Speaker 1: 0:01

Self-perception is a funny thing. It's a big knot of the things we believe about ourselves. It's the character traits, the capabilities and the limiting beliefs about what is possible for us. To find success as a coach, I needed to face my own stuff and get real. Trust me, we are all a work in progress and my work on me is far from done. Now I've begun to feel grounded, but that doesn't mean that every day getting here has been sunshine and rainbows. I love what I do, my clients and my community. I had to do some serious work to navigate to this place of comfort and confidence as a coach.

Speaker 1: 0:49

Hi, I'm Becky Fraser, an award-winning coach, author and entrepreneur. I'm also a leader shaped by decades of experience inviting others on a journey towards adaptable leadership and fulfilled potential. Welcome to Short Story Long. Today is a novella. These episodes share the journeys between the inflection points. They still have growth, a little drama and insights, just in a smaller package.

Speaker 1: 1:18

It's not surprising that jumping into entrepreneurship was a significant change for me. Even with all my other leaps, this was a lot to take in. Over time, I found myself, I found my clients and I found my place. It was hard work, but it was meaningful. It could be easy to doubt whether or not you're the right person to do the job you're doing. It could be easy to doubt whether or not you're the right person to do the job you're doing and naturally, there have been some times when I felt like I wasn't certain that I was the right person to be coaching someone. Maybe they had more experience leading than I did, maybe they were in a role that I didn't know anything about and I wasn't certain that I knew how to guide them. One of the magical things that I noticed over time was that didn't matter. It goes back to that idea of I'm not telling you what to do. You have enough people who are around you trying to tell you what to do. You don't need me to do. You have enough people who are around you trying to tell you what to do. You don't need me to do that. My role is to listen deeply and understand what you are saying to yourself and the struggles within you to decide what you want to do. Next, that I'm qualified to do with anyone that I'm talking to and actively listening to what people might be curious about and wondering about and worrying about. Then I just ask them more questions about that until they unravel that knot that's been in there and they can see the path forward and what they want to do next. It gives me a lot of confidence in my coaching to see people see the light at the end of the tunnel during or at the end of a conversation or a coaching engagement.

Speaker 1: 3:15

All that work had to start somewhere, and the work that I did at first was with my values, and I needed to find a way to translate those into how I do leadership and business coaching. So I have three main values that that I have, just as a human being in general. One of those is freedom. I need the room to be able to make my own choices in my own time and in my own way, and so that translates to supporting my clients to find their version of what I call lead as you. Trying to be someone else is never going to be as good as being you. You'll always come in second place, at least when you're trying to be someone else, and so one of the things I really needed to figure out was how to integrate those two things together where my clients could feel that sense of freedom, even if freedom wasn't one of their top values for themselves. One of the other things that was really important to me was that I had an authentic kind of impact when I was working with my clients. What that meant for me was really identifying those people that I could be myself with, and I didn't have to pretend to be someone else, and I recognized in my clients the desire for them to have the space for some acceptance and some opportunity to sort through what is really true. They would kind of verbally throw it out on the table and then we would clean it up together, and from there then they were able to choose their path forward, and for me, that, I realized, was a critical part of me being a coach and me being me while I was supporting my clients.

Speaker 1: 5:09

One of the things, though, that's important about that is that I needed to maintain some objectivity, and that translates to what I care about and what I don't. I have well shocked a few clients when I've told them I don't really care what choices you make. They kind of give me that quirked head and that kind of wide-eyed look and they're like what do you mean? You don't care what I do. I don't, I don't care what you do. What I really care about is that what you're doing is a conscious choice for yourself and something that serves your greater goals. And once I recognized that that was really my intention for my clients, it gave me the permission to not want something more than my clients wanted it for themselves and to be able to let go of what I thought should be or could be and just guide them as they were going through that discovery process to realize what was most important to them. It's interesting because I can actually take any side in a debate, which means that I might be asking you questions but I'm maybe just poking the bear. So when you think I'm taking a side, you have to wonder am I? And I think that's kind of fun for a client and I know it's a lot of fun for me.

Speaker 1: 6:35

The other thing that really helped me be a lot more grounded and really focused and recognizing the value that I could have as a coach was taking on all of the working on the business side of things. I recognized and realized how much I had absorbed from other people throughout my career In HR. I'd often supported what I would call the centralized functions. That included things like finance, marketing strategy, maybe operations and technology, and here's a shout out and thank you to all of you who showed me what quality work looks like in those areas. It truly helped me develop a mindset and a structure for how I do things within my business. I didn't realize I was learning by osmosis, but it turns out I did a lot of that.

