Self coaching for moments when visibility feels hard

Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarfe, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups and organisations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective, a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveller, a reader, a mum, wife and dog parent and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses. The executive coaching business is tough and I've learnt all the lessons through plenty of mistakes and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are. I'll be sharing tips and ideas translated for your context as well as stories from the field with brilliant coaches and mentors. If you want to level up your executive coaching business skills, then this is the place for you. Okay, so here is my question for you to start this episode. When you're sitting down and you are doing some marketing, you're thinking about hitting post on LinkedIn. You know you need to add photos to your posts. You have to put your photo on your website. You might be reaching out and sending a message to an old colleague to talk about business. I want to know, and this is my question, what are the automatic negative thoughts that go through your mind? Because believe me, I know there is a lot going on when it comes to showing up on LinkedIn and showing up on the Internet generally. So I include website in that or other social platforms and I know that I can say just do it. I promise it's worth it. All I want, I can say that to the cows come home. But it doesn't really address what why we feel this hesitation, this pause, this fear. So take a moment, press pause on me if you like and think about or for a gold star write it down. What are the automatic negative thoughts that pop up for you at that moment when you're about to post, when you're thinking about what to write, when you're thinking about adding photos. So do that. Here are a few that I've had and continue to have and that my the members of my corporate to coach accelerator tell me come up for them things like oh my God, they're going to think I'm so annoying they're going to say, who does she think she is to be saying that? I'm not really an expert. Who am I to put myself out there as one? People that know me are going to know that I'm just starting out and so they're going to think I'm lying or faking by sharing things. Why would people want to listen to me? That other coach over there is clearly more successful, more knowledgeable, you name it, than me. And finally, and I hear this one much more than you would imagine. I don't look the part, right? I should look more serious, I should look more professional, I should be thinner, I should. Well, I don't look like the model of a middle class, white, successful person. And so that comes up a lot. So I wonder if that's for you. So make sure you've written your automatic negative thoughts down. A lot of these can be categorized in a few key categories that I see coming up with when we are struggling with visibility are these. And I would say it's not limited, right? So I see comparisons, right? Where we compare ourselves to people who are either in different businesses or different stages of business, or even in the same business, but different clients or you name it, I see a lot of comparisons and I think there's a big category of negative thoughts there. There is fear of judgment by people that we know, right? So what are the people we know? What are they going to think about us? What are they going to say about us? Then we have fear of judgment by people we don't know, right? So what will all those strangers. Is someone going to troll me? Are they going to say something? Are they going to comment something nasty? Are they just going to think badly of me? And then this physical insecurity is another category and I see that come up more and more. So this insecurity with how we physically look. And you know, I want to say if you are having these automatic negative thoughts in any of these categories, you, you are very normal, right? This is a normal reaction. We're doing something that is kind of countercultural in some places, right? We're putting ourselves out there, we're promoting ourselves, we are having to show up. We want people to recognize and know us. And often we've been brought up that there's something wrong with that, that we should be humble, that we shouldn't put ourselves out there like that. So it's normal. I absolutely have all of these fears too. I have gotten so much better at handling them. And I'm going to tell you how I do that through the tool that I'm about to share. But just know that if you're having that reaction, it's really normal. And what I've discovered is that coaches or people really are infinitely creative in the ways we can criticize ourselves. Right. Our negativity bias comes out full throttle in the context of visibility and the context of social media. So it is really important to address it as soon as you notice it. So once you've identified your automatic negative thoughts, I want you to have think and we're doing a bit of self coaching here in this episode. I want you to think, how do they make you feel like what is the emotional consequence of these thoughts that you're having? I'm going to guess that there is probably some shame, there is probably a good dose of fear, there is guilt, there is sadness. Of course, a lot of these automatic negative thoughts about visibility are really deeply personal. Right. A lot of it is I'm not good enough in some way or they are never going to like me or accept me. And that can be a really painful place to be in. Now often we aren't aware that this is what's going on under the surface. And as coaches we know because we do this with our clients. But what we are aware of and often really frustrated by is the behavioral consequences that come up, right? So the avoidance, the procrastination, the rumination, the self censoring, the rebellion, that's my favorite right where we go, oh, I shouldn't have to this anyway, so I'm not going to. And just generally the not doing of the things that we