Intro - Exploring the Power and Importance of Coaching

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[00:00:16] So if you think about Olympic athletes, they have whole teams of people who are dedicated to honing every single aspect of their performance, from their nutrition, to how they sleep, to how they perform on the field. And they'd never think of trying to compete at the Olympics without having that coach by their side, supporting them, challenging them, cheering them on, really focusing on them, being interested solely in them.

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[00:01:07] In fact, one of the reasons I became a coach is because I was lucky enough to have quite a lot of coaching during my career. And in fact, in the end, I negotiated it as part of my package when I moved. And I think that time spent with the coach really, really helped me achieve what I was lucky enough to achieve on my journey.

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[00:02:07] With a coach, you'll have someone who's fully focused on you, who has no agenda, who's there to support you to reflect back, but also to challenge and hold your feet to the fire in terms of execution. And they'll be a fantastic sounding board for you.

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[00:03:07] So there are lots of amazing coaches out there who all have different experiences, use different tools and come from different backgrounds. But the most important thing are these three things, getting away from the day job, thinking strategically, having a thinking partner who can sit with you, and then really hearing yourself talk out loud.

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[00:03:46] Coaching has a bit more of a forward looking aspect to it. So we're looking at what can you do going forward that is going to make things much better for you. But what that doesn't mean is that we don't look back because often, in fact I would say almost always, we are looking at the psychological aspects of our behavior, and in order to understand those, it's often really important that we go back into our history.

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[00:04:26] So generally coaches, a bit like therapists, don't tell you what to do. That's what a mentor might be doing. So they would be mentoring you, drawing on their own experience and then giving you advice about what they think you should do going forward. You'll hear quite often that therapists won't give you advice. They just want you to reflect and for you to make your own decisions. And coaching, is pretty similar. So some very classically trained coaches may not offer up any suggestions of their own. They may just simply prompt you to talk further about the issue that you're discussing until you come up with the answer yourself.

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[00:05:01] So I'm a bit less non directive than that, and I will definitely draw on the experiences of my career and also all the great knowledge that I have gleaned from my amazing coaching clients.

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[00:05:23] Another important aspect of coaching for me is getting people to really think about what they want the outcome to be. If you can be really clear on what you want to have changed at the end of your coaching experience, then really it's all about execution, which is much, much easier. What people find much harder is to to define their goals, to define what they're really looking for, and to be really, really specific about what those are once you're specific, it's really about coming up with the steps to get to that goal and then being really rigorous in terms of execution.

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[00:06:12] So even if you're dealing with something very specific like preparing for an interview for a promotion, if you've got the time and the space and the coaching, maybe think a little bit about your life longer term. So what are the experiences that you would really like to have in your lifetime, both at work and outside of work.

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[00:07:02] So, for me, that's the magic of coaching. So, go out, find yourself a coach, and have fun.