Speaker 1: 7:30

One of the other foundations for me as I really started to develop my focus as a coach was understanding who are the people that I wanted to coach, and that was the development and the evolution of what I now refer to as the introverted skeptic, and I'd been looking at who I loved coaching, or my favorite clients from my HR days. Who were they? What did they have in common? What were the things that we talked about? And it really started to come together and gel into a pattern and it was really no surprise who they were. It was only a surprise that I didn't see it sooner. Everyone was asking me about which industry do you work with, or what roles, or do you work with women, do you work with men or whatever characterization that they wanted to apply to it, and that wasn't a defining piece for me, but seeing the introverted skeptic, that definitely stuck the landing for me.

Speaker 1: 8:31

You might be wondering what is an introverted skeptic and I know I talked about it a little bit in a previous episode, but I'll refresh your memory here and that is someone who's introverted boy. They get a reputation for being shy. That just is not true. Really. What it is is that their energy gets drained when they're in large groups of people or have to talk all day or ugh. Horrible for them is the small talk right, and so they don't want to be involved in those kinds of things. Pair that with a skeptic who, when they're looking at a situation, they're looking for ways that it doesn't make sense or it won't work. So it's a questioning perspective. What I find is that the folks that carry both of those characteristics often get told hey, talk a little bit more in a meeting. But then they speak up and they're like why can't you be a team player? Why do you have to be so negative? And when I start talking to people about those two things coming together, there are a lot of leadership characteristics that they have in common, while, of course, having other characteristics that are uniquely their own. Be an entrepreneur, they said. You'll have flexibility in your schedule, they said.

Speaker 1: 9:48

The first point is true for some of us. Some step into this work and find they don't love the experience. That's fair. I did have one point early on where I was thinking about finding a traditional job and I shared that with my husband. His support was immediate, but not in the way I expected. He told me to stay the course because he could see I was happier coaching even if it was hard. I'm grateful for that push. It was exactly what I needed to hear, so I would revisit the inner work I needed to do and keep going. What do I learn from all of this stuff and what might I prompt you to be thinking about the first piece?

Speaker 1: 10:29

I had to think about who am I? I went through what I call a corporate hangover as I left my corporate role in HR and moved into becoming an entrepreneur. Corporate had become such a part of my identity that I had to use a wider lens when I was thinking about who I was and what I chose to do as a coach, and I encourage you take a serious look at how you see yourself. What's really true versus a belief you have been holding that may no longer be true. My book has a chapter called Hold your Labels Lightly. No one else needs to pigeonhole you in an identity or role if you do it for them. In that chapter I talk a little bit about the beliefs that you might have about yourself that might be old truths but not current truths and really recognizing how you might want to really navigate into a different kind of image in a different way of seeing yourself and talking about yourself.

Speaker 1: 11:34

The other thing that I really recognized was who are the people I wanted to have around me. They say you resemble the five people you spend the most time with and arguably I spend time with a little bit more than five people. And yet I learned by watching others do things and using what resonated and leaving the rest. I learned so much from my clients and community. I ask a question and the answers I get often blow my mind in amazing ways. I'd been surrounded by so many fabulous people throughout my life. I just hadn't recognized how much I could really learn in some of those conversations and those experiences that we had together until I started to slow down and actually listen and explore what I was hearing and what I was seeing, and explore what I was hearing and what I was seeing. Ultimately, I had a chance to choose where I wanted to be. I'm thrilled to be doing what I'm doing all these years after I started. Watching leaders feel more settled and more acceptance for the leader they are brings joy to me every time.

Speaker 1: 12:45

I loved supporting my clients when I was in HR, but for me this is so much better. In HR I had dual responsibilities the organization and the people in it. Now, even when I get hired by organizations, I'm quite clear about supporting the company goals, but in service to my coaching client. The coachees needs will always be held as a priority, since they are always in a place of choice. One thing I hear in the coaching community is follow the energy. It wasn't clear that I was following that energy when I first started my coaching practice. Frankly, it felt like leaving and not following something. Now I have learned to trust that energy. I joke that I don't do anything I don't want to do anymore. Of course, that's not exactly true, but it is far more true than it ever was. My clients mean a great deal to me, even if I don't care what they do. I absolutely care how they feel. Sometimes in life you don't get to have control and make the choices. Instead, it's about relationships and influence, but that's another story. Thank you for listening to another story.