What coaching means to me

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel” – Socrates??

The origin of coaching sits, perhaps unsurprisingly, in sport. In the opening pages of Coaching for Performance , Sir John Witmore, widely considered the grandfather of modern executive coaching, explains how it all got started. He points to a Harvard educationalist and tennis expert, Timothy Gallwey, who broke the mould of what had been considered sports coaching up until 1974, with a book entitled, The Inner Game of Tennis. Gallwey’s approach to unleashing the best performance of tennis players was to focus on their “inner game”, in other words, “the opponent within one’s own head”, which is “more formidable than the one on the other side of the net”.?

Gallwey became something of a maverick for this view. Until his book, sports coaching had been about a coach telling his or her coachee or team what to do. The coach would share the wisdom, methods or “ways of doing things”, perhaps learned playing that sport themselves or from their education. The conventional wisdom was that by following this approach, the coachee or team would improve their performance by listening and responding to the coach’s feedback. The challenge from Gallwey was that the coach could be more effective if he or she helped their coachees to learn rather than teaching them. It was a truly evolved form of coaching. Instead of following rules, coachees are given ownership, discovering their own potential by removing the interference of the coach.?

Witmore took this approach to Britain and started his own “inner game” coaching for tennis and skiing. Before long, his clients were also asking whether he could apply such approaches to their work. Modern management coaching was born.??

In the world we live in today, with all its increasing complexity and uncertainty, we can see how apt Gallwey was in his approach. With more people seeking meaning and purpose, we can see how relevant a coaching mindset is for organisations.??

Our educational systems and ways of work are much like sports coaching pre-Gallwey. There’s a reason executive burnout has become a perineal issue. As the pace of technological advancement and business transformation speed up, high performing managers and executives are promoted and pushed through the management curve as quickly as possible. Grasping for the ropes that can help them scale this steepening peak, many lose their footing and fall. Those who cling to the peak often perpetuate that “what got me here” ways of doing things, putting pressure on those around them, making the climb difficult for everyone. As they scramble up the rockface, they’re inadvertently loosening dirt and rocks that fall on everyone below.?

The sudden fall can be confusing. Executives on the increasingly slippery slope wonder why it gets so hard. In the arms race for qualifications, they are nuclear superpowers, with masters degrees and MBAs. How did it all go so wrong so fast even though they deployed their strategic armoury but still lost the battle??

Because “what got you here, won’t get you there ”, Marshall Goldsmith reminds us. Thinking of ourselves as vessels that need to be filled with gold plated educational certifications, experience and mentors can only take us so far.?

What coaching has taught me??

So what takes us “there”???

On one hand, there’s still much to be said for skills development. Data from LinkedIn shows that skill sets for jobs have changed by around 25% since 2015. By 2027, this number is expected to double. In other words, 50% of the skills you use to do your job today, will need to change in the next 5 years. So we need to sharpen our technical and academic abilities.??

But on the other hand, there’s you.??

“Who am I?” I’ve heard executives ask themselves, after blazing a stunning career path and reaching the top. They pause as they look back on their trail of achievements. They wonder what’s next as they now look for self-fulfilment or seek out meaning in their lives.??

This is where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs starts to intersect with the management curve. We’ve established our basics, we’ve built friendships and romances, we’ve gained respect. Now what? Self-actualisation, that’s what. When careers are at the inflection point of taking a successful manager into a leadership role, the first natural question is how to make the leap. The second question, although not often explored, is how to make it count.??

Leadership is about quality. Great leaders are standard bearers. We aspire to follow them or to lead like them. Those who fail let us down. We feel betrayed, as we did when we found out Santa wasn’t real. Failure can happen quickly and it sneaks up on executives. Often those making the transition from management to leadership bring with them their existing ways of working and biases about how things are done. Many continue to shoulder the burden of workflow, getting involved in everything. “Surely they’ll respect me for joining them in the trenches and being one of the team”. Some rely on their formulas for how things should be done and apply guardrails and strictures upon their teams to follow. “This has helped me before, why wouldn’t it work again?” This is much like the sports coaches of old. While such managers might move the needle, much of this pattern thinking perpetuates the burnout they are feeling as they run between meetings to make everything work just so. The outcome would be better, more effective, perhaps, if they helped their people to learn rather than teach them. This is where meaning is created for everyone involved.?

Finding this meaning starts with bringing more of their true selves to the table. Much has been written in management literature about the power of authenticity. What it really means to people is following someone real, someone who brings their hopes and fears to the table, calls a spade a spade and allows for others to do the same.?

This means letting go of the ways they’ve been taught, letting go of what they think they know and opening their hearts to what lies within and without. There is an unlimited amount of potential within each person and unlocking it starts with oneself.???

I have found that this potential can be unlocked by removing the interference we put in our own way. Human beings are sensemaking machines. In seeking to understand the world around us, we try to make things fit with what we know. We try to bring what we know to fix the world around us. There’s a reason that doesn’t always work. This brings yesterday’s thinking to tomorrow’s problems, when we should be thinking about bringing tomorrow’s thinking to today’s problems. This sensemaking can be put to better use.?

Liberation and freedom unleashed??

I was lucky to learn this lesson before I fell.??

I am lucky to have moved up the management curve very quickly in my career. I thought I was on the fast track, on the road to greatness, but I was reaching burnout. I was trying to be all things to all people, firefighting for my employees, supporting them in all aspects, answering all of their questions while trying to lead and guide. I was also a young father trying to keep a good family life going.??

I almost fell over the edge, but a coach caught me by the hand before I toppled over.??

“It sounds like you’re trying to be a God”, she said. I was stunned. She’d nailed it and I think she was right. We unpacked that and went down the rabbit hole together. Through a series of clever questions, well-timed observations and active listening, she helped me remove the obstacles I never even knew were there. This is what coaches are trained to do. We learn models and clock multiple hours of live coaching to help our clients see what they’re not seeing. We help them pivot to new realisations, and, crucially, help them put their learnings into action, checking in across multiple sessions to see how things are going, what they are learning and observing about themselves. The most important role of a coach is to help the client find their own way. It’s our job to ask the client where they want to go next and help them find their own path. Why is that? Because the way adults learn is by experience, not by being taught. While mentoring and psychology all have a role to play at certain times and contexts, coaching provides a platform for lasting, memorable change.??

I wanted to become a coach to support others when they reach the big challenges or just feel stuck. I want to give others that freedom to find out who they are, what's important to them and how they can be the best version of themselves.??

I’ve seen first-hand how coaching can transform a person.??

In my own case, I was able to take a step back, spend more time observing. I stopped asking my team how I could support every aspect of their challenge and instead asked “what do you think we should do?” I found incredible, untapped ownership and responsibility in those around me. When I asked “when would you like to come back to me on this?”, I found them able and willing to commit to swift follow ups with even more energy than before. Aside from removing my own obstacles, I had removed my interference from those around me. I realised that my old approach was interfering, bringing my experience and expertise to every situation where it might have benefited more from theirs. After all, they are closer to the problems, the challenges and deadlines. Why not let them decide??

My career suddenly felt more enriching, less challenging and more fulfilling. I found new realms of exploration, more options and an open space to explore the world around me.?

More importantly, I changed as a person. I was able to be more present with my family, a better father and able to ask my children more questions, rather than helping them to solve every issue myself.??

Building on Socrates, what I’ve found is that a flame once kindled expands in shape and size. Kindled well, it becomes self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. In working with my clients, I’ve seen similar outcomes, a liberation, a sense of peace at getting to the bottom of things. The truth is that change never ends, but embracing it is essential.?