bit about the more experienced coach. So see you in a little while.
Charlie Warshawski (14:54.839)
Welcome back. I hope you had a little bit of a leg stretch or if you are driving or gardening or walking or just mitching around the house, always going well. Let’s talk now about the more experienced coach, maybe two years into the practice or five or 10 or 20. What is it that the experienced and qualified coach loves about coaching? Again, we’ve got a whole bunch of categories we can talk about.
The employed coach, the, I’ve just learned the language of the generalist coach. I quite like that term. the specialist coach, the internal coach, the person running their own coaching business. today I’m just talking about why they, why coaches love coaching. I’m not worrying about the whole big picture of coaching businesses. So we’re just talking about coaching. I think with as like a starting point, we can really think about anyone who moves to a level of.
high degree of confidence in any skill. If you think about wherever you’ve worked, the idea of people who have been there five or 10 years, who’ve worked hard, have become particularly skillful. I think it’s not automatic, but often with skill and with experience comes confidence. I’ve worked a long time in schools. Before that, I worked in the voluntary sector. Before that, I worked in hotels when I was a very young man. And I would always observe the same thing, is that
There would be like an optimum moment when people had been doing their job for, I don’t know, maybe five years, seven years, they’d be highly skilled, highly accomplished, and would be pretty well in that flow state, you know, when they were doing their job, especially if it needed either manual skills or physical skills or some sort of dexterity or brain skills. The trick of course was to keep that.
that level of motivation and confidence up when you get moving to 10 and 15 and 20 years and not to plateau and not to get disenchanted and cynical that often happens, I think. Coaches are no different. Coaches who learn to practice and learn to become very good are able to become increasingly confident. If we think about the full-time coach, of which there’s not loads, but someone who is coaching an awful lot,
Charlie Warshawski (17:20.052)
Either they may be an internal coach or they are, they’re running their own coaching business. So they’re looking to be coaching an awful lot, getting hundreds of hours under their belt, having sat in a room for hundreds of hours and worked with dozens of, of coaches. Those experiences build and the experience of being able to do the coaching well really, really builds.
And seeing coaches grow and change and develop and work really hard and suffer and be vulnerable, it has to impact us, doesn’t it? I find coaches are deeply moved and are profoundly appreciative of their coaches. The word that comes out so often, I’m sure you’ve all used it, is privilege. It feels like a privilege, doesn’t it? People sharing, people being so open, people saying,
to coaches, I haven’t told anyone else this before, or I didn’t realize I was going to say this today. I’ve gone so far. as experienced coaches, those client hours meaning something, I think that’s a really big point and a really important starting point. And then in rhythm with that, of course, is the idea that we hear the stories, we hear the stories of growth and change.
We hear the stories of impact. Coaches come back to our follow-up coaching session talking about the actions that they’ve done or talking about the changes that they’re making to their work or to their life. We encourage coaches to have an end of whole coaching program review session where they meet with their coaches maybe a couple of months after the coaching program’s finished and find out what’s changed, what’s different since day one.
It’s a joyous thing to hear and it’s joyous to see that people have grown and developed so much. So there’s something there. This has to have an impact on every single coach. We’d have to have a heart of stone to not notice all of these things. So that’s probably the first thing that coaches know they’re doing good and they’re experiencing and they’re seeing growth and they’re seeing change in front of their eyes. Then on top of that, there’s how the coach themselves
Charlie Warshawski (19:47.998)
changing. And I think a loads of examples of that. I’m not naming names today, but I certainly have people in mind. see coaches, know, I know lots of coaches who’ve now who we trained 10 years ago, or who, who are friends of mine who trained 20 or 25 years ago. And you see this, this, I want to say, like,
confidence, but without arrogance. You know, we’ve all met arrogant people and there was a little bit of a turn off, aren’t they? it’s a rare moment, I think, to meet an arrogant coach. Yes, definitely confident coaches. Yes, definitely self-assured and people who can handle themselves really well in lots of conversational circumstances. But the idea that we manage ourselves, you know, we’re managing ourselves all the time in the coaching room.
which probably means we can manage ourselves in lots of conversations. And I think that the coaches are really good at that and there’s a growing confidence, know, there’s a confidence in how they operate, how they are able to engage not just in their coaching practice, but with colleagues, with friends, in the family, in their social environments, all those types of things. You know, there’s something about being an experienced coach, it’s like,
I’m never sure what my relationship with the word mastery is because again, it can sound like an arrogant word, but there is something I observed that’s quite masterful about people who are really on top of themselves and not cold or formal, but they manage themselves really well in conversations. I think of my, actually I’m going to name a name. I think of my friend, Kim Gregory, really experienced coach, been coach for 25 years or so. we…
We sometimes go, we have a coffee or go for a dog walk or something like that. And I’m in awe of how she manages herself and, but she’s not trying to coach me when we’re a dog walk, it’s, but it’s, but it always feels like a beautiful conversation because she’s a really experienced coach and she knows how to be really at ease with herself and with me when we’re talking. And I see this countless, countless times. So that’s another thing about what coaches really love about this.
