10 Things Nobody Tells You Before You Become a Coach

Apparently, becoming a professional coach involves learning to shut up, stop giving excellent advice and occasionally discuss gremlins.

Here are 10 things nobody warned me about:

1. Silence is apparently a skill.

My current record is somewhere around one or two minutes.

Which doesn't sound particularly impressive until you sit opposite another human being in complete silence and actively resist the urge to SAY SOMETHING.

At the beginning, silence felt like something I needed to fill.

Now I actually love it.

Because if you really observe someone, you can often see that they're still thinking.

Their eyes are moving. They're looking somewhere. Something is happening.

And interrupting them at that moment with my supposedly brilliant next question would basically be me saying:

“Sorry to interrupt your potentially life-changing train of thought, but I got uncomfortable.”

So I've learned to sit there.

Watch. Wait.

Do absolutely nothing.

And somehow, doing nothing has become one of the things I'm most proud of getting better at.

2. I don't need to give people advice. Even when I REALLY want to.

This one has been particularly difficult when someone brings a topic I can deeply relate to.

For example, someone has a dream they want to follow…

BUT.

There's the security of the corporate job.

The salary.

The sensible path.

The question of whether they're actually ready to give that up.

And I'm sitting there having literally just gone through my own version of this thinking:

OH, I HAVE THOUGHTS.

So many thoughts.

Lessons!

Experiences!

Things I wish I'd known!

And then I have to remember:

Their life isn't mine.

Their answer might be completely different.

And they might not be ready to make the same decision I made – or ever want to.

So I don't need to tell them what I learned.

Even when it would be really useful.

Still hurts. 😂

3. I don't actually need the full story.

This goes against almost everything we normally do in conversation.

Someone tells you they're struggling at work and naturally you ask:

“What happened?”

“What did they say?”

“And what happened after that?”

Because that's how we show interest.

Coaching has taught me that sometimes all of that is completely irrelevant.

I don't necessarily need to know what Karen from Finance said.

Or what the manager did six months ago.

Or the other 14 things currently wrong with the company.

I need to understand what matters to the person sitting in front of me.

This is still slightly painful for my curious brain because, personally, I WOULD like to know what Karen said.

Professionally, apparently I can survive without it.

4. The thing someone asks to be coached on isn't always the thing we actually need to coach.

Sometimes a session starts very practically:

“I want to become healthier.”

“I want to build this habit.”

“I need to be more consistent.”

Great. Let's talk about the routine.

Except…

As we explore it, suddenly it becomes:

Why are you expecting yourself to do all of this in the first place?

Where is the pressure coming from?

What would happen if you gave yourself a little more grace?

Do you actually want this – or do you think you should want it?

And suddenly the conversation that started with:

“How can I build a healthier routine?” isn't really about the routine anymore.

Sometimes the action someone wants to take is just the first layer.

Apparently humans are onions.

5. Metaphors get weird very quickly.

I've now had completely serious professional conversations involving:

Blankets.

Barriers.

Locked doors.

Poison.

Magic cures.

And gremlins.

Yes. Gremlins.

Fear in particular seems to have an impressive ability to transform itself into some sort of imaginary creature.

And instead of questioning how we arrived here, I now happily continue:

“What is the gremlin trying to protect you from?”

Perfectly normal Tuesday afternoon.

And somehow these conversations often make complete sense.

Because once something becomes a locked door, a barrier or a gremlin, you can suddenly relate to it differently.

I did not expect imaginary creatures to become part of my professional toolkit, but here we are.

6. Your body apparently gets a vote.

Shoulders are very communicative.

So are stomachs and chests.

I've heard:

“My shoulders feel tense.”

“I can feel it in my gut.”

“My chest feels tight.”

And then, later:

“I feel lighter.”

But what I find even more fascinating is that sometimes I can see the shift before someone tells me.

Their whole energy changes.

They suddenly smile.

Or laugh.

And I've learned not to just smile back and move on.

Instead:

“I noticed you smiled when you said that. What did you notice?”

And sometimes that opens something completely new.

So yes, I now pay attention to what your shoulders are doing while we're discussing your career.

Apparently they have opinions too.

7. Once you learn to hear limiting beliefs, you hear them EVERYWHERE.

“I can't do that.”

“I'm too old.”

“I don't have enough money.”

“I need another certification first.”

“I've tried everything.”

“I should…”

“I have to…”

My coaching brain: 👀

Because once you've spent enough time listening for the assumptions hidden underneath what people say, it becomes very difficult to switch it off.

“I can't do that.”

Can't you?

“I need another qualification first.”

Do you?

“I should be doing this.”

According to whom?

Obviously, I cannot interrogate every person I meet about their belief system.

Which leads nicely to...

8. Your friends do not always want to be coached.

Sometimes a friend or family member tells me about something they're struggling with and my brain automatically goes:

“So what's the goal here?”

Or:

“Why do you think you should be doing that?”

And then I have to catch myself.

Because this is not a coaching session.

Sometimes my friend does not want to explore what she really wants.

She does not want to identify the belief underneath the problem.

She definitely does not want to establish a coaching agreement.

She wants to tell me what her coworker did and for me to say:

“WHAT?! Karen did what? No way.”

Sometimes people just want to gossip.

Knowing when to turn Coach Sarah OFF might actually be one of the more important skills I'm developing.

Unfortunately, turning her off when I'm talking to myself is proving considerably harder.

9. You spend months learning coaching models only to learn that sometimes you don't need them.

One of the models I've found incredibly useful is Logical Levels.

You can move from the practical:

What are you doing?

to the much bigger questions:

What's important to you?

Who are you becoming?

What's the purpose?

And I've seen how powerful it can be when a conversation moves from:

“What action should I take?”

to:

“Who do I actually want to be?”

So naturally, when I learned it, part of my brain went:

Excellent.

A recipe.

I have a recipe for coaching.

Except some of my best conversations haven't followed the recipe at all.

We've just… talked.

I've followed what the client brought.

And afterwards I realised the values, identity and bigger-picture thinking had all been there anyway.

Apparently you spend months learning models so you can eventually stop worrying about whether you're using the models.

Again: slightly offensive.

10. A good coaching session doesn't always end with a huge breakthrough.

This has probably been one of the hardest lessons for my outcome-focused brain.

Sometimes I finish a session and there hasn't been:

✨ THE MOMENT ✨

No huge realisation.

No perfectly defined action step.

No visible before-and-after transformation.

And it's very easy as a coach to start thinking:

Was that actually useful?

Did enough happen?

Should I have done something differently?

And then, occasionally, I'll get a message later.

They kept thinking about something we discussed.

Something landed an hour later.

They suddenly saw the situation from another angle.

And that's taught me that sometimes the development doesn't happen while I'm watching.

A coaching conversation can create awareness or unblock something without producing an immediate breakthrough.

Sometimes all you've done is start something.

And apparently I'm not allowed to demand immediate evidence that I've been useful.

Another deeply inconvenient lesson. 😂

I started coaching education because I wanted to learn how to help other people find their answers.

What I didn't anticipate was that months of listening to people talk about what they really want, what matters to them, what they believe is possible and what might be holding them back would have an unfortunate side effect:

It became increasingly difficult to ignore my own answers.

I started my coaching education in January.

Three months later, I handed in my resignation.

Coincidence?

Let's call it that. 😅

Namaste, Sarah x