The client is king for most coaches, with very few focusing fully on themselves during their working days, according to research into coaches’ self-care.
“The client can be king but the coach has to be king first and have a lived experience. Running while the orange light is flickering is very uncomfortable yet is often done,” said Jane Keep, head of Leeds University Business School’s coaching faculty.
She attributed this partly to “the strong focus in childhood on doing for recognition and acceptance rather than for simply being the amazing person we each are. Many of us become performing seals”.
Keep presented research findings from her PhD study, “Developing deliberate awareness of self-care for coaches”, at the European Mentoring & Coaching Council UK’s annual conference on 29-30 March. Keep tracked 35 coaches and facilitators over a five-year period, and also conducted a self-study.
She looked at areas including self-care practices and whether practitioners offer services “when the orange light is flickering”. She reviewed existing literature and found that self-care and wellbeing scarcely feature.
Other findings included that “consciously choosing self-awareness and self-observation can deepen our relationship with ourselves”; using the physical body is supportive: “our physical body is always talking to us”; and “self-care is very practical and we can build nourishing momentums and the body does benefit.”
Study questions included: “How can coaches stay steady and consistent? What kinds of things do coaches do to support themselves while they work? How often do we use our physical bodies as markers to get a sense of what we need to support ourselves as we work?”
She said coaches should be saying things like: “I’ve had a great week because I’ve been more myself than I had been before”, rather than “I’ve had a great week because I coached 10 clients.”
“We focus on what is not, we rely on tools rather than ourselves as instruments. It’s not about retracting from life into the mountains, but driving your car and making it your day.”
Coaching at Work, Volume 6, Issue 3