A story about the difference between reflecting on our working lives and learning to coach ourselves through them
Self-Coaching: What Does It Actually Mean to Coach Yourself? wasn’t a question Kathleen expected to spend much time thinking about.
After all, coaching was part of her work.
As Learning and Development Manager, Kathleen designed programmes, facilitated workshops and worked with managers across the organisation to help people develop.
She enjoyed watching someone leave a conversation seeing themselves, or a situation, differently.
It never stopped feeling worthwhile.
One afternoon, after delivering a management development programme, one of the participants stayed behind while everyone else drifted out of the room.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I’ve realised I spend most of my time waiting for somebody else to ask me those questions.”
Kathleen smiled.
Then he added something that stayed with her.
“I wish I could coach myself like that.”
Driving home that evening, Kathleen found herself wondering.
What would that actually mean?
More Than Thinking About Ourselves
Kathleen had always encouraged people to reflect.
Reflection mattered.
Experience on its own didn’t automatically become learning.
People often discovered something important simply by pausing long enough to think about what had happened.
But reflection wasn’t quite the same thing as coaching.
She thought about her own working life.
There had been plenty of evenings when she had reflected on a meeting.
A difficult conversation.
Something that hadn’t gone as planned.
Sometimes she replayed events in her mind.
Sometimes she wrote in a notebook.
Sometimes she simply thought while walking home.
Reflection helped.
But it didn’t always move her forward.
Occasionally she found herself thinking about the same situation repeatedly.
She wasn’t learning anything new.
She was simply revisiting it.
There had to be something more.
What Coaches Actually Do
The following day, Kathleen began thinking about the coaches she most admired.
None of them rushed to provide answers.
They rarely told people what to do.
Instead, they listened carefully.
They noticed assumptions.
They challenged thinking.
They asked questions that slowed people down just enough to examine what they had been taking for granted.
Good coaches didn’t think for other people.
Neither did they leave people entirely alone with their thoughts.
They created a way of thinking.
Kathleen stopped.
Perhaps that was the distinction.
Coaching wasn’t simply about conversation.
It was about creating the conditions in which better thinking became possible.
Turning the Questions Around
That evening Kathleen thought about a meeting she had found frustrating earlier in the week.
Normally she would have replayed it.
Instead she imagined she was coaching someone else.
She smiled at the idea.
If another person had brought her exactly the same situation, she knew she wouldn’t begin by giving advice.
She would ask questions.
So Kathleen began asking herself the same ones.
What actually happened?
Not what she feared had happened.
Not what she imagined other people had been thinking.
What had actually happened?
Then:
What assumptions am I making?
That question stopped her.
She realised she had been treating one interpretation as though it were a fact.
Then:
What matters most here?
That was different again.
The meeting itself wasn’t really the issue.
There was a broader relationship she wanted to strengthen.
Then:
What could I do differently next time?
Not perfectly.
Differently.
Kathleen closed the notebook.
The situation hadn’t disappeared.
But something had changed.
She was no longer simply thinking about it.
She was working with it.
Self-Coaching Isn’t Positive Thinking
The phrase self-coaching can sometimes sound deceptively simple.
As though it means encouraging ourselves.
Being optimistic.
Keeping a journal.
Repeating affirmations.
Or believing we already have all the answers.
Kathleen didn’t recognise herself in any of those descriptions.
Sometimes self-coaching led her to encouraging conclusions.
Sometimes it challenged her.
Sometimes it confirmed she needed to have a difficult conversation.
Sometimes it helped her recognise she had been avoiding one.
Sometimes it showed her that she had been asking the wrong question entirely.
Self-coaching wasn’t about making herself feel better.
It was about helping herself think better.
Reflection Is the Beginning, Not the End
Kathleen began noticing another pattern.
Reflection often started with awareness.
What happened?
That was important.
But awareness on its own rarely changed very much.
Self-coaching carried the thinking further.
What does this show me?
What assumptions am I making?
What else could be true?
What matters most?
What choices do I have?
What will I do?
What can I learn from what happens next?
That movement mattered.
Awareness.
Questioning.
Choice.
Action.
Learning.
Without movement, reflection could easily become repetition.
With movement, experience became development.
Coaching Ourselves Through Working Life
Kathleen wasn’t trying to replace coaching.
She knew the value of another person’s perspective too well.
A skilled coach noticed things we missed.
Asked questions we would never think to ask ourselves.
Held us accountable.
Challenged our blind spots.
Created space that could be difficult to create alone.
Self-coaching wasn’t intended to replace any of that.
It complemented it.
Because most working days didn’t arrive with a coach sitting beside us.
There were meetings.
Conversations.
Unexpected decisions.
Moments of uncertainty.
Successes.
Mistakes.
Opportunities.
Disappointments.
Small moments that quietly shaped our working lives.
Self-coaching meant learning to work with those moments while we were living them.
A Different Way of Thinking
Several weeks later, Kathleen was facilitating another programme.
Towards the end of the day, someone asked a familiar question.
“What would you do?”
Kathleen smiled.
“I could tell you.”
The room laughed.
“Or…”
She paused.
“I could ask you a question that helps you discover what you think.”
Afterwards, Kathleen thought again about the participant who had said he wished he could coach himself.
She understood the comment differently now.
Perhaps self-coaching wasn’t about becoming our own coach.
Perhaps it was about learning to think in ways that good coaches encourage.
To become more curious.
More honest.
More willing to question our assumptions.
More deliberate in our choices.
More committed to learning from our experience.
Working life gives us problems to solve, decisions to make and opportunities to grow almost every day.
Reflection helps us notice them.
Self-coaching helps us work with them.
Perhaps that’s what it actually means to coach ourselves.
Not having all the answers.
Learning how to ask ourselves the kinds of questions that help us find them.
Continue Exploring Self-Coaching
Read more Professional Self-Coaching stories and explore practical self-coaching resources in the Professional Self-Coaching collection
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