No business coach? No worries – how to be your own mentor

Wouldn’t it be great to have a leadership coach on tap; someone who could team with you to help you solve the issues you are grappling with? Unfortunately, the likelihood of having a coach available 24/7, and on short or immediate notice, is next to none. So, what’s your alternative? asks internationally renowned coaching expert, Karen Stein.

Self-coaching is a powerful tool which can be used to support you in the moment in lieu of a leadership coach. By building your repertoire of self-coaching strategies, you can become skilled in recognising what you can do in support of yourself and others. You’ll be equipped to further your personal and professional growth.

The key to self-coaching is learning relevant self-coaching practices to enable you to apply them as required. This approach creates a cost-effective, timely method of personal support. It can then be supplemented with a more nuanced coaching conversation with a leadership coach at a later date.

Self-coaching tips

Make time

Self-coaching requires time for self-reflection, time for practicing, experimenting and developing new habits, and time for assessing and refining your progress. It requires your mindful attention to your self-awareness to understand the consequences (both intended and unintended) of your behaviours, emotions and cognitions.

In the busy world we live in, it’s easy for time to slip away. Think about how readily you become distracted as you juggle the many responsibilities of work and life. Self-coaching requires an intentional mindset, where you pause and notice the impact which you may be having and make informed choices in response.

We typically sleep eight hours a night, which leaves us 112 waking hours each week. The best leaders I coach use this time judiciously. They prioritise their time for self-coaching, making it not-negotiable time. By committing to one hour each week (that’s less than one per cent of your waking hours!) these leaders create a ritual of investing in themselves so that they can be their best selves as they lead others. By building this habit, they are also better equipped to self-coach in the moment as the need arises.

The more that you invest in yourself – through both self-coaching and external coaching – the more you’ll be supported to better understand your assumptions, reactions, beliefs and behaviours, and the more comfortably you will lead as your best self.

Find your one per cent and lock it into your diary.

Know yourself

Build your self-coaching strategies to lead as you. By understanding your values, strengths and purpose you will be able to connect (or perhaps reconnect) with your sense of self. This is your true north – your navigational system that will support you as you lead your way. By honouring your values, drawing on your strengths and acting in line with what matters to you (your purpose), you will experience a more positively-minded leadership.

You will be better informed to make deliberate choices, and notice what you are spending your time on and how that supports your purpose.

Ask yourself what matters most to you and reflect on how much time you are investing in it. Consider what gives you meaning in the work you do and how might you feel when working in this way. What needs to be true for this to occur more regularly? What can you influence to make this happen, and who might you need support from in your network?

Tap into your values when shaping your goals, so that they are aligned with your beliefs and motivate you to progress them.

Identify your strengths to recognise which of them might support you with the challenges you face. Your strengths will energise, engage and motivate you.

Systems mindset

Lift your gaze beyond what simply impacts you and broaden your perspective to notice what is emerging in the systems around you. Self-coaching with a focus simply on yourself, rather than in the context of what’s happening around you, can be limiting.

Your environment experiences continuous change, whether it be new team members joining, customers and suppliers changing, economic fluctuations, businesses being acquired and more. These and the myriad of economic, social and political changes can cause new insights to be formed through what’s emerging.

Be sure to increase your perspective and insights by seeking more knowledge, information and understanding of the system in which you form a part. This can help you test your thinking and assumptions and gain further data points to inform your decision-making and your self-coaching experience.

This article was first published on Flying Solo, read the original here.

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