COACHING SELF-AWARENESS

Self-awareness and coaching—what is the relationship between these? Does a client need self- awareness to be coached? If so, how much self-awareness should a client have before entering coaching? How much self-awareness is required in order to get value from coaching? And while on the subject of self-awareness, how much self-awareness is required to be effective as a coach?

To begin with, it’s really no secret that one of the great unintended effects of coaching is an increase in self-knowledge and self-awareness. This is inevitable where there is effective coaching. Why? Because Coaching, by its very nature, is a step-back process for reflecting on the meaning of life. So no wonder clients come away from Coaching with a deepened sense of understanding themselves—what makes them tick, how they work, the functioning of human nature, what they really want, their strengths, their weaknesses, etc. So even when the client does not ask for this, greater self-awareness and self-knowledge emerges from Coaching. Asking questions about these areas works in the long-term to facilitate an expanded awareness.