The moment someone enters the space of a coaching session, they then realize that self-awareness is part of the game. From the very beginning you understand that to develop as a coach means to develop as the person who embodies this role. Thus, self-awareness in coaching is a skill, a practice and a strength. At the same time, lacking self-awareness leads to a trap between two poles a) being too focused on oneself and b) being too focused on the client, switching from one to the other like a pendulum.
Looking at the competency frameworks
The three competence frameworks of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC), the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Association for Coaching (AC) includes coach’s self-awareness as an active ingredient of being and acting as a coach. The EMCC’s and ICF’s framework talks more explicitly about this kind of awareness and the AC’s one in a more implicit way behind the words.
Let us take a look at the frameworks
Association for Coaching
Competence 4: Managing self and maintain coaching presence. With a specific indicator of Stays aligned to personal values whilst respecting the values of the client.
International Coaching Federation
CC2: Embodies a Coaching Mindset. And more particularly CC2.5 & CC2.6: Uses awareness of self and one’s intuition to benefit client & Develops and maintains the ability to regulate one’s emotions.
European Mentoring & Coaching Council
Competence 1: Understanding Self. That is to demonstrate awareness of own values, beliefs and behaviours; recognises how these affect their practice and uses this self-awareness to manage their effectiveness in meeting the client’s, and where relevant, the sponsor’s objectives.
Self-awareness as part of your coaching journey
Understanding the self and consciously regulating one’s emotions is a core competence for coaches. It is a fundamental part of our identity.
a) Being as coach
In coaching, self-awareness is not just about knowing yourself, it is not a final answer to the question “who am I?”. It is not even a theory or a philosophical life stance. We, as coaches, experience self-awareness as thecontinuous process of observing, discovering and questioning ourselves during and between sessions. This is part of the coaching relationship system.
b) understand and regulate your behavior
The goal is to be competent enough to identify your feelings, thoughts and intentions while coaching, in real-time, in order to understand “if and how” you sabotage client’s learning. Nothing should happen impulsively while being a coach. Of course, we cannot control our emotions so easily. Our emotions and feelings are our internal reality which is created autonomously so we must accept it, understand it and consciously decide how to behave and act. Yourself is the tool and you must know how to use it.
c) overcoming the first obstacles
Coaching is a relationship-based intervention, a dynamic brain to brain engagement. As we already know, during any sort of attachment there is a series of patterns that emerge and interfere. During the first contact with the “other” (that is the client) trainees and graduates deal with their internal realities. For example, to act like a savior, disproportionate sense of guilt, too much enthusiasm, lack of confidence or too much confidence without a reason, distress that is derived from conflicting values, the intention to guide, putting tools first in order to do the job instead of the coaches themselves, trying to convince the client to change his/her mindset, freezing of becoming over empathetic while facing overwhelmed clients. Those are elements that threaten boundaries, roles and question the fundamental principles of coaching.
The dark side of self-awareness
Let us consider self-awareness as a strength; a positive energy that governs the archetype of the coach. There are two fundamental truths. The first one is that the energy of a “great coach” and the person who embodies the coaching mindset are not the same. That means that each coach tries to reach and obtain deeper or higher levels of self-awareness and become a “master” of themselves. But, we all have bad moments and our pathway to mastery is an endless effort to explore and understand ourselves, that is, our less functional parts. No one can say that this path has ended for him.
The second truth is that the embodiment of such a strength is not always positive. There is a bipolar dark side of the strength. The lack of self-awareness can lead to a) too much focus on the client. The coach who adopts such an attitude is always sure about him/herself and never questions what he/she thinks and feels even during the first steps. And b) too much focus on the self. The second one includes a more passive response, a coach who is too much focused on him/herself, often overwhelmed, trying to control and question everything that he/she feels and thinks while leaving the client aside.
The coaching session works as a magnifier for the self and self-awareness is the one and only key to unlock the truth and create the pathway to development.
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