What is it like to have an Executive Coach?
‘I am not your therapist. I am not your mentor. I am not your advisor. I am your mirror. I listen to what you’re saying and what you’re not saying. And then I will shine a light on what I observe.’
My new coach began our relationship with a simple introduction. She asked — have you been coached before? -No. So, she explained what we were about to get into.
‘I am not your therapist. I am not your mentor. I am not your advisor. I am your mirror. I listen to what you’re saying and what you’re not saying. And then I will shine a light on what I observe.’ — Coach M
“This is your hour, she said. We can talk about anything, so tell me, what shall we talk about?”
I said
- I’m seeking balance.
- I want to get into a rhythm.
- I want more moments of being in a state of flow.
Because right now, I am overwhelmed with all the things I’ve said YES to. Multiple work projects, many planned trips, a side hustle, and more. COVID-19 taught me how short life is, so I’m diving deep and saying Yes to life.
Coach M responded very simply, “so… what you’re looking to do is Prioritize!”
I said as a Product Manager, my job is to Prioritize work for my teams, every day. So how shall we prioritize all the things going on in life?
She offered two tools:
Tool one — Categorize everything into buckets and identify which items are:
- Essential and Urgent
- Important but not on a deadline
- Nice to have
- Nice Not to have
Tool two — Coach M reminded me of the Pareto principle. Also known as the 80–20 rule. This rule states that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Sometimes this is even more extreme — sometimes close to 99% of the effects come from less than 5% of the results. It applies in all natural, economic, and social contexts. Some cool examples from ubc:
- ~20% of seeds planted result in 80% of the flowers
- ~20% of the world has ~80% of the wealth
- You wear ~20% of your clothes ~80% of the time
When applied to work and productivity, I was reminded to stop trying to overdo each task. Identify the 20% of the effort that will bring in 80% of the results in each of my tasks and then just do it. We ended the call setting up another session to apply these tools.
A week later, we got on Zoom to apply these tools in the second coaching session.
I created a big doc of All the things I feel I need to do. I put them into three buckets: personal, work, and side hustle. Then together, Coach M and I, placed all the tasks within each bucket into the four categories above.
- Essential & urgent items should happen right away — like dealing with a scary tax audit notice I got last week.
- Important items that are investments for the future should happen next — like creating a long term strategy for my products, and writing this honest newsletter to you regularly as I navigate life.
- Nice to have items I will delegate ruthlessly — like planning my trips this year.
- Nice not to have items I will just skip doing altogether. What a relief.
In 30 minutes, I was able to give my unending mental task list some rest.
Now, I keep taking on the items that bubbled to the top in each bucket, and am working to apply the 80–20 rule to these items.
As an example, I haven’t released a newsletter in a month because I’m overthinking my drafts, and editing them multiple times. Instead of trying to make this one the perfect article, I’m writing it, editing it once, and hitting publish.
That’s what I’ve gotten out of two sessions of coaching.
In the next session, I intend to bring up the theme of Goal-setting and creating milestones for the next few years. Like Bill Gates said — we often over-estimate what we can get done in a year and underestimate what we can get done in three years. Hit the ❤ button a few times if you want me to continue writing about them as I learn from these sessions.
Have you ever had a good coach in life? What did you learn from them, what topics came up? Comment and tell us about it so Coach M and I can bring it up too.
This article was first published on my weekly newsletter, you can get these straight in your inbox but they Maybe Too Honest.
