The Twelve Gifts of Coaching

“The best gift we can give ourselves — at any age, in any season — is space to keep becoming.”

Entrepreneurial moms will get this analogy. Especially if your kids are small. When we are working, we often feel guilty about not being with our kids. When we are with our kids, we often feel guilty that we are not working.

December is like that for me. When I am working, I feel like I need to be getting ready for the holidays. When I am getting ready for the holidays, I feel like my work needs me more.

It’s part of the reason I struggle in December: the pace, the pressure, the noise — it often feels like too much and never enough all at once.

But this year is different. After having a reflective year of entering a new decade (5-0), and my word of the year being “GRACE,” I am feeling, well, peace. I made some very hard decisions this year. I lived through a few important transitions. I have all the girls gone again for the first time in a while. My house is my own – me and the pets. My work has been fulfilling, my body has reminded me that there are many things I can’t control, and my investments in myself and my personal and professional growth have changed me.

Now, as the year winds down, I want to offer something to the people who make my work meaningful: my community, my clients, and those who’ve been part of my journey.

I call it The 12 Gifts of Coaching.

They’re not shiny or seasonal. They’re the quiet, lasting gifts that coaching gives — things like focus, courage, connection, and transformation. These are the gifts that help us navigate change, rediscover what matters, and move into the next chapter with intention.

Each reflection in this post comes from what I’ve witnessed in others, and what coaching continues to teach me, too. My hope is that one or two of them meet you where you are — perhaps offering a small pause or a spark of possibility as you think about the year ahead.

As we move through this season, rather than rushing toward the next thing on our naughty and nice lists, let’s take a moment to reflect on what coaching gives us — and what we can give back through the work we do, the people we lead, and the lives we live.

The 12 Gifts of Coaching

Gift 1 – The Gift of Focus

It’s funny how we can spend entire days working without really progressing. The emails, the meetings, the repeated small decisions — they pull us in endless directions before lunch. We start the day with good intentions and end it wondering where the time went.

That’s where coaching steps in. The real gift of coaching isn’t adding more — it’s helping you notice what’s essential and what’s noise. Focus isn’t about perfect concentration; it’s about choosing what deserves your time and what doesn’t. Like that NBA player taking the free throw. They can focus on the ball, the board, and the rim, or they can be distracted by the crowd. Their best chance of making the shot is narrowing their focus to what they truly need to do.

In coaching sessions, I often see people’s shoulders drop when they realize they’ve been busy doing, not building. When they finally pause long enough to consider what they are working toward and why, the fog lifts. The to-do list shrinks. The direction sharpens.

Much of this happens with the focus of a Strategic Plan. Thoughtfully, respectfully, I encourage you to build yours (ideally with guidance and challenge) – use a book (Traction?), a Google search, your best friend ChatGPT, or use a coach. You will get what you pay for, but do something.

Questions to ask yourself: What deserves your full attention right now? Can a strategic plan help?

Focus is a form of freedom. When you know what matters most, everything else becomes optional. 

Gift 2 – The Gift of Accountability

Accountability gets a bad rap sometimes — as if it’s about being policed or pressured. But real accountability is about partnership. It’s someone standing beside you saying, “You said this mattered. Let’s keep it that way.”

Coaching provides a space where your goals are both held and honoured. A coach helps you stay connected to your own intentions, even when distractions creep in. We all fall back into old habits; it’s human. The difference is, with accountability, you catch yourself sooner — and can course-correct faster.

There’s power in being seen, supported, and reminded of your why. Accountability doesn’t just move projects forward; it moves people forward.

I have accountability at my gym, my yoga studio, my financial planner, I book appointments so I will show up, I commit. But when I am off track, I need redirection. I appreciate and honor those who know what I am trying to do, and hold up a mirror for me when I don’t.

Question to ask yourself: Without blame, shame, or guilt, who helps you stay true to what you said you’d do?

Accountability is how intentions turn into action, and action turns into results.

Gift 3 – The Gift of Perspective

When you’re in the thick of things, it’s hard to see your situation clearly. You know the feeling — too close to the problem, too tired to think creatively, too invested to see the forest for the trees, too emotional to find logic.

Coaching brings viewpoint — not detachment, but perspective. A good coach helps you step outside the story you’re telling yourself and look at it through a different lens. Sometimes, that small shift changes everything.

You realize the obstacle isn’t permanent. The assumption isn’t true. The “only way” might not be the best way. You discover YOU are the barrier, but only YOU can move you.

Perspective is one of the most valuable gifts coaching offers because it gives you access to choice. And choice, more than anything else, is empowering.

