How do you measure progress for yourself?
Another coach asked me how I know whether my coaching is impactful. Obviously, I think it is, but I hadn’t asked myself what makes me think that.
One answer is that many of my clients go on to get promoted and/or gain more scope, or they quit their jobs to start their own ventures. But those are lagging indicators – I can’t know at the time of coaching whether they will get those results (and promotions often involve an element of luck that is out of their control).
I was a bit stuck, so I inverted the question: how do I know when my coaching is not impactful? That was easier to answer – I know I’m failing as a coach when we are repeating the same conversations each session. The person is having the same complaints, often about the same people, but they aren’t doing anything differently themselves to change their situation. When I see that, I will encourage them to stop or pause coaching until they are ready to commit to change.
So I know my coaching is having results when the conversations change each session. They are paying attention to different things. As their attention shifts, they start to think differently, and then their behavior changes by trying things they weren’t before. That doesn’t mean that they will have completely changed themselves after one session – it still takes practice and repetitions to rewire the nervous system. But once they see a new possibility and tried it out to get a different result, I am confident the change will likely stick.
What are the leading indicators like that for you? How can you know what you’re doing is working before you see the final results?
This is particularly a challenging question for executives, as they might be placing bets on people to step up before they seem ready, or committing to a business or product strategy that could take years to pay off in the marketplace. So what do you look at when you can’t get instant feedback in the form of results?