Self as Coach, Self as Leader

Chapter 3 Building Heat Through Cultivation of Self as Coach

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Cultivating Self as Coach Builds Heat for the Work

Heat is a potent cauldron connecting head, heart, and gut in a mixture that creates an opening for meaningful breakthroughs—the sort that connect the dots, linking who we are today with our past, our narratives, our early attachments, and the scripts we crafted in our early years that no longer serve us as well in our current lives. Heat creates the possibility for new insights and epiphanies. With well-constructed practices and supports, these breakthroughs lead the way to our own vertical development.

Chapters 3 through 9 focus on the six dimensions of Self as Coach and include conceptual links to the foundational theories explored in Chapter 2. The following chapters examine how, as coaches, we can create heat through our use of self and provide practices to begin to incorporate new ways of being into our own sense of the self as a coach.

The six dimensions of Self as Coach are: Presence, Empathy, Range of Feelings, Boundaries and Systems, Embodiment, and Courage (see Figure 3.1). Our most worthy goal as a great coach is to remain at the edge of our growth, always feeling appreciative for where we find ourselves in our development, and simultaneously leaning into new layers and emerging opportunities to deepen our capacity as coach.

Figure 3.1 The Self as Coach Model