is focus.  How do you get the focus you need to get your coaching career started?  When most people think about setting a vision, they think about “The Secret” and the “Law of Attraction.”  They think that if they know what they want, it will come to them.  The problem is that if you don’t know where you are, you won’t be able to figure out where you want to be.  So what you need to become a coach isn’t just to know where you want to be.  You also need to know where you are right now in your coaching career.

A Starting Point for Your Coaching Career

If what you need to become a coach is focus, why is it so important to know where you are in your coaching career before you start?  What if you’re lost and stranded in the desert.  Suddenly an airplane drops a map that shows an oasis.  You know where the oasis is now, but what’s the one thing you need to know to get there?  You need to know where you are on the map.  No matter how detailed the map is, most likely you’ll be walking in the wrong direction unless you know where you are starting from.

Taking Inventory of Your Coaching Career

What you need to become a coach is to take a thorough inventory of where you are in your coaching career.  To do this, answer the following questions.  Take some time for this and write it in your journal.  This is important information.

• What are your strengths?
• What results have you created in the past?
• What results have you produced for yourself, and others?
• What are your weaknesses?
• What are the opportunities in your coaching business?
• What are the threats to the growth of your coaching career?  With your clients, yourself, your environment?
• Are you currently meeting your goals and expectations? Why or why not?

Gaining A Clear Picture of What You Need to Become a Coach

Now what you need to become a coach who knows where you are in your coaching career is to get a clear picture about how others see you.  Ask at least 3 members of your community the following questions:

• What are my strengths?
• What are my weaknesses?
• What does everyone know about me?
• What can I be counted on for?
• What can I never be counted on for?
• Is there anything else you would like to tell me or anything that you have never told me that you would like to now?

What You Need to Become a Coach in the End: Feedback

What often holds us back in life is that we usually ask these questions.  We cave into the fear that we’re not enough.  What you need to become a coach is to realize that whatever people say, it won’t kill us.  As we start taking an honest inventory of where we are, we start to become open to feedback from ourselves and others.  Then we can really move forward with our coaching career.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Accountability Coach