What is Coaching?
Let’s start with what it’s not.
Coaching is not a curated Instagram feed of inspirational quotes. It’s not someone with shiny hair and dead eyes talking at you about how if you could just be more like them, your life will be more. More. MORE.
When you research coaching you’ll encounter words like ‘achieving’, ‘goals’ and ‘optimising your performance.’ All true and all helpful terms. Unfortunately these days, "goals-based performance optimisation" brings with it a whiff of tech-bro boardroom. Coaching is about you. Where you are, where you want to be and whatever it is that keeps getting in the way of you getting there.
Coaching as a journey
You are here. You want to be there. On the journey from here to there, you might encounter obstacles. Obstacles like a lack of money, lack of time, lack of motivation, lack of confidence. Or like too many ideas, too many things to do or too many doubts.
As your coach, I am not here to drag you along on your journey, shove you up the hills, or hide those trip hazards from you. We do this side by side and we face what is in front of you, together.
Often, my clients arrive completely unclear about where they want to be. They just know that where they are isn’t feeling good right now. So if the coaching journey is me accompanying you from A to B, I always start with the B.
Finding your B
Maybe you know exactly what B looks like: stick to a routine that actually works; get on top of the finances; make time for family dinners more than once a week. Specific, doable, yours. Or maybe you don’t know what B looks like yet. You just know that A - where you are right now - feels off. That’s fine. Going from ‘something feels wrong’ to ‘I know what I want’ is itself an important journey, and coaching is an incredibly useful way to work that out.
Understanding your A
Once we’ve got a sense of where you’re heading, we take a proper look at where you are now. We don’t want to spend too long on the life story that got you here: coaching isn’t about dwelling in the past. A bit of context is useful, but too much reminiscing or looking back full of regrets holds us back. We’re practical, busy people and we need to crack on.
In understanding your A, we work together to get clear on where you really are: what you’ve got to work with, what’s going well, what’s draining you, what’s getting properly on your nerves right now. In an effective coaching session, you might discover that where you think you are is actually a bit of a distortion. Under gentle questioning, and with a different perspective, you might realise the picture your brain has been painting isn’t as bleak as it first seemed.
Noticing the obstacles
The road between A and B often contains a few trip hazards. If no matter how many different routes you try you keep bumping into the same dead ends, you’ll likely find coaching helpful.
Some of the barriers in your path might be external pressures such as the state of the whole world, your responsibilities to your dependents, or external deadlines you are obliged to meet. Sometimes it’s that nagging inner voice - the internal obstacles such as the one telling you: “You can’t!” “You mustn’t!” “Why did you ever think you could?”
Working with a coach, we spot these trip hazards together (the assumptions, habits, thought patterns and practical blockers) and work out how to move them, navigate around them, or simply stop giving them so much power.
Remembering the human
The problem with all this talk of goals, achievement, performance and optimisation is what tends to follow in their wake: charts, graphs, SLAs, KPIs. All useful tools. But definitely not all that matters. This journey isn't something external to you that thrives on being clinically tracked. It's a part of you and your life. It asks simply to be lived.
The discomfort, the frustrations, the agitations, the things that make you furious or sad or unexpectedly full of joy - we notice these. The thoughts, feelings and behaviours that aren't serving you? We work together to reduce their power to disrupt.
Moving the journey forward
Coaching isn’t a talking shop. It’s a practical journey with a concrete destination in mind. To move it forward we agree an agenda, set actions, and check in at a cadence that keeps things moving. You’ll work on things between sessions. We set timeframes. We flex what needs to change. But we keep you and where you want to arrive firmly in mind.
What I bring
A confidential space and time for you to think. Tools to help you devise a plan. Questions to shine a light on what’s stopping you and how to power you forward.
Empathy but not sympathy. I get it, I really do, but I’m not here to feel sorry for you.
There is plenty outside your control and yes, it’s unfair, but how you respond to it? That’s entirely yours. I’m here to help you work with what you have the power to change, and to take the heat out of the things that you feel are blocking you.
I don’t know what’s best for you. But I do know the frameworks, tools and questions to help you work out a way forward that will work for you.
What you bring
An open mind. A willingness to think deeply and work hard. Trust in the process, and the willingness to tell me when something isn’t working. I’m not a guru. We’re partners.
A real desire for this change to happen. The best journeys are hard at times, but when you get to the view you wanted to see, it’s pretty much always worth the effort.
What we bring, together
When this works well, coaching brings an energy that one person alone can’t generate.
This is where coaching with a person differs from coaching yourself through a book, online resources or an AI conversation. There’s plenty you can get from those tools. But pesky little humans that we are, it’s that spark of human connection that’s often the energy we need to propel us towards where we want to go.
Coaching with me might be right for you if…
You are navigating a change - work, family, hormonal - and it’s impacting things in a way that feels hard.
You can’t hear yourself think and want room to think louder.
You’re want someone who listens and time for you to be heard.
You find yourself procrastinating, perfecting, ruminating, or wondering if you’ve any business running a business at all.
You’re willing to show up, do the thinking, and actually do something with what comes out of our sessions.
You want a space where someone is genuinely listening and asking the questions worth asking.
If that sounds like you tell me what’s going on. We’ll go from there.
