September has always felt much more like New Year to me than January does.

I suspect some of that comes from spending so many years in education, when September meant new classes, new challenges, a new timetable and, of course, the obligatory new planner!

But I think there’s something else about September too.

For many of us, the summer creates a natural break in the rhythm of work.

Clients go away, diaries become a little less frantic and August in particular can be noticeably quieter. We might take a holiday ourselves, work fewer hours or simply find that the usual pace slows down for a few weeks.

And I think that pause can be useful.

We don’t necessarily have to do anything with it, but when September arrives and everything starts up again, there’s a natural opportunity to notice whether we simply want to pick up where we left off, or whether something could be different.

September still makes me want to take stock and ask myself: What next?

 

Development looks different when you’re an experienced coach

When we’re relatively new to coaching, development can feel quite straightforward. There are skills to learn, competencies to understand, qualifications to gain and plenty of things we know we don’t know.

As we become more experienced, I think development becomes rather more interesting.

It isn’t necessarily about learning another technique or adding something else to our coaching toolkit. Sometimes the most valuable development comes from looking more closely at the coach we’ve already become.

What habits have crept in?

Where have we become a little too comfortable?

What are we doing because it genuinely serves the client, and what are we doing simply because it’s how we’ve learned to coach?

Those questions interest me far more these days.

 

Coaching is changing too

This September feels particularly significant because the coaching profession itself is changing.

ICF credentialing is evolving, including changes to mentor coaching and the way coaching will be evaluated from 2027.

AI is raising questions about how we work with client information and what ethical practice looks like.

Expectations around reflective practice, supervision and ongoing development continue to grow.

For me, that’s a good thing because being an experienced coach shouldn’t mean we’ve finished learning how to coach.

In fact, I think experience gives us different things to pay attention to.

 

Perhaps you don’t need another course

One of the things I’ve become increasingly interested in through mentoring and assessing coaches is the difference between learning more and seeing more.

Sometimes another course is exactly what we need.

At other times, development comes from listening back to a coaching session and noticing something we hadn’t noticed before. It might come from feedback from someone whose judgement we trust, from a mentoring conversation that challenges an assumption, or from supervision where we have the space to explore what’s happening for us as the coach.

The learning isn’t always in acquiring something new.

Sometimes it’s in becoming more aware of what’s already happening.

 

So, what does your coaching need from you now?

Rather than setting yourself a long list of development goals this September, you might start with one question:

What would make the biggest difference to the quality of my coaching over the next twelve months?

It could be there’s something you’ve avoided looking at.

Maybe you’ve been meaning to apply for your ICF credential or renewal and haven’t quite got around to it.

Perhaps your coaching is going well, but you know you’d benefit from having somewhere to think more deeply about your practice.

Or maybe you don’t know yet. and that’s fine.

After more than 25 years of coaching, I’m still learning about coaching, about myself as a coach and about what becomes possible when we remain curious about our own practice.

Maybe that’s the bit of the September “back to school” feeling worth keeping.

 

So, if this September were the beginning of a new year for your coaching, what would you want to be different by next September?

I’d love to hear what comes up for you.

Cath

P.S. If developing your coaching, working towards an ICF credential or having more space to reflect on your practice is part of what comes up, you’re very welcome to get in touch and have a conversation about what might be useful.

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