Coaching Through It

“What is your past experience with coaching?”

This was one of mine – swim team! I loved being part of this water-logged crew, and being able to compete at meets, improve my strokes, and see my progress each week. It takes focus and determination, but I couldn’t have done it with out many swim coaches who have circled in and out of my life. Coaches were there to offer feedback, correct a stroke, cheer me on, and challenge me to be my best — even if I didn’t want to jump into the pool at 5 am. Coaches pushed me outside my comfort zone and helped me learn that small changes and strategies help me improve.

This question excited me, and I have been thinking about it ever since I started my Higher Ed Coach Training journey with Katie Linder on June 20, 2020. I knew from this opening ice breaker — I was going to fall in love with coaching — as a practice and process. Coaching skills directly relate to my own passion: talent. What it is? How we cultivate and grow it? How can we apply it to things we love and do? It’s amazing experience to help my coaching helps my clients realize their full potential, and how I get to be a collabortor in the process for their own career development.

What I didn’t realize at the time, is how coach training would also provide me with a beacon of hope in a year of many unknowns and constant change. I was interested in starting something new, not just to seek certification from ICF, but to get into deep, meaningful work with coaching clients. In the last six months of training, I have not only added to my own coaching practice and grown my clientele, but I am also empowered by the community of coaches I continue to learn from/with in this community. As these three courses wrap, I am grateful for what I have learned and how I have applied it to help my coaching clients realize their opportunities and overcome challenges. Additionally, I am honored to be part of such purposeful partnerships with those who have explored coaching with me so far. My gratitude for my clients courage and raw honest as they open up and dive deep in each coaching session to support their own life/work transitions and goals.

I lovingly named this blog post “Coaching Through It” for two reasons:

1. Aren’t we all just trying to figure it out? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be coached through all the things? This former “pollywog” swimmer could use one.
2. This is also the name of a NEW podcast, Coaching Through It, I co-host with my good friend & fellow coach-in-training, Julie Larsen.

The creation of the podcast is twofold — we use it as a way to process what we are learning in coach training and share how we might use these in our own coaching practice with our clients. As Julie and I have been friends for over a decade now, season 1 episodes are candid conversations about all the things in life/work/home in relation to the coach training we are in. The goal of this podcast is to pull back to share what coaching is really about. Coaching is NOT mentoring, advising, sponsorship, consulting, or editing your resume/cover letter. It is doing some of the deep and hard work to unpack what is preventing us from moving forward.

We hope this podcast is one of many (check out: Coach to Coach & Called to Coach, etc.) out there to explain and debunk coaching — so we hope you enjoy this slice of our coaching practice, what we’re learning, and how it applies to how we coach our clients.

• 

In Coaching Through It [Trailer], your podcast hosts and newly minted coaches, Julie Larsen and Laura Pasquini, bring their ideas and insights in audio format to an audience to share about their coaching practice. In each episode we introduce what coaching is — specifically coach training, powerful questions, coaching tools or techniques, working with clients, & applying how coaching fits into our work & personal lives.

Join us and listen to our conversations on… Coaching Through It [subscribe! or find it wherever you catch your podcasts] & connect to the pod on Twitter at @CoachingThruIt.