I passed!

There I was caught up in an all day meeting with a bunch of financial planning business owners discussing frameworks to think about using AI in our businesses when my phone went wild. My coaching What’s App group was alive with various congratulations whilst I knew I couldn’t access my results until much later.

Tense.

I'm delighted to report I passed!

Forgive the self-congratulation, but I thought I'd tell you a little more about my coaching qualification journey.

It all began last November when I signed up to do the Henley Business School Certificate in Professional Executive Coaching qualification. What followed was ten months or so of workshops, study, reading and practice, culminating in a 2,500-word reflective essay and a 30-minute recorded coaching session.

Phew.

I'd completed two coaching qualifications before but was keen to learn more. Looking back, I realise how far I’ve come since I started.

There were the nerves and excitement of that first weekend meeting my cohort and lecturers, closely followed by being thoroughly bamboozled by the International Coaching Federation’s core competencies framework.

I don’t know about you, but I often find academic principles and frameworks difficult to understand and interpret, let alone relate to real life. It’s only now that I can see the importance of the foundations they provide. It’s a bit like learning to drive, when “mirror, signal, manoeuvre” and “hands at ten to two” feel laboured and restrictive, only to find that once you’re let loose, those same foundations allow you to develop a fluency and style that feels natural.

Fluency and flow. The 2Fs. Playing with and developing my fluency and flow is what comes next, along with honing my skills so I give each client exactly what they need to flourish and find their own version of the 2Fs. Or maybe that’s 3Fs?...

The further I progressed through the course, and the more I embraced my role as Business Coach to Financial Planning business owners, the more I found myself enjoying it. I guess it’s like most things in life: the more you put in, the more you get out. And if you half-arse it, you’re never going to progress or truly inhabit the role.

One area I’ve found particularly hard is challenge. As a natural people pleaser, with a desire for harmony and to be liked, challenging others doesn’t come easily. Or so I thought. My poor friends discovered otherwise over dinner on Friday night, when I began questioning the logic of one friend’s employer’s working-from-home and expenses policy. I blame the “Two Chicken Sparkling Rosé” – you know the one - before we went out for my loose tongue and slightly unfiltered rant.

Waking up on Saturday morning I realised how irritating I might have been. Sorry Ally! My lesson? Good challenge isn’t about butting in or trying to be right. It’s about asking for permission or being invited. My clients sign up to be stretched; my poor friend had simply wanted a nice dinner. Quite frankly, it was none of my business!

So, onwards and upwards with my developing coaching practice. I’m lucky to be working with some super interesting people at various stages of their business development. It’s a pleasure and an honour to work with each and every one.

You

Where have you been playing small when what’s needed for progress and growth is a proper commitment to the role, project, book or sport you want to master? And what have you done, or what could you do, to change that?

For me, it was signing up for a course I thought would stretch me, one with a good reputation and, a price tag I had to think twice about.

You're never going to be any younger than you are today. And please don’t give me the “I’m X years old, so what’s the point?” excuse. What’s really stopping you from doing the thing you want to do?