Coaching is not what you do, it’s who you are.
A few months ago, I began working with Liz Keogh from Thoughtworks, and she quoted something Patrick Kua had told her, “being a coach is who you are, not what you do.” At the time it was passed ot her, this comment had a major impact on Liz, but by contrast, at the time she chose to pass it on to me, I was fairly ambivalent about it.
As a piece of wisdom, however, it lay in wait to sneak up on me much later when I wasn’t looking.
Very recently I found I was being made redundant. For the first couple of days I found I suddenly I was unable to coach - it was like having all the CPU of my brain being used for filing, leaving nothing left for anything more than polite conversation. I felt I’d lost a hundred IQ points overnight. What was worse was I was broken - I couldn’t do my job, not that I didn’t want to, I actually wasn’t able to .
However, soon I began to have sparks of my old self come through again - “great, back to work” I thought… I had temporarily lost some of myself, but I was back now, and that had to be good.
Yet now I was asked (for legal reasons) NOT to coach my colleagues and friends about the threat of redundancy. As my brain power returned to normal I found this more and more difficult…I actually couldn’t stop coaching - on whatever subject we were talking, and so I began to step out of redundancy-related conversations.
And again I was lost: not being my self.
I finally understood what Liz had told me, and what Patrick had told her: Coaching is not a job - it’s who you are, and as with all genies; once it’s out of the bottle, there is no putting it back - It can’t be turned on and off at will, and if circumstances mean this happens, you are aware that you have lost part of your self - as much part of who you are as your fingerprints and your iris pattern.
And that’s a good thing.
October 5th, 2008 at 21:01
Cool first blog Helen! Keep it up
October 10th, 2008 at 15:37
Interesting thoughts. Although it is not a good thing that you learnt it in the hard way, but still it is something valuable that you’ve learnt about yourself. I wish you all the strength you need to get over this, and find yourself a job where you can be yourself - the agile coach.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:09
Thanks for your interest - I’m very new to the blogging idea, and it’s great to get some encouragement from people. Thanks for taking the time, and for such positive words. Helen.
December 18th, 2008 at 13:11
First of all congratulation for such a great site. I learned a lot reading article here today. I will make sure i visit this site once a day so i can learn more.
December 18th, 2008 at 15:19
Thanks for the feedback, and I’m glad you find my ramblings useful! I only usually post every month or so, rather than daily, but I’m glad you liked it enough to want to check back!