I’ve always been fascinated by who we are and why we are.
For many years I loved a personality test, a type assessment, a quiz - any way to help me find out who I was and what made me tick.
Most of them were useful in some way - helpful lenses that showed me where I fit in someone else’s framework - but even more useful has been building my own personal understanding, from the inside out.
Have you ever realised you’re completely off track?
Recently a good friend and I were lost on the South Downs. We had set out to do a lovely 4.5 mile loop and ended up doing a hot, hilly and exhausting 9 miles.
It was not intentional!
We’d followed the signs, and it had looked pretty straightforward, and yet we got lost more than once. Even my beloved Maps app couldn’t help.
As we stood at the edge of a field, covered in scratches, hopelessly willing the path to emerge it was a brilliant example of how easy it is to veer off course.
Especially if you’re not paying attention (there was a lot of chatting), or if the sign you’re looking for just doesn’t appear and you keep going anyway (!).
I’ve had a lot of first sessions recently. Meeting someone for the first time, exploring working together, and asking lots of questions about what’s needed for us to get set up well.
Alongside the purpose of the coaching (the what), is the partnership and the practicalities (the how).
This is such rich territory! Each of us has our own recipe of things that help us work at our best - and we’re all different.
It’s hard to focus when we’re constantly being interrupted.
Notifications, messages, calls, meeting invitations, people popping in for a chat and not realising we’re listening to or working on something.
It’s frustrating - we never get a chance to get into what we need to or want to.
If only there was a way that we could get some quiet focus time…
Oh wait. There are lots of ways!
Feedback is one of my favourite topics to coach around. There’s so much to unpack and explore, and a lot we can reframe in a short amount of time.
While most often we’re working through how to give and receive it, there can also be times when we want more than we’re getting - because how can we improve if we don’t know where we are?
We just need to remember to ask a useful question, so that we get some useful information in response - instead of defaulting to “Could you give me some feedback?”.
