How to Clarify Your Purpose as a Young Leader and Breathe Again

In a previous blog post, I talked about why personal coaching is the greatest gift you can give to yourself as a young leader and why you need to consider personal coaching if you are struggling at work and in your career. I believe to become who you want to be as a young leader, you need personal coaching. I needed it when I was struggling at work and in my career. I didn’t know it then, but in the darkest time of my life, I reached out to a personal coach who helped me clarify my purpose and breathe again. My coach gave me a perspective that allowed me to find my mission as a young leader and begin building a high-performing team around that mission.

Personal coaching helped me improve the quality of my work, life, relationships, and health. I truly believe personal coaching has the power to help you become who you want to be faster than you thought possible. In order to get the most out of personal coaching, you have to first understand what personal coaching is and what it is not and how personal coaching differs from mentoring, therapy, or teaching.

Personal coaching is different from mentoring, therapy or teaching. A coach-client relationship is an equal partnership. This is different from mentoring or teaching which is based on an expert-novice relationship. Personal coaching focuses on helping a non-clinical population to achieve specific goals whereas therapy focuses on pathology and clinical populations with a specific problem or diagnosis. Kerryn Griffiths talks more about this in her 2005 study in the Journal of Learning Design titled Personal coaching: A model for effective learning.

In Coaching for Performance, John Whitmore defines coaching as “unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching.”

I love personal coaching because it is an active, collaborative, authentic, engaging, thought-provoking, and creative process designed to maximize your potential. Personal coaching is about helping you become the leader of your own life first before you can lead anyone else. It’s about learning to become who you want to be by finding out who you truly are. Personal coaching is how I was able to take control of my career and my life, the right way. The best personal coaches will help you get the most out of your life by giving you greater insight into who you are, improving your sense of awareness and the quality of the decisions you make.

For me, personal coaching was the quickest way to achieving the goals I had for myself and building a team of people around me who share those values. These people became my partners. My personal coaches became part of my team as well.

You can’t do life alone. You can’t go it alone. You need a team. You need people around you, the right people. I am reminded of a scripture in the book of Genesis that says “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”

You need partners. Your personal coach is your partner. Think of becoming who you want to be as building a movement. You need people that can help you build your movement. I like this African Proverb because it gets to the heart of why personal coaching is so important.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Personal coaching is how you learn to become the best you so you can go far in your life. It empowers you to build a team around your life and your goals. You need others to go far. But you have to find and lead you first.

You need real confidence, improved goal setting, and self-determination. And personal coaching is how you get these things.

I believe being professional, smart, persuasive, fun, and social is not enough to become who you want to be as a young leader and improve the quality of your life and career. Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to be professional, social, smart, and fun. You should strive to be all of those things.

I believe, however, that you need a personal coach to help you become a better leader and build a great team around you. It takes great leadership to achieve the goals you have for your life. And all great leaders have someone in their corner that’s got their back. I call this person a personal coach. This person must be able to speak truth to you even when it’s not convenient, even when it hurts a little. This person should care more about your life than your ego.

Personal coaching doesn’t get talked about too often when we think about becoming who we want to be as young leaders and taking control of our lives. But I believe personal coaching is something you need if you are looking to build a team and life that inspires and prospers. Becoming the best leader in your career, industry, company, and in your life starts with coaching.

It’s great to be professional. Education matters. Being fun and social is desirable. These are all wonderful things to associate with your career, your goals or to encourage when interacting with your team and your clients.

But, if you're struggling to become who you want to be in your life or you’re having trouble achieving your goals or building a high-performance team around you, it might be time to get a personal coach.