Give Yourself the Gift of Coaching in 2025 — You’re Worth the Investment
Happy New Year 2025!
Happy new year! It’s 2025 and I suspect, like most of us, you’re taking a moment to take stock and think about what the year will look like. You’re maybe asking yourself a few questions. I have a couple to try on you.
When was the last time you reflected on your inherent worth, your attributes, and your distinctive abilities as a leader? Or can you recall when you last pondered whether you were happy, engaged, or jazzed about your current role, team, or assignment?
I hope I got you thinking because that’s what coaching does. Gets you thinking — on the heels of a few provocative questions — about an aspect of your life or leadership where you’d like to perhaps make a change, pivot, or commit to new actions. Coaching disrupts your typical treadmill thoughts, behaviors, and habits and invites new thinking, beliefs, and practices.
At times, all of us get in a rut doing things the same way over and over again. Yes, that creates efficiency. And works well for automating skills to drive a car, but it’s not ideal when it comes to certain behaviors and habits that no longer serve us in this season of life and work. For instance, having few boundaries, hoarding ideas and rarely delegating, communicating without a filter, or holding limiting beliefs about yourself or others.
As humans, we navigate much like computer operating systems (OS) with baked-in programs. Our beliefs, behaviors, and feelings are so baked in that we’re often clueless about how we’re showing up and what programs are outdated. Coaching invites a system update, closely examines what’s beneath our OS, and builds self-awareness.
Every coaching engagement is unique to each person and generates different provocative questions based on where you are in life or work. As coaches, we ask questions and you do the soul searching, the real inner work. The power rests with you. It’s your journey and we join you for the ride. We hold up the mirror and trust that you have the inner resourcefulness and wisdom to own and direct your leadership path. We believe in you, cheer you on, and help you find your authentic rhythm, true voice, and north star.
A few things to keep in mind as you consider investing in coaching in 2025:
Find your dance coach. Work with a coach you feel comfortable with. Someone with whom you sense a connection and are willing to build trust. Interview several coaches to conduct a chemistry fit to see if their style and approach resonates with you. Like a good dance partner, a good coach anticipates your next move and follows your lead. A good coach will also challenge you and make the conversation all about you, not them.
Be curious and open. The exciting work of self-discovery is yours to unlock with your coach’s help; you’ll have the opportunity to take steps to shift your thinking and behaviors — all in support of your goals. Your coach will help you uncover stories, limitations, fears, and beliefs — hidden barriers that may hold you back. We’ll gently unpack their meaning and offer clarity and accountability toward new actions.
Be honest and transparent. In a safe, confidential space, prepare to have truthful conversations that support your growth and awareness. Be ready for truth telling that invites insights and eventual closure, healing, and new action.
Trust the coaching process. Coaching is not a straight, linear path from point A to point B. Rather it’s a dynamic journey of unpredictable detours with highs and lows, a journey that ebbs and flows. It will be important to be open to not knowing, to surrender to the process, to be uncomfortable in the learning zone. Your coach will be there with you during moments of epiphany and uncomfortable change.
So, come along for the journey of coaching this year. You’ll have a range of experiences and emotions including laughter! You just may break open into a new way of being that feels more like home, like flowing with the river rather than against the tide.
The most effective leaders are aware. So, make a commitment in 2025 to deepen your awareness and leadership/life effectiveness. You’re worth the investment.
