Coaching is a helping profession.

One often is in a position of empathizing with other people’s stress, anxiety, and pain.

It can be difficult to manage one’s own mental health in this environment, especially when combined with the uncertainties and challenges present in everyone’s day-to-day life today.

Working with top experts in the awarenow.io (soon to be rebranded as Profi) community of coaches, we have been able to identify five proven strategies that coaches can use to stay grounded and mentally balanced despite these challenges.

1. Lead By Example

It’s difficult to help clients with their stress without adequately processing one’s own challenges. As Taylor Morgan, founder and CEO of The Captain’s Lifestyle puts it, “YOU must be your first priority.” Until you have helped yourself, it is difficult to help others.

As such, the best coaches practice self-care. This includes checking in with yourself about how you are feeling, emotionally and physically, and making time for activities that refresh you. Especially if you help clients deal with stress, it’s important to practice what you preach.

2. Recognize Signs Of Burnout

Many coaches are able to recognize signs of burnout in their clients.  It is just as important to be able to do with oneself.  Diane Martinez, a life coach at Conscious Creating Life Coaching, warns that the signs of burnout may be subtle and hard to detect especially in the early stages.

She advises that burnout symptoms include physical and emotional fatigue and a feeling of depleted energy.  They may also include increased cynicism, impatience, or a feeling of being overwhelmed by even minor chores and tasks. Another telltale sign of burnout when it comes to client work is talking more than listening.

3. Get Help From Other Coaches

Many of the best coaches rely on a support network of other coaches. In fact, according to certified coach Mike Bundrant of iNLP Center, “every life coach should be in coaching as a client.” Not only does having a coach oneself communicate faith in the coaching process, but doing so also can provide a needed source of support. As Nance Schick, a coach with Third Ear Conflict Resolution explains:

Nearly every coach I know has a coach. We also have mastermind groups or other accountability partners because we know that our work can be emotionally, energetically, and intellectually draining. We need to have mutually nurturing and supportive relationships, which help to identify burnout in its early stages.

Another advantage of seeking the assistance of your peers is that fellow coaches are uniquely positioned to be able to understand your challenges. As Carrie Wren of Carrie Wren Coaching explains, “I think that it is imperative as a coach to maintain a relationship with my own coach to both challenge and support me personally and professionally, as well as receiving ongoing mentoring, peer support, and training.”

Incidentally, a further advantage to being coached, as a coach, is the insight that it can give into the coaching process from a client’s perspective. This can provide valuable insight into your own coaching business.

4. Establish And Maintain Boundaries

As in any relationship, it’s important with coaching to establish and maintain appropriate boundaries. This is especially important in the current environment where barriers between work and personal time are increasingly blurred.

While it may seem that making oneself available to clients 24/7 would be desirable to clients,  it is actually counterproductive.  Coaches need to be at their best to give their best to clients. It is very difficult to be at one’s best if one doesn’t have an opportunity for meaningful downtime. Lack of boundaries may lead a coach to unconsciously resent clients, creating situations that can lead to unnecessary conflict between coach and client.

Furthermore, being overly available to clients makes it too easy for them to expect to be spoon-fed and reliant on their coach. This short-circuits the process by which coachees can grow and develop on their own while using the coach as a mentor and/or source of feedback, advice, and accountability.

One practical tool here is to “schedule your priorities and prioritize your schedule”.  Book personal life events first, including family time, meals, vacations, and downtime.

Similarly, it is important to maintain boundaries around the scope of an engagement.

While this may evolve or change over time, it should do as a result of explicit conversations as opposed to client-initiated “scope creep”. 

If a client seems to be wanting or expecting more, use this as an opportunity to revisit your scope of work and determine whether additional services, a change in focus, or even a referral to another coach for additional support may be appropriate.