We’re halfway through the year, and it’s time to assess how things are going. In Part 1, we checked in on your coaching skills and your coaching business. In this post, we’ll take stock of YOU.
We discussed some of the sources of data (both hard and soft) you can use to monitor your business and skills development, and there are just as many options when it comes to your personal development.
For hard data, you may subscribe to a health app or use a wearable fitness tracker for your workouts and nutrition, or you might do this with a pen and paper or a whiteboard. Of course, like anything else, this data can only help us if we look at it, and use it to inform our choices going forward.
You may have specific physical goals or targets prescribed by a fitness or medical professional. Some numbers you may want to see go up (e.g., servings of vegetables, number of workouts, muscle mass, steps taken), and others you might want to go down (e.g., blood pressure, weight, number of alcoholic drinks).
And then, on the subjective or soft data side, what do you notice about life in between your coaching sessions, or in between your coaching days? What’s the rhythm like, and is it working?
“What makes a fire burn is space between the logs.” – Judy Sorum Brown
This line from Judy’s poem invites you to ask: Are you giving yourself enough space?
Another consideration is the balance between the coaching you give others and the support you receive for yourself, whether that’s coaching, mentor coaching, supervision, therapy, spiritual guidance, or something else. EMCC Global, a European coaching association, believes that the minimum ratio of practice to supervision should be 35 practice hours to 1 hour of supervision received.
What’s your ratio between giving and receiving?
Lastly, what is the energy like in your living space, and your working space (and for many of us these overlap)? Is the air stagnant, or is it fresh. In your physical space you can open a window and let the breeze clean the air and carry away the stale air.
How can you freshen your mind and invite new ideas and perspectives, and let go of unhealthy or unhelpful ideas?
What do you need to do more or less of? What brings you joy, and how can you do more of it? What’s draining your energy, and what can you do about it?
Sleep is something else you might have hard data for, again, if you’re using an app or a wearable device that tracks how long you sleep, or even your stages of sleep. Subjectively, you can track how you feel when you wake up in the morning, your energy level through the day, and your sleep hygiene behaviors like staying off your devices when it’s close to bedtime.
If you’re working with a coach, this mid-year check-in is a great topic to bring to your next session. Above all, it’s not meant to be overwhelming. It’s a quick pit stop to park your car, get out and take a look, and kick the wheels a bit. How are we doing? Are we good? Great, let’s go on. Not so good? Let’s correct our course and get back out there.
Mid-Year Check-In for Your Business