Coaching cringe: when you second guess yourself

Do you sometimes wake up at night and think about a witty repartee that you should have dished out in a tricky situation? When you suddenly know what you should have said, but somehow did not? When this happens to me I am at the same time amused at my potential response and disappointed in myself that I did not have the idea at the time.

This also happens to coaches after coaching sessions. You reflect on a tricky moment in a coaching session with a client and suddenly, out of the blue, you figure out “what you should have said.” This can happen while you are reflecting, in a supervision session or when you are engaging in continuous coach education. And usually, the feelings a coach experiences are just like the ones we have in the middle of the night: on the one hand, happy that we found a good solution, on the other a bit embarrassed that we did not think of it at the time.

Here is what might help if the embarrassment side of things gets too strong:

Acknowledge that you are normal

Not knowing what to do in a conversation is normal. Being stuck is normal. It happens to all of us. Yes, all of us. Even the most experienced coaches have post-session insights of “arghs, this is what I should have said.” It is how we learn. Try to cringe for a bit, but then move on.

Strengthen the happiness

For some people, writing down what they are learning helps strengthen the happiness about the learning rather than focusing on what you did not know before you learned. Maybe reflect on all the situations in which you can use the newfound insight.

Be aware that there is no second universe

We did something in the tricky situation. Since we do not have a second universe to compare with, we cannot know that what we now thing would be better would actually have been better. A conversation is like a tree with many different branches and leaves. If we follow one branch, we are not following another and the conversation would have evolved very differently if we had selected a different route. There is no need to beat ourselves up about a “mistake”. Just look at your new discovery as an alternative option.

Strengthen your growth mindset

Try to think of your coaching skills as a work-in-progress. Getting better does not mean that you were bad before. It just means that you are learning. You might experiment with exchanging the words “o, no, I should have …” with “next time, I will experiment with.”

I hope this helps a bit with your midnight moments of cringe about something you did. This text actually emerged in a discussion in our free meetups and exchanges – if you want to hang out with a few coaches, get to know us or ask us and the others anything, why don’t you join one?

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