Coach Your Self Up

Coach Your Self Up is based on the premise that the best thing you can do for your career development is to commit to your ongoing personal growth—because personal development is career development. Deepening your self-knowledge is important for taking ownership of your career. Learning to be your own coach is an effective way to make this happen. What is “self-coaching?” Well, who do you talk to more than anybody else? This is not a trick question. For most of us the answer is “ourselves.” Now imagine using those inner conversations for good—your own good. Whether we know it or not, we all get in our own way. Based on a successful global training program by the same name, Coach Your Self Up provides innovative practical techniques for identifying and breaking through behaviors and thought patterns that may be blocking your success at work and in life. But the even bigger and bolder message of this book is this: by learning to be your own coach, you can make sustainable changes to become more effective and realize more of your potential. Self-coaching is about becoming more self-aware. Normant lays the foundation by synthesizing important findings on self-awareness from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science. While steeped in science, Coach Your Self Up goes on to be up close and personal. A structured pragmatic approach and easy-to-use self-coaching tools help you understand what may be undermining your career (and life) trajectory. With this book in one hand and a pen in the other, you will learn to notice your self-limiting behaviors, and to question the “deep stories” (i.e., unconscious assumptions, self-limiting beliefs) fueling those behaviors. Coach Your Self Up skillfully teaches you to harness the “superpower” of managing your attention to identify and challenge those deep stories. Coaches know that to make a lasting outer (behavioral) change, you must do the “inner” work. Just becoming open to the possibility that your deep stories are not “facts” will swing the door open for making changes that you might have thought were impossible. You can apply this easy-to-use approach over and over again. Small shifts can lead to big changes for you in your career and beyond. Invest in yourself! You are your best coach! The bottom line: becoming more self-aware can help you change the way you “show up” at work (and life). This is not a trivial accomplishment—any single shift can significantly alter your career (and life) trajectory. Self-coaching has the potential to be a potent cornerstone of the next generation of career development and employee engagement practices. A great resource for an individual, this book also includes guidance for small groups who want to work through it together. Mike also shares ideas on how this material could be utilized within organizations on a broader scale.