One of my coaching clients is a project manager. During our coaching session, which was focused on some time management issues that he had, he asked me to share how I manage my own time.  I felt a bit uncomfortable about his request, but rushed to offer him all I know about time management and how I manage my own time. After talking for a few minutes, I mentioned that our schedules and life challenges are very different. I asked him how what I have shared might have been useful for him. He didn’t respond to that directly, but my feeling was that the time spent on that wasn’t very effective.

When our coaching session was over, I thought to myself about why I went into explaining how I manage my time.   And then I had this discovery : I acted out from the “wrong” place, from the place of not wanting to be judged by my client as someone who withholds useful information, someone who is too secretive or even worst, not helpful enough to her clients. If I were to take a moment to really understand my feelings at the time when he asked me to share “my story”, I would have acted differently. I would have said, “I’m happy to share with you how I manage my time, but our lives and challenges are so different. And as a project manager with as many years of experience as you have, you must know a lot about time management skills. In what way could you apply them to your life?” That would have made our session much more productive and we would have gotten to the solution much quicker.

My big insight: being aware of your own feelings (as a coach) and managing them is just as important as understanding your client’s feelings. Just as we check in with our client to make sure that we understand them and that we are on the right track, we must check in within ourselves to make sure that our questions and comments come from the right place.

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