My immersion in the world of coaching

and how I'm integrating it back into engineering and life

When I left Medium at the beginning of 2017, I was burnt out — I couldn’t imagine what any company might be building or what anyone could say to me that would make me want to join them for a year or two. So I went into coaching and eventually, leadership development. The idea of not being attached to any one company — of being able to coach and help support people across different companies — was appealing to me. And to be honest, that my role was also limited to hour-long coaching sessions — that I wouldn’t be pulled into company leadership dysfunction and toxicity afterwards and day in and day out — well, that was appealing too.

Over the next year, I built up a solid coaching practice for engineering leaders. I went through CTI’s five-module coach training program. For the next two years, I ramped down my coaching practice to co-found Co Leadership and help engineers become leaders. I met and became friends with a lot of coaches.

In the end, I missed being on a team — I missed working with and supporting a team and individuals that I cared deeply about. I didn’t want to disappear after coaching sessions or one-day workshops — I wanted to see the ongoing change, the moments when teams click and gel.

When I think about me now versus me four years ago, a lot has changed, and a lot has stayed the same. My immersion in the world of coaching fit what I needed at the time in my life — making new connections, work flexibility as I processed changes to my life, exploration, recovery.

As I integrate what I learned from coaching, here are the things I really hold to be truly valuable from the past few years.

The value of having the right coach at the right time

Mid-way through CTI training, I sought out a coach who couldn’t have been more different at first glance. She had me answer questions before our first session such as, “Who do you give your power to?” and “What’s your relationship like with your heart? Your soul?” I’m pretty sure I responded, “I literally don’t know what this question is asking me.” She had me go on monthly soul dates to learn to listen to my intuition on what I needed, and she had me take my sensitive child self on little dates to sit quietly in a park and doodle. Each morning, I chanted loudly “Life is abundant and full of possibilities!” ten times.

In an hour-long coaching session every two weeks, she skillfully guided me through some of the roughest parts of my separation, of dating new people for the first time in over ten years. And when our 6 months coaching engagement ended, I felt complete. I didn’t renew, and I haven’t worked with a coach since. But I know viscerally how valuable it is to work with a good one, and I won’t hesitate to find another coach who’s the right fit in the future.

Being a better listener (and the awareness to know when I’m not)

Before I was a coach, sometimes I would have 1:1s that seemed really useful to people, but I didn’t always know why. People described me as an empathetic manager, but I didn’t have a lot of intention behind how I supported people in conversations.

Coaching gave me tools and awareness around when to listen and ask questions, to be curious and withhold judgment. To know when sharing your own story builds trust and understanding, and when it closes someone off by signaling that their turn to talk is over.

When I have 1:1s now with engineers at Range, I sometimes step more into a coaching role to help someone talk through an issue they’re facing, and sometimes it’s a more casual banter about what’s going on in our lives. I can feel when I’m in different modes, and I know when I haven’t been as effective as I could have been.

Lifelong friends

The friends I made in coach training are people I imagine I will keep in touch with for years to come. They witnessed me open up, they coached me on the things I almost didn’t bring up because they were too hard to talk about directly.

And many of them — divorced older women with kids — showed me that I would be ok. As someone who married young and had kids on the younger side, I didn’t know anyone who had been divorced. Most people my age are single, or newlywed, or with newborns. Divorce carried with it such a stigma that I avoided looking at it directly. Meeting older women who had been through divorce and honestly seemed much happier and free was hugely impactful for me. Someone to text me after tense mediation sessions to say, “I’ve been there. It’s so hard. And it will be so much better on the other side.”

I am so grateful for these friendships.

The power of mindsets

Mindsets are powerful — they are the lens through which we view the world, and so shifting them is powerful too. Some of the shifts are little — “This frustration at work? What if I saw it instead as an opportunity to step up and peak up?” and some of them are so deep and core to our beings — “I am safe. I am enough.”

I can better recognize when I or others have mindsets that perhaps don’t serve us anymore — and how to use tools to help shift to more useful mindsets (and even that you can shift mindsets!).

Getting in touch with my feelings and my body

I neglected my feelings and my body for years. I put up so many walls to numb hard situations, even to myself. When I told my parents about my separation, my dad said “you’ll be alright. you’re tough.” Toughness got me through a lot in my life, but it also numbed me from feeling.

Good coaches do a lot of their own inner work, both because it’s an investment in themselves, but also because it impacts how well they can coach others. A coach who hasn’t worked on managing their own inner critics can hardly help others deal with theirs.

In the last few years, I’ve felt more. I’ve listened more to my body. I’ve shared more about how I’m feeling, and I’ve let myself trust my body’s intuition when something doesn’t sit quite right with me. The walls are not up all the time.

The ability to have deeper conversations

I once flew across the world to visit a friend. I stayed with her for a week, and I shared very little with her about my personal life, my uncertain marriage, how hard it was to have two young kids.

I never talked to my friends about the hard stuff.

Coaches love to go deep. At first, it’s thrilling and addictive — how much connection and deep, intimate conversations have I been missing out on my whole life!? I went on a lot of first dates where I just tried to go really deep with people in a short period of time.

Now that I can, though, I’ve found that I don’t always want to. Sometimes I just want to have normal conversations where people tell me the silly thing their dog did, or where we play online games and laugh at our awful drawings.

—

I once sent a dear friend a book recommendation, and she replied, “Thank you, but right now, I’m a bit burnt out on personal growth.” I think about that moment often, and I feel it deeply.

My mental model of how people change is a bit like the periods of expansion and focus that happens in product design. People go through an exploration phase, sometimes even rejecting who they were, and like a pendulum, swing far from their past selves, striving to re-invent. This part feels like slipping back into my old skin, finding it more comfortable than ever, and finding joy again in the things that always brought me joy.

There may be more periods of intense personal growth ahead of me, or it may simmer for decades. For now, these are the lessons I’ll carry with me.