Charlie Warshawski (22:00.182)
It bleeds into the rest of their lives. The next thing that I think is really, we can’t avoid mentioning in this, that we carry on learning and there is this real love of CPD, this love of professional development. Sometimes it can be a bit intense, you know, we could always, we could be a little bit impostery, couldn’t we? And be rushing to, you hear about a new psychometric tool that everyone is using these days or a new questionnaire or…
certainly for newer coaches, know, a new little method, a new little tool, a new questioning technique. And we have to go and rush off and find that. So that can be a little bit heavy and weighty, but the general CPD, I think is really good. I observe lots of coaching groups. I go to a coaching group in Guildford. I know of them in London and Kingston and Reading and York and all sorts of places. All the coaching association run groups and those groups.
do all sorts of great things, don’t they? You can go and learn, someone will run a webinar or someone will cover a new topic or you’ll be able to have a co-coaching or there’ll be supervision, those types of opportunities. And coaches really engage in that. They really, really engage. There’s now loads of literature. look, there’s loads of really good literature around coaching. You can carry on reading.
All of the, all the nonsense on Facebook, you know, these sort of $7 courses, can happily just ignore those, but read good stuff, you know, good and important thing. And that’s really helpful. And I think knowing that you can embrace further learning and further interesting topics. definitely see coaches do that. You’re here in, in a later series, you’re here, a very experienced coach, Nick Jerome. He was a very experienced coach and then he went and did his masters. You know, he didn’t need to do his masters.
But he did his masters. Why did he do his masters? Because he wanted to carry on learning. He wanted to get into the books, into the literature, into the case studies. When I did my coaching supervision diploma in 22 at Oxford Brookes, the room was full of coaches who’d been coaching 10, 15, 20 years. But it was like being in a first year university class with this enthusiasm and this passion for ongoing learning. It’s joyful.
Charlie Warshawski (24:20.077)
every person I know who’s a coach loves carrying on doing their learning. So I’m sharing loads and loads of reasons why I think and how experienced coaches love their coaching. let’s start bringing this conversation to a close. I’d really encourage you to carry on thinking about this. It’s a good thing. we know here that we do our coaching practice for ourselves and we do it for other people.
there’s like this mutuality in it. We’re doing it because our mission is to contribute and we’re doing it because we want to be on a journey of personal development. But we’re also doing it because we want to see the impact. We want the impact to be profound and significant for other people. And knowing that we love coaching, that coaches really love coaching and that they really care about coaching, I think it’s joyous.
Probably the last thing I want to mention is the idea of coaches engaging in a community. The amount of times I see coaches supporting fellow coaches, coaches offering help to other coaches, volunteering to give away free coaching sessions for someone or to be a coachee for someone for a qualification, or being able to share a resource, share a tip, something like that. See this all the time. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing. So.
There was not a specific big learning outcome I wanted us to have from today’s session, but I really wanted people to be able to hear and think about why coaches love coaching. You you might be able to extract some of the things that I’ve been sharing today as a way of helping you understand internally why you love coaching. You might be able to use some of what I’ve said today to be able to explain to other people why coaching is such a good thing, you know.
We are still in that place where coaching is only internally regulated. You know, we have our wonderful codes of ethics and codes of conduct and rules and accreditation, but still people talk about it being unregulated. Well, we’re not unregulated. You know, we have regulations. We have internal, we’re not regulated in the same way as nursing is, but we have regulations. But these type of things, these type of positive professionalizing ways that we
Charlie Warshawski (26:44.479)
approach coaching as coaching are really good things to share, really good things to talk about. What about you all? What are you left thinking about today about loving coaching? This is a personal episode for you to think about. Why do you love your coaching? So as you go off for the rest of your day, think about what it is about coaching that you love. Has it changed? Has it grown? Has it developed? Has it got worse? Do you need to rekindle the love of coaching somehow?
whatever it is, do share your stories, do drop us a note, put a comment in the feed below, it’d be really good to read about it. But whatever you’re doing, that whether or whether you don’t love your coaching fully, other people will love your coaching. Your clients will love your coaching, your coachees will love your coaching. And the people in your environment, even if…
your partner or your kids give you a bit of a kicking sometimes. They will also love the fact that you are a coach. I would put money on it. Fellow coaches, have a great day. Enjoy your day. See you later. 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:
- Visit our website
- Learn more about our courses and coaching qualifications
- Contacts: charlie@loveyourcoaching.com | hello@loveyourcoaching.com| 01306 264026 | 0774 8515189
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