The thing about being a coach is that you don’t know what you don’t know. It doesn’t matter how independent you are, how DIY your whole approach is — there are gaps you can’t see from inside your own head. That’s not a weakness, that’s just being human. Now I Have to Be My Own Coach is a real situation a lot of people end up in, and it’s hard precisely because you lose the outside perspective that makes any of this work.
I’ve seen what it looks like when a coach doesn’t have a coach. Narcissistic, guessing, lost. There’s a confidence that starts to look like expertise but is really just untested opinion. Coaches Need Coaches, Too gets at this — the moment you stop being a student of your own craft, something starts to rot. The overconfident fake expert doesn’t appear overnight. It’s a slow drift that nobody catches because nobody is watching.
The real resistance to this idea, I think, is pride. People hear “coaches need coaches” and read it as an admission of failure, like you’re saying you’re not good enough. That’s completely backwards. It’s actually the most human thing in the world to need help. The 2 Maxims of Coaching points to something similar — the fundamentals don’t stop applying just because you’re the one doing the coaching. And why coaches need coaches is a question worth sitting with, because most people who resist it are operating from pride, not from any real evidence that they’ve got it handled.
If more coaches actually took this seriously, you’d have fewer overconfident people out there doing damage in the name of guidance. The Paradox of Doing Less for Coaches connects here — a lot of what makes coaching go wrong is too much ego, not too little skill. Who coaches the coach is a real question with real stakes. The answer isn’t complicated: everyone needs help. The ones who accept that are the ones actually worth listening to.