Coaching Fundamentals: Finding the right coach for you

One of my goals for this blog is to help folks discover whether coaching could be right for them. I'm basing this Coaching Fundamentals series on my experiences coaching and being coached. In today's post, let’s talk about how you seek out the right coach for you.

Start with you

Coaching is a growing field, and there are lots of folks who offer coaching services to address different needs. If you Google coaching services or if you search on LinkedIn or Instagram for coaching, you can find people addressing all manner of needs - health coaching, career growth, job transition, interpersonal communication, financial coaching… If you don’t know what you want when you start your search, it can be overwhelming or you could get pulled in by something that sounds appealing but isn’t actually a priority for you.

In my previous role, I called this the Trade Show Effect. People would come back from conferences or webinars excited about software they’d discovered and insisting we had to implement it… but when we dug deeper into why they thought that software was helpful or what problem it solved, we’d usually discover that it wasn’t addressing anything that was on their priority list. There are all sorts of great solutions out there that solve important problems…. but if it isn’t a problem you actually needed to solve, then the value was misplaced. Sure - it would be great to find a financial coach who can support you with making decisions about your budget and savings and investments… but if that’s not a top priority over your career growth or caregiving responsibilities, then you might be stuck in the trap of finding a solution that’s in search of a problem for you to solve. It’s a cart before the horse situation.

So take some time to reflect about what you’re trying to accomplish through coaching. To help with this reflection, you can ask yourself a few questions:

• What is prompting me to seek out coaching? Why now?

• What outcome am I hoping to achieve through coaching? What will this outcome bring to my life when I achieve it?

• What am I not focusing on right now? What is a distraction that I need to avoid?

Look for fit

Once you have a general idea of what you want to gain from coaching, you can start looking at who might be a good fit to work with you. Coaching is a partnership, so you should be seeking out someone who you align with on values, expertise, and communication style. You should also look for someone who can bring new perspectives and is going to support you to stretch and grow.

Most coaches have a website or a profile on LinkedIn or another social site that can give you an idea about their qualifications, their values, and their approach. Coaching is an unregulated profession, which means that anyone can call themselves a coach. You can look for affiliation with a professional body like the International Coaching Federation for an indication of their baseline qualifications. And you can look for indications of where they received training and what tools they bring into coaching. You can also look for references to coaching and leadership skills they’ve developed throughout their career to see if it’s a match for the type of growth and development you’re looking for from coaching. If nothing is listed in their profile, you can ask questions when you get to the discovery call (more on that in a moment) or send questions through email or an online contact form. Coaching is a relationship built on trust, so if they’re not willing to be transparent about their qualifications and approach to coaching, that can be a red flag about their ability to co-create a safe and trustworthy environment.

As you start looking through profiles of coaches, you can ask yourself a few questions:

• What are the coach’s qualifications?

• What am I learning about their values?

• What am I learning about their communication style?

• What interests me about potentially working with this coach? Does this interest align to the goals I’ve set for myself, or is it addressing something else entirely?

• Am I willing to invest more time to learn more about this coach?

Try before you commit

Someone I know referred to their process for choosing a counselor as Speed Dating. There are several online platforms that provide the opportunity for a free session so that you can meet the counselor, ask them questions about their approach or their fit for addressing what you’re bringing into counseling, and use that info to decide who to work with. This person decided to schedule a significant number of those sessions across a couple different platforms before deciding who they wanted to work with as a counselor. In helping professions like counseling or coaching, spending the time to experience several different approaches and styles can be a helpful way to find the right fit. (And discover anything that’s a significant detractor for you.)

Choosing a coach can be a similar process. Many coaches offer a discovery call (a.k.a. an orientation session, a free consultation, etc.) to get to know one another before committing to a coaching relationship. It is a little bit like speed dating, in that you typically have 15 to 30 minutes together to get the sense of the person. It can be helpful to gather your questions ahead of time, so you can make the most of the session.

Some questions you could bring to the session:

• I’m aiming to work on X through coaching. What skills or experience do you bring into the relationship to help me reach the outcomes I’m looking for?

• What would a typical coaching session look like? What do I need to do to prepare for a coaching session?

• What ethical guidelines do you follow? What do you do to protect my privacy?

It can be a red flag if the coach you’re speaking with doesn’t have answers for questions about ethics and privacy. If they don’t think about privacy or ethics, they may not be equipped to deal with any issues that may arise or they may cause harm from their inaction around protecting your rights.

In addition to asking specific questions, you should also be paying attention to how you mesh with this coach. After your Discovery Call, trying asking yourself some reflection questions:

• Does their communication style work for me? Do I feel heard and respected?

• Do I feel a sense of trust? Could I be comfortable being vulnerable with them?

• Do their values align with mine? Or did they say anything that was in sharp contrast to my values?

• Are they making an effort to understand what I’m trying to accomplish through coaching and how they can best support me?

Don’t underestimate the impact of time and money

Two of the biggest barriers to coaching are the classics: Time and Money. When connecting with a potential coach, it’s important to confirm what their availability looks like. Do they have a limited set of hours to offer in a given week or month? Do they only offer evening appointments when what you need are early mornings or lunch hours? Do you have a shared understanding of how often you want to meet? Sometimes coaching packages are structured - twice per month for three months. Others are open-ended for you to schedule as-needed. If there’s a mismatch between what you can commit to and what your coach offers, it can create barriers to getting the most out of coaching. Having a logistics conversation as part of the discovery call, or as a follow-up before you commit to a coaching contract is an important detail.

Money is another important logistical detail. Whether you are funding coaching out of your own pocket or having an employer sponsor your coaching investment, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of what a coaching package costs and how payments need to be made. Packages can be structured in all sorts of ways - a monthly subscription model, paying per session, paying upfront for a set of sessions, etc. The coach should be able to clearly describe their fees and expectations for how payment, cancellation, and refunds work. If their pricing model is out of line with your budget, you need to pause before moving forward. It can be a red flag if a coach is not willing to be transparent about their fees or if they’re pressuring you to make a quick decision without time to weigh the affordability of their offering.

Bringing it all together

Choosing a coach takes some forethought and preparation. By thinking through what you want from coaching, what personality traits and expertise you expect from a coach, and checking if you mesh well with each other, you will be equipped to find a coach who is the right fit to support you. And once you confirm that time and money line up with your expectations, you can move forward into what can be a very constructive and supportive relationship.

Don’t forget to check out the other posts in this Coaching Fundamentals series to help you learn what to expect as you get started with coaching. If you’re reading this blog as part of your search for a coach, I’m happy to talk more about our fit to work together through a Discovery Call.