My Coaching Journey, Part 1: Getting Coached
In the beginning of May, I got my Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential with the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and now I’m sharing about my experience for anyone who is interested in getting a coaching credential or just curious why and how I became a coach. My coaching journey actually began 16 years ago when I first worked with a life coach. Looking back on that experience, it’s amazing to see the insights and awareness I gained through coaching, and how consistent my values have been over that time. So today I’m going to get up close and personal again as I discuss what it was like for me as a coachee, and next time I’ll talk about the certification process.
Photo courtesy of Chris Robinson: View from breakfast in Óbidos, Portugal
It all started in 2006, shortly after I returned from my honeymoon in Kauai, an island of Hawai known as the Garden Isle due to its lush rainforest. My husband and I were so enamored with the island and its natural beauty that we wanted to figure out how we could live there in the not-too-distant future. At the same time, my job was getting busy due to some major projects and I wanted to achieve better balance with my personal life, and we were thinking about starting a family soon. I had a few things I wanted to figure out in my life and needed help. A friend recommended her coach, so I got in contact with her for a consultation. Karen gave me a few thought starter questions to answer over email, and after I decided to move forward with personal coaching, she sent me some worksheets, including the Life Wheel. We had weekly coaching sessions over the phone. I was able to find a folder full of my handwritten notes and all of the emails I had sent to Karen, so I have a pretty detailed record of my first coaching engagement.
I started out by exploring various factors that moving to Kauai would entail, including considering lifestyle, cost of living, timing of starting a family, housing, both of jobs, how our families might react if we moved even further away, childcare and schools, and medical care. After a heart-to-heart discussion with my husband, we realized that moving to Kauai would be a challenge both for building our careers unless we were in the hospitality industry. We decided that what we really wanted was a change. I had lived in Orange County, California, for about 5 years after moving there for my job, and while I had met some great people and loved the warm weather and beaches, I never quite felt at home there. From there, we would focus on relocating to the Bay Area, where I had gone to college and graduate school, as well as the next steps in my career path.
I took an online Myers-Briggs personality test, and at the time I identified as INFJ. While I won’t go into all the details of what that means, when I go back and read the description for INFJs, I have to admit it fits me to a tee. My temperament was described as idealist and my dominant function intuitive. I had written notes about wanting to be a “catalyst for positive change” - making a positive difference in someone’s life - I harbored aspirations to become a personal trainer or massage therapist, and at the time was into leading beginner hikes and volunteering.
In January 2007, I described what success looks like as:
Balancing my work and personal life
Having a family
Strong personal relationships with friends, family, significant other
A nice house that is big enough for family
Challenging my mind, problem solving
Financial self-sufficiency
I was astounded to read this list recently, because I have all of these things in my life! I know it’s not just a coincidence. But the interesting part is that I never put together a detailed plan with these goals in mind, and I didn’t diligently track my progress over the last 16 years to get what I wanted. In fact, I forgot about this list until I found it in a closet. Coaching helped me to gain perspective on what I really wanted–i.e., my own definition of success–and this laid the foundation for me to attain what I valued.
My coaching notes also included how I defined my fantasy/dream job and 25 elements of a perfect life. The former is pretty spot on for where I am today. What stood out most for me was that I wanted to be myself and be accepted and admired for it. I couldn’t think of 25 things for a perfect life, but my list of 14 has stayed consistent with one or two exceptions. My coach also recommended a few books that helped me reflect on my ideal career. I have no idea if these books have stood the test of time, but they were:
The Best Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It by Debbie Ford
What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles
Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type by Paul Tieger
And get this - the potential vocations I came up with at the time were dietician/nutritionist, coach, project manager. This is remarkable because my current job is program manager (and it took me a few steps to get here), and now I’m also a coach! I didn’t seek out project manager or program manager roles, but I still ended up here. And the thought of becoming a coach remained dormant for many years before I considered it again.
As part of my action items from coaching, I applied to jobs at a few companies in the Bay Area and ended up at Google (but in a different job role than I currently hold). I continued to work with Karen for a few months as I navigated interviewing, accepting a job offer, and planning our move.
Then while at Google, I was fortunate to work with a handful of excellent internal coaches (thank you, Renais, Dolores, Suzie, and Landis!) and my colleague Becky co-founded the career guru program that eventually became the g2g (Googler-to-Googler) coaching program that I’m part of as a career and leadership coach. With the help of these coaches, I learned to reframe my self-view as an oddball who always felt different from my peers and instead appreciate my unique talents and abilities. When I wanted to develop my leadership presence but struggled to find a role model that I could relate to, a coach helped me to develop a vision of my own authentic leadership persona.
While I am a proponent of mentoring and have loved being a mentor, I’ve learned that I prefer being coached to help me solve problems over being mentored. This was a bit surprising because I started out wanting someone to tell me what to do. But in reality it was rare for me to find a mentor that really understood me and gave me advice that resonated for me. What I love about coaching is that it’s an empowering partnership - as a coachee you are the expert of yourself and your coach is there to create space and allow you to look at your situation from different perspectives. It’s often as much about a mindset shift as figuring out what you need to do. And coaches are really good at listening not just to what you say through your words, but also what else you are communicating through your tone, choice of language, body, and pauses. They reflect back what they hear and see, but don’t tell you what you should do. You own that part, and they help you to clear away the cobwebs and put the tangled web of thoughts spinning in your mind into ideas, words, and actions.
When I got promoted to Director at Google, I started to work with a wonderful external coach named Valerie. She coached me on growing as a leader and later was instrumental when I grappled with recovering and emerging from burnout. It was during that time that I came back to the idea of becoming a coach. I’ll continue with that story in Part 2 next week.
