What does getting coached mean? Have you heard someone talk about getting coached, and you’re now wondering what they are referring to exactly? You’re in the right place!
Up ahead, we discuss what it means to get coached, so if you are interested in getting coached, you will know what to expect and perhaps feel more prepared for your first coaching experience.
Getting coached is one of the most amazing things ever. Seriously. This is life-changing stuff, and the sooner you try it, the quicker you can see results. So let’s talk about what getting coached means and let you in on all the goodness waiting for you in your next coaching session.
What Does Getting Coached Mean?
Before getting into what happens in a coaching session, which is what the phrase “getting coached” refers to, perhaps it will help highlight what a coach is.
A coach, in the easiest way to explain as possible, as referenced here, and not in terms of sporting teams, is someone who helps you improve your life.
For instance, there are organizing coaches who help people get more organized in their homes. There are business coaches who help people run their businesses. There are weight loss coaches for losing weight.
If there is an issue anyone is having, there is a coach for it. Guaranteed. Yes, every issue. How do I know? Well, because there are catch-all-any-issue-goes coaches called life coaches that will literally coach anyone on any life issue.
Deciding if the issue you have is an issue you want coaching on is another question for another day. But in the basic way of seeing it, a coach helps anyone get better in any area of life they want to get better in.
#1 What Does Getting Coached Mean: Awareness
Getting coached helps you get the awareness of you that you have yet to get on your own.
It’s not that you get some secret awareness into yourself that you can’t get on your own. No. It’s that you could get the awareness of something while working with a coach in about five minutes that might take five years to get to on your own. Having a coach can speed up your awareness.
Having a coach and the awareness you can get is kind of like being at a party and not knowing you have gum stuck in your hair until that one person comes over to tell you that all night you had a wad of gum stuck in the back of your hair. You had no idea your hair had gum in it, and when you found out, you were so thankful, and while it would have been possible to discover on your own, you just didn’t. And of course, you are so thankful you finally have the awareness and the outside help with getting the awareness.
This is the type of thing that can happen with coaching. At the end of a coaching session, most clients are so thankful to finally see the thing about themselves they hadn’t seen for so long, and now that they see it, they can do something about it if they choose.
What does getting coached mean real-life example:
A client comes to her coaching session saying she is stressed about her business and nothing is working. Then, by the end of her coaching session, she realizes many things are working in her business that she has been ignoring because she’s so focused on what’s not working.
#2 What Does Getting Coached Mean: Acceptance
Acceptance does not need to mean agreeing with; it can just mean that you acknowledge that it did not happen another way.
Coaching often involves acceptance and coming to acceptance of things.
People often feel upset and frustrated in life because they haven’t accepted something and are still trying to change it. Nobody ever needs to like anything, but staying in a state of frustration or anger about something happening that you can’t control is basically choosing to engage in a war you can’t win. Coaching can help with this.
What does getting coached mean real-life example:
A client comes to her coaching session upset that her son is playing video games instead of doing his homework. She is also upset that she has been yelling at her son about the video games a few times this week. She wants to get along better with her son. By the end of the coaching session, she accepts that her son likes video games, she doesn’t like them, and that it is okay, they disagree about video games. She also learns how to accept what her son likes as a gateway to compassion and a way to talk to him calmly instead of yelling at him.
#3 What Does Getting Coached Mean: Compassion
Compassion is a big part of the coaching I do with my clients and something that comes up in most coaching sessions.
No matter what issue a client gets coaching on, as soon as they learn about how to apply compassion to the situation, big change often occurs.
Compassion comes up in many coaching relationships because clients often do not know how to be compassionate to themselves or do not even think to extend compassion to themselves about a given situation.
Compassion might sound like a fluffy feel-good type of solution, but once you experience it, you likely will change your mind and want to have every encounter with compassion you can get.
What does getting coached mean real-life example:
A client comes to her coaching session stressed about her recent weight gain and wants to talk to her coach about eating plan ideas. During the coaching session, the client realizes instead of a new meal plan that week, what she really wants to do is to stop being so hard on herself, which then leads her to overeat when she feels really stressed. She leaves the coaching session knowing why she overate that week and knowing what to do if she desires to overeat that week again.
#4 What Does Getting Coached Mean: Courage
Getting coached can be a huge boost in bravery. Both getting coached and the results of getting coached often include courage.
Being vulnerable and telling your coach things that might feel scary or shameful requires courage.
Then, while working with a coach, a client often realizes they can access more courage they ever knew they could before, and they start doing things in life they dreamed of but never did, until now that they are working with a coach.
What does getting coached mean real-life example:
A client comes to her coaching session to discuss having a difficult conversation with her sister-in-law but is scared to have it. By the end of the coaching session, she feels prepared and ready to talk to her sister-in-law, and even if she gets scared at the moment while talking to her sister-in-law, she knows she’ll be able to handle it now.
#5 What Does Getting Coached Mean: Change
Getting coached means change. The very act of attending a coaching session will be a change from the normal way of doing things.
Not all change feels good at first, though. Changing from a person who never does what they say they will do to becoming a person who always follows through with their plans can be amazing for getting things done, but it also can come with a lot of discomfort along the way.
So it’s not that every coaching session feels great, but likely every coaching session will result in you changing in some way (hopefully for the better!).
What does getting coached mean real-life example:
A client comes to her coaching session feeling super excited to tell her coach how much she has changed and up-leveled her life. She tries to give credit to her coach for “changing her life,” but the coach quickly helps the client see how much she worked on making the changes in her own life, including being the one to sign up for coaching in the first place.
#6 What Does Getting Coached Mean: Whatever You Make It Mean
Even though coaching is becoming an increasingly common term, no two coaches are alike, so no two coaching sessions are alike. Getting coached can mean totally different things based on the clients and coaches involved.
Some coaches use humor in their coaching, and some use swearing, and some use teaching, and some give a lot of advice. Just like in school when a history class can mean many different things based on the students and teachers involved, the same applies to coaching.
Perhaps this is why who your coach is can mean so much.
If you have a preference for what getting coached means, then, by all means, be very selective about your coach! Think about what you want from your coaching session, how you want to feel after you get coached, and then look for a coach that will coach you like you want to be coached.
What does getting coached mean real-life example:
A client comes to her coaching session wanting to get coached on her marriage. By the end of the coaching session, she realizes she got a lot of coaching on her relationship with herself, and she tells her coach that she got coached on something completely different than what she was expecting. It was so much better and more helpful than she ever could have imagined.
Related: Ready to get coached? Join now!
Now that we’ve talked a bit about what it means to get coached. I want to leave you with this idea that is really my main answer to the question, LOL. 🙂
You can only really know what it means to get coached by getting coached.
Just like you could read all about chocolate cake and how to make it and what others think it tastes like, all the reading you do, and all the listening you do about chocolate cake won’t be anything like actually eating chocolate cake. Right?!
So if you want to really know what it’s like to get coached, get coached! I bet you’ll be so glad you did!
Excited about the idea of getting coached? Want to get coaching on perfectionism and learn how to use it to your advantage? Start with this practical guide that I created for you to get some quick wins with perfectionism, and let me know when you want to start coaching!