know are going to help us grow our businesses. So it all makes sense, it's all very normal, doesn't mean it's easy to change. So a tool that I use a lot in my coaching practice, especially when we have issues of mindset or where emotional regulation is causing derailing behaviors or there's avoidance is an adapted CBT exercise that I learned from the wonderful Dr. Susie Green. Now she is a positive psychology and coaching psychology expert and pioneer. She was a lecturer of mine at Sydney Uni in the very first coaching psychology unit at a university in the world who I worked with and I worked for as an associate over a number of years. And so if you want more details, do check out her book, the Positivity Prescription. I'm just holding it up here. If you, if you see this on video, it's a great resource for you and also your coaching business. And I will link that in the show notes. What Susie recommends is that we catch our ants, right? Our automatic negative thoughts, which, which we've. Right. So we did that up front, but that's not enough. That's just kind of depressing. What we then need to do is create our pets and our pets are not our positive thoughts, right? Automatic negative thoughts. A pet is not a positive thought. It is instead, and I love this, reframe our performance enhancing thoughts. So in the case of what we're talking about today, visibility, showing up on LinkedIn or a website, we would specifically craft a set of performance enhancing thoughts that we choose to anchor on before we go and start doing those tasks. Like the writing of a post, for example, or the, you know, the going and getting photos taken. A performance enhancing thought at its simplest to me is just a thought that is going to help me show up in the most helpful way and the way that is most aligned with my goals and my values, right? So will let me perform at my best in this context. So for example, if my aunt is, I'm not really an expert. People are going to see through me. A pet, a performance enhancing thought might be one that is going to help me show up consistently. Could be. I'm passionate about helping leaders in transition and if just one leader resonates with this post, then that's a win, right? To me, that reframe really helps me then say, okay, I'm going to go and do it. Or if my ant, my automatic negative thought is I need to look better or different before I put my photo on LinkedIn with the post. My performance enhancing thought might be my ideal. Clients don't look the same and I want a model that we get to show up and be seen and valued exactly as we are. Because I believe in that. So when you get a second press pause again and for each of those ants that you came up with, come up with a performance enhancing thought that is going to help you show up for the goal that you have, right? Or the values that you have or what is important for you. Now, this process alone is going to help change your brain and shift your beliefs. But the real magic comes from doing it consistently. If you can spend five minutes every day or even just before, when, whenever it happens, before you dive into marketing or you know, doing a post on LinkedIn or updating your website, if you can spend just five minutes unearthing your ants and directionally replacing them, identifying your performance enhancing thoughts and then you go and start your marketing, I guarantee that your experience is going to be completely different. It'll be night and day I promise. Because with our ants, right, we identified that we were likely to be having those feelings of shame, of guilt, of fear and sadness and then the behaviors that flow on for that. And we all know the thought, feeling, behavior triangle. Like our behaviors are avoidance, procrastination, rumination, general, you know, self censoring, all of those not helpful. Our performance enhancing thought. And you probably even noticed as I read them out, right, the feeling is one of there's hope, right? There's a bit of trust, there's. There's being connected with my bigger picture. There's even, even curiosity, right? So I'm curious, I'm going to go into this and be curious what, you know, it might be that I'm my performance enhancing thought could be I'm going to treat everything I post as a great experiment where I win or I learn, right? And so the feeling is curiosity and that works. And then so the, the behavior that's likely to flow on from that shift in emotional state is, you know, more trust in myself means I'm just gonna have a go. I'm not gonna overthink it. I'm not gonna feel so bad about it that I have to push it off to another day. I'm not gonna hesitate at the last minute and not press post until another day. So I'm much more likely to do the things I know I need to do to grow my business. So please have a go at this activity. Give it a go for the next week. Just spend five minutes a day as part of your marketing. Please let me know how it works for you. I'd love to hear if it's as transformative for you as it has been for me and many of my clients. So until then, have a great week. Now I have a few slots available this week and next to meet up with coaches who are looking to take the next step in their business to particularly if you are interested in Getting your next 10 corporate coaching clients with a very manageable marketing load. So if this is you or you're planning your Runway to start your business, I'd love to have a chat. And Mark, we can talk about the accelerator and what we do and who we are, whether it could be a good fit for your goals and really what your, what your next steps are and how I can help. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can book in with me directly for that one on one call and I'll be back next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Business of Executive Coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us. This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business, education, mentoring, deal clinics and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found@elliscarfe.com have a brilliant week and I look forward to talking to you again soon.