In 2022, I took the Enneagram personality assessment and received a clear result: Type 2 — The Helper. It felt like a moment of validation. Helping people came naturally to me. I was deeply invested in people’s growth, emotions, and transformation. Coaching seemed like the perfect alignment of my personality, my passion for people, and a meaningful career.
With that clarity, I made a bold decision. I quit my investment banking career and stepped into coaching full time. For the next three years, I worked closely with people—guiding them, mentoring them, offering insights, and suggesting paths forward. Helping wasn’t just what I did; it was who I was.
In December 2025, I decided to upgrade myself further as a coach and enrolled in a formal coach training program with Coach to Transformation. Given my background and experience, I genuinely believed this phase would be an easy breeze. I confidently planned to complete 100 coaching sessions within two months and emerge as an even better version of myself as a coach.
What unfolded, however, was the exact opposite.
To my surprise, participants who were completely new to coaching seemed to navigate the journey with more ease than I did. That realization was unsettling. It forced me to pause instead of pushing harder. Slowly, I began to see the truth: coaching was not challenging my competence—it was challenging my identity.
As a Type 2 helper, my instinct has always been to support, guide, and add value. Helping is deeply woven into how I relate to the world. Beneath this strength, however, lay a quiet fear I had never consciously questioned before: “If I don’t add value, am I useful?”
For most of my life, doing more felt like the right answer. Offering insights, providing direction, and moving people toward outcomes felt reassuring. In coaching sessions, I often noticed an internal rush—rushing to ask the right question, rushing toward clarity, rushing toward results.
Coach training asked me to slow down.
It asked me to unlearn patterns that had once defined my effectiveness. It asked me to trust the client’s wisdom rather than rely on my own. Silence, which once felt uncomfortable, became something I had to consciously allow. Not knowing, which felt unsafe, became a space I had to learn to stand in with confidence.
This journey has taught me that coaching is not about fixing or rescuing. It is about emotional companionship without direction. Being fully present with a client—without steering them toward an outcome—requires restraint, self-awareness, and emotional regulation. It requires me to manage my urge to be helpful.
Over time, something shifted. When I did less, clients accessed deeper insights. When I trusted more, conversations unfolded naturally. Presence itself became the value.
The helper’s hardest lesson, I am learning, is this: my worth does not come from doing more, but from holding space well. Coaching is teaching me that growth does not always come from action. Sometimes, it comes from stillness.
This journey is humbling me and reshaping how I show up—not just as a coach, but as a leader and as a human being.
Author Name: Aradhana Jain
