The email landed on a random Tuesday morning: “Claire is no longer on your coaching roster.” My stomach dropped. Claire [not her real name] had decided she no longer wanted to work with me as a coach. Oph. That hurt.
My nervous system went to work to keep me safe.
Flight: You’re kidding yourself with this coaching thing. You should quit.
Fight: Good riddance. She wasn’t ready anyway.
Freeze/appease: How could I win her back? What could I say that would change her mind?
My brain was awash of cruel stories while my heart just hurt with the feeling of rejection.
I support clients to be brave in similar moments. I could do the same for myself. I took a breath. I called a friend for connection. I grounded myself in my core value of growth. As it turns out, courage, in that moment, didn’t mean pretending the rejection didn’t hurt. It meant staying curious about what it had to teach me.
I had been coaching for 10 years, but I had never coached in this context before. To grow my coaching competence, I had to be brave enough to admit I didn’t already know. This moment inspired me to do three things: get very curious with colleagues and mentors about how the coach within this context, enroll in a Master Certified Coach prep program, and ask clients for more real-time feedback during sessions.
This jolting “failure” became one of the most important accelerators of my growth as a coach. And I achieved this new competence only because I, as *Brené Brown says, “was willing to be brave enough to suck at something new.”
Consider…
- What is new about your work right now?
- If you gave yourself permission to be a beginner, how would that change the way you showed up?
- What activities are most likely to grow your competence in this area?
- What does deliberate practice (with feedback) look like?
- How will you know when you’ve grown your competence?