By:  Lisa M. Hayes for The Coaching Guild

I think this might be the best time in history to become a coach. I also think coaching is a terrible shortcut for people who are unserious about the work.

A woman can get a hundred answers before breakfast about whether to stay married, quit her job, or forgive her mother. Some of them will sound remarkably wise. She still has to live with the decision, in her own body, in a life with bills and loyalties and people she loves. There’s real value in spending an hour with someone who can help her hear herself think without quietly steering her toward the life that person thinks she ought to want.

I think that kind of attention is especially valuable right now. So much of the advice we get arrives already certain about who we are. A stranger hears thirty seconds of a story and knows exactly what the woman telling it ought to do. A skilled coach can spend an hour with that same woman and stay curious long enough for her to say something she’s never said out loud. I think people are hungry for that.

It takes more skill than it looks like from the outside.

Say a client tells you she wants to quit her job. You’ve been waiting six weeks for her to say it. You think her boss is a petty tyrant, and frankly, you’d love to see her walk out. Can you hear the part of her that wants to stay with the same attention you give the part that wants to leave? Can you catch yourself when the question you’re about to ask is really a recommendation with a question mark at the end?

Maybe she likes the work. Maybe she needs the insurance. Maybe the colleague she eats lunch with every day is the only person who knows what’s happening at home. A good conversation leaves room for her to tell you those things, even after you’ve privately decided that quitting would make for a more satisfying ending.

That’s the sort of thing we work on at The Coaching Guild. You’ll train with multiple instructors over at least 18 months. You’ll coach real people, get feedback on your sessions, and learn to recognize when a client needs support outside your scope. You’ll get to hear yourself ask a question you thought was brilliant and realize, on listening back, that you interrupted someone who was about to tell you something important. I want you to have people who can help you hear that and get better at it.

When I say serious, I mean willing to practice, willing to be corrected, and willing to take responsibility for the influence you have in someone else’s life. You can be brand-new to coaching and bring all three. In fact, some of the best conversations I have with prospective students start with someone telling me about a moment when they wanted to help and realized they needed more skill than they had.

If you’re considering coach training, message me to book a discovery call for The Coaching Guild’s February cohort. Bring your questions about the training, the time commitment, or what equity-based tuition and a payment plan could look like for you. We’ll talk about the kind of coaching you want to do and whether this is the right place for you to learn it.