Questions to ask yourself: What might look different if you viewed your challenge from another angle? Can a coach ask you a hard question to help you lift your head and see more clearly?

Perspective doesn’t erase challenges; it expands what’s possible within them.

Gift 4 – The Gift of Confidence

Confidence isn’t about knowing you’ll succeed; it’s about trusting that you can handle whatever comes. And confidence is not cockiness. It’s self-assurance that you can do it.

Many of us spend years earning degrees, learning skills, and collecting experience, but still question whether we belong in certain rooms. Coaching helps you remember what you already bring to the table. It draws out the strengths you’ve been overlooking and challenges the stories that keep you playing small.

Confidence often begins as permission — permission to show up as yourself, to lead your way, and to make bold decisions rooted in your values. Coaching offers that reminder, again and again, until you start to believe it on your own.

A good coach believes in acknowledging you as you are, asking you to see your own magic, and using tools like DISC or StrengthsFinders to help you understand yourself.

Question to ask yourself: Where is your confidence being built and dissolved? Do more of the former!

Confidence grows not from certainty, but from self-trust.

Gift 5 – The Gift of Self-Awareness

We all operate on autopilot sometimes — repeating patterns, making decisions out of habit, reacting instead of responding. Coaching slows things down enough to notice the WHY and the WHO behind the what.

Self-awareness is one of the most transformative gifts of coaching. It helps you understand how you show up under stress, what drives your decisions, and how your values shape the way you lead. Once you see those patterns, you have a choice: continue them consciously, or change them intentionally.

It’s not always comfortable work — but it’s powerful work. Because awareness gives you the ability to respond instead of react, to explain rather than defend, and to hear as well as be heard.

Questions to ask yourself: What’s one pattern you’ve noticed in yourself that you’d like to shift? How fully do you think you see yourself clearly?

Awareness is the first step toward growth.

Gift 6 – The Gift of Transformation

Transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It’s rarely loud or obvious — more often, it unfolds quietly over time. It’s that 1% rule showing up every day. 1% better, one small shift at a time. Eventually, you start thinking differently, responding differently, and leading differently. And one day, you realize you’ve become the version of yourself you were always working toward.

That’s the power of coaching. It creates the space for transformation to happen — the kind that begins with awareness, builds with action, and solidifies with reflection. Coaching doesn’t “fix” anything; it powerfully helps you reconnect with the parts of yourself that were waiting to be rediscovered.

Transformation shows up in the moments you choose courage over comfort. It’s in the conversation you finally have, the decision you stop delaying, or the belief you let go of because it no longer serves you. It’s in the subtle shifts that, over time, become lasting change.

A coach doesn’t hand you a roadmap — they walk beside you while you find your own. That’s what makes transformation both powerful and personal.

Question to ask yourself: What part of you is ready to evolve into something new?

Transformation isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about becoming more of who you already are — intentionally, fully, and freely.

Gift 7 – The Gift of Time

We all get the same 24 hours, yet how we spend them defines us, our paths, our outcomes, and our successes and failures. Coaching helps you make intentional use of your time, aligning your actions with your values so that your schedule reflects what matters.

Many of us operate in reaction mode — responding to the next email, the next request, the next fire. Coaching helps you shift from reactive to proactive living. You start to manage your calendar instead of letting it manage you. You manage your business and your people, not the other way around. Or, like a client of mine likes to say, to stop the “tail from wagging the dog.”

When you know what truly matters, it’s easier to protect time for it — and to release what doesn’t serve your goals or your energy.

But here is a warning: you can show up to coaching all you want to make decisions and actions and to gain clarity and focus, but if you don’t put TIME in your calendar for the “doing” then, obviously, nothing will get done.

Question to ask yourself: If you reclaimed just one hour a week, how would you use it?

The way you spend your time reflects the story you’re writing with your life.

Gift 8 – The Gift of Courage

Courage doesn’t always have to look dramatic. Sometimes it’s a quiet decision to keep showing up.

Coaching nurtures courage by helping you explore the fears beneath your hesitation — the “what ifs” that hold you back. The “what is getting in your way” question. When you name them, they lose their power. When you plan for them, you build resilience.

Courage grows when we practice it. Whether that means having a hard conversation, setting a boundary, or taking a risk that feels equal parts thrilling and terrifying — courage gets stronger with use.

Some of my clients show courage by just showing up to our conversations vulnerable and ready to see themselves more clearly. Or by showing up to that event they were nervous about, or to try that new business direction that seems scary.  They put out the post that they have been delaying.

Question to ask yourself: What bold step have you been putting off because fear keeps whispering “not yet”?

Courage is rarely loud. It’s often a quiet whisper saying, “Try anyway.”

