“Create a career you love,” she says. It’s all very well me saying this ad infinitum but I rarely talk about my career and why I love it.

But it’s International Coaching Week so I thought that this week’s email should be in celebration of the amazing profession to which I belong. I’d love to think that more people are inspired and attracted to this profession. If you want to make a difference to people’s lives, then it’s definitely worth exploring. And, even better, it’s a relatively future-proof profession as it’s one of those that cannot (in the foreseeable future) be replaced by Artificial Intelligence!

Now, I’ve said before that my career path has been a bit unplanned and that I approached coaching on a bit of whim or gut instinct. It just felt right. And from Day One of my training, I was hooked. It plays to all my energising strengths around relationships and communication, and it fulfils my “why” which is to inspire people to explore beyond their boundaries so that we can all live our best lives.

What is coaching?

At this point, I could trot out a few definitions including that of my accrediting body the International Coach Federation. However, put me on the spot and I would define it as “a partnership predicated on trust that inspires new thinking and moves individuals towards their goals and aspirations.” (I’m actually quite pleased with that…)

Coaching, in its purest form, is agnostic and a coach does not need to know your industry or to even understand what you’re saying! It is not giving advice and is therefore quite different from its third cousin-twice-removed, mentoring.

Coaching can be about any topic – life, career, business, etc. It can be transformational in a huge and noisy way as well as in a quiet and comfortable way. It gives you support and stretch in equal measure, enabling you to do things that you would not otherwise have done.

Why I love coaching

There are many reasons I love coaching. Here are a few.

• I get in flow when I coach; listening intently, moving with the client, using my intuition and being absorbed in their reality.
• I'm good at it. I build rapport and trust quickly with my clients and I'm an excellent listener.
• It challenges me. When my client needs challenge, I rise to the challenge. This is a coaching muscle that is harder for me to flex than my listening one.
• It's based on equality with neither person in the coaching partnership being of higher status. This fulfils my value of fairness.
• It's a bottomless pit of learning. I will never finish studying coaching. There is always a new challenge and / or learning from the vast field of coaching psychology to take on.
• It makes a difference. People grow, you grow. It’s inspiring.

Would you make a good coach?

Coaches come in many guises. If you’re interested in becoming an accredited coach, then I think there is one over-riding criteria: the ability to put your ego to one side when you are coaching. If you are comfortable with being fully present in support of your client, then you can learn the rest.

It’s an amazing profession to join and it would fill me with joy to welcome more people into the profession. Even more, it’s an amazing and supportive community.

I hope that’s given you a flavour of what coaching is all about. If you’d like to explore further, I’d be happy to chat through your training options and how to access “taster” coach training days.

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