Clare Norman, author of ‘Cultivating Coachability’ says boosting your business with coaching takes effort.

If you sign up for coaching, the process will be unique. Your ways of seeing the world require something tailor-made for you. The coach’s role is to enable you to explore and then to support you to customise ways forward. Your coach will enable you to access your own inner wisdom.

No fairy dust

There is no magical way to make things better once you have described the problem to your coach. You are responsible for the thinking, sensing, feeling that will lead you to new awareness. You are responsible for stepping up, whatever that looks like for you. You are responsible for the outcomes.

Be prepared for digging deep – looking at what’s working, what’s not, how you feel about that, what you value, your beliefs (limiting or otherwise) and much more. It’s a space to be vulnerable if you want to get the most out of it. You create value in coaching, not your coach. Your coach will support and challenge you to catalyse that value but ultimately, you need to be willing to make self-determined changes. You won’t be forced to do anything you don’t want to do, but there is no point in investing your precious time and money if you don’t intend for something to be different.

Thinking is key

But first comes the thinking. Your thinking, feeling and sensing. This is not an intellectual exercise, but rather an exercise in accessing all of your multiple intelligences, as that’s where your wisdom is hiding.

Your coach can’t make you come to coaching though – you will need to set the time aside to give it your full attention, both in the coaching sessions and in between times.

Don’t come to coaching because your boss wants you to work on something. Come because you want to work on something – whether that is the same or different from what your boss wants. Your coach can help you to get clear on what that something might be, but have some idea about that before you start.

Don’t come for coaching if you see it as more socially acceptable to be working with a coach than a therapist. If therapy is the better fit for your needs right now, invest in therapy instead (or alongside coaching).

To sum things up, your mindset for coaching means that you must be willing and able to:

• embrace your role as thinker in the coaching process (to think)
• move beyond known thinking to new thinking
• find answers that fit your unique needs, personality and context rather than a one size fits all
• believe in your capacity to be creative, resourceful and whole
• use your head, heart and gut to access new thinking
• experiment in coaching and outside of it
• focus on yourself and who you wish to be, not just the problems you need to solve.

This is how you will get the best return on your investment in coaching: recognising that your role is to think and boost your brain’s and your body’s capacity to think.