If you've ever found yourself thinking, I'm three months into coaching and I have no idea if I'm making a difference, then this episode is for you.

Hello, friends, and welcome to the bright morning podcast. I'm your host, Elena Aguilar, and in each podcast episode, you will learn how you can lead

conversations that build connection and spark change. So it's normal to feel this way. In fact,

it is so common that I designed a skill session to help you answer that very question.

Today, we're going to talk about how to reflect on your impact, gather feedback from clients,

and reconnect with the purpose that brought you to this work.

So here's what's at the root of this challenge.

Coaching can be lonely. We don't get regular feedback. There is no dashboard telling us if what we're

doing is working. So sometimes we can start to second guess ourselves. And maybe your clients haven't

made big visible changes yet. Maybe no one is acknowledging your efforts. Maybe you aren't even sure

what you're aiming for. So this is where doubt creeps in. And this happens because

most coaches aren't set up to measure our impact. We jump from session to session without a

structure for reflection or feedback. And without those systems,

sometimes we can assume the worst. But chances are you are making a difference. You just haven't

gathered the evidence to see it yet.

Let me take you back to my first year as a full-time coach.

I had left a school that I loved.

To coach in another school that was really struggling.

I missed teaching so much.

I missed feeling effective.

And I kept thinking, did I make a mistake?

I felt uncertain, invisible, like maybe I wasn't cut out for coaching after all. But then I sat down and I wrote out what I had done. I wrote about the teachers that I had built relationships with. I wrote about the tiny shifts that I'd started to see in classrooms. I wrote about the brief moments of vulnerability in our conversations.

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