Gift 9 – The Gift of Balance

We live in a world that still glorifies being busy. But constant motion isn’t the same as progress. Coaching helps you create balance — not a perfect split between work and life, but a rhythm that sustains both. And maybe balance isn’t what you want – maybe it’s integration – for the pieces of your life to flow around each other instead of constantly banging heads.

Through coaching, you start to recognize what restores your energy versus what drains it. You learn that saying no doesn’t make you less committed; it makes you more effective. And you remember that rest isn’t a reward — it’s a requirement.

Boundaries are key here, and protecting yourself physically, emotionally, cognitively, and practically through time, commitments, and yeses and no’s is the only path to balance or true integration of your priorities.

True balance and integration are fluid. Coaching helps you adjust the rhythm as your seasons change.

Question to ask yourself: What parts of your life could use more breathing room right now?

Balance isn’t about perfection — it’s about being present for what matters most.

Gift 10 – The Gift of Connection

We do our best work when we’re connected — to our purpose, to our people, and to ourselves. Coaching fosters that connection by helping you tune in rather than check out.

When you feel disconnected, everything feels heavier. Coaching helps you remember why you started, who you’re serving, and what you care about most. It also reminds you that leadership isn’t lonely when it’s authentic — it’s shared.

Unfortunately, our relationships have become more transactional and less connecting. Texting, social media, and emails are often built on reaction or response, not true connection. And we don’t need to connect with everyone, but when we are trying to lead or grow in life and in business, connection is necessary. Coaching reconnects us with ourselves. Each session answers the question “what did you learn about yourself or about this problem in this session?”

Reconnection often begins with reflection: pausing long enough to notice where you’ve drifted and what needs attention.

Question to ask yourself: Where in your work or life do you feel most disconnected — and what would help you realign?

Connection is the bridge between intention and impact.

Gift 11 – The Gift of Options

Problems in business and in life have multiple solutions. Often too many. Through coaching, we narrow down the options and better understand the best solutions. This stops the negative brain chatter, the cognitive overwhelm (i.e., decision fatigue), and prevents the overthinking that can lead to indecision. The outcome is movement.

By understanding the options and seeing the person behind the choices, people can make the best decisions for themselves. That is why coaching is not consulting. Consulting is “these are the ways I managed that problem, or this is what I (expert in this area) would do.” And there is a place for consulting. Absolutely.

But a consultant would tell someone they need to fire that person, or move offices, or pursue another market. A coach would help someone to see what choice aligns with their own values and abilities to pursue the solution which leads to a more successful and sustainable outcome.

Question to ask yourself: What problem is taking up most of your cognitive and emotional resilience right now?

Every great change begins with understanding the options.

Gift 12 – The Gift of Money

No, coaching doesn’t “pay you” per se. And yes, most people see coaching as a “cost.” But when you shift to the mindset of coaching as an “investment,” the benefits and returns are there.

I have many examples of clients who, through the structure of coaching and their own hard work, found that:

• They went from breaking even to making a profit.

• They started paying themselves more.

• They increased margins.

• They started getting referrals from that new market or business line.

• They cut out a customer or product that improved the business and its cash flow.

• They turned “sell the business for parts” to competing offers of $750K.

• They doubled their bookings in a year.

• They found that magical new service provider who brought in six-figure revenue.

• They hit their target of $1M.

• They grew over 20% per year since receiving coaching.

• They turned consulting costs into employee wages at significant savings.

• They let go of someone who was harming the business’s success.

• They transitioned their own cases to their team, who were able to provide better service. Increased referrals followed.

• They tracked referrals to understand how these were trending to drive sales efforts.

The list goes on.

The right coach, over the right period, will show their value.

Question to ask yourself: What are you prepared to spend to have more money next year?

Money leads to possibilities, that's why we all love it and want it so much.

Final Reflection

As another year comes to a close, I’ve been reminded — once again — that transformation rarely happens in the big moments. It happens quietly, in reflection. Daily, in minutes. In our hearts and heads through awareness. In the small decisions, the 1%’s, that shape who we’re becoming.

The 12 Gifts of Coaching are not meant to be lessons to check off. They’re reminders of the ways coaching helps us move forward with intention, reconnect to purpose, and rediscover what we already have within us.

As you prepare for 2026, take a moment to consider:

• Which of these “gifts” resonated most with you?

• Where are you being invited to slow down, shift, or step forward?

• And what could become possible if you gave yourself permission to change in the year ahead?

The best gift we can give ourselves — at any age, in any season — is space to keep becoming.

Here’s to reflection, renewal, and the quiet work of transformation.