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Hello and welcome along to another episode. It's been a little bit random lately, so I took most of the summer off or like worked for sort of weird hours. Last week I was away at a conference all about trauma, which was mainly attended by therapists and psychologists and social workers and people.
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So I was a bit of an outlier at that conference as a coach. People were like, "Ooh, what do you do?" Then I explained, and they'd be like, then I asked what they did, and they explained, and then they would go, "What actually is coaching anyway?" And so that was quite interesting having to sort of frame coaching in relation to what they do and the edges of coaching and trauma healing and how it shows up in the workplace and who my people are and what my approach is and all of that kind of stuff.
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So that was really interesting bit of thinking. Then when I got back, I put out a message on LinkedIn and an email to my mailing list, reminding people that I was back and therefore Strategy Hour was back on and it got 15 new people sign up which is very exciting love that and so I've been recording like a little welcome video for people this afternoon it really just made me come back around to that same question as the conference had generated of like what is coaching, what are its boundaries, and when is it good to use as an approach.
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And so I thought I might dive into that a little bit. So I'll start with unpacking strategy hour of what it's for, and then we'll take it from there. So, the thing that I'm hearing most often from clients, prospective clients, people around my, you know, LinkedIn and people that I have conversations with is, "I could just really do with some time to think.
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Really need to slow down and and figure out what I'm doing" because it seems like people's to-do list of like grown arms and legs and everything's quite pressurised and so we need time to think and that's where Strategy Hour comes in.
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So, Strategy Hour is my completely free weekly drop-in session. It's not really coaching; it's a facilitated process where you bring all of your stuff, like all of it.
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Bring all the stuff, all the mess, all the mental clutter, all the desk-based clutter, everything. I lead us through a process where we gather together all of the action items that you have across your various work-related spaces.
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So that is what's on your mental to-do list or what's on your mind relating to work, what's on your sort of half-finished to-do lists and notes from meetings, post-it notes that might be floating around your work surface.
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Emails that have come in, Teams messages. What things have you attended in your calendar over the last couple of weeks that have generated action items? What's coming up in the coming couple of weeks on your calendar that might require some action in advance? We gather all of that stuff together and then we go through a process of prioritizing and figuring out what stuff really.
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Firstly, what belongs to you versus what needs to be delegated or deleted or stuff. What what do you really have to do? Secondly, what stuff really needs to happen this week? And then we go through a bit of a prioritization process to understand what feels easy, doable, what feels a bit more stretchy or risky.
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Sometimes we dive in a little bit into what's in the risky. stretchy category, but not much, because I think that does veer into coaching. And then if we've got some time, we might do some co-working. So that's where you say what you're going to work on, and then we turn mics off and just get on with whatever the thing is that you've said you're going to work on, make some progress.
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And I really like this process for the week, for the beginning of the week. So it's 9:30 on Mondays. It's a really great process. Gets you clarity from the mental noise. Brings some peace of mind that you've got a trusted place where all of your action items can live, but that doesn't need to be in the back of your mind or scattered about your desk on random bits of paper.
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So you're building a structure and a process that you can trust, and then that means that you can free up that bit of mental capacity. Some things that come up through that process will be prioritization issues.
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I need to write this paper for planning committee. Great. Do that on Tuesday afternoon or whatever. So, I don't prescribe what that process is. People, you know, apply their calendar management in whatever way suits them.
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But that's the prioritization issue. I need to write this paper. When will I do it? Put it on the calendar, put it at the top of your to-do list, whatever that looks like for you. Sometimes it's not actually a prioritization issue. If you've got an item that you've put off all year since that committee that you attended last October, and now it's September, and you're thinking, "Shit, this this committee's coming up, and I haven't done the thing I said I would do, I haven't produced the paper." Maybe it's because you don't know what to write.
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Maybe it's because there's an underlying risk of being judged or your work being judged or you know disappointing people if they were expecting it to be different or a fear of failure around if you need to advocate for whatever your stance is that you're putting forward in the paper.
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Those things typically are more likely to be coaching type of issues, and that's where I think it's people often say I just need some more time to think, and I think actually where coaching can be really beneficial is in having not only time to think, it's a protected hour in your calendar where you're showing up specifically for a particular type of thinking.
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Also, a place and a person to think with. That's where I think coaching can be really, really helpful. And I often think of it as lending the process of coaching is like lending someone extra mental bandwidth.
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Like, bring your stuff and we'll put both of our brains together to help you figure out what you want to do about it. Importantly, it's different than training. So I'm not giving you a prescriptive list of steps to take or actions to follow.
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It's not consultancy, so I'm not telling you what I think should happen. I'm really helping to facilitate your own thought process, and a lot of people show up to coaching with very black and white this or that either or type of thinking, and often what I'm doing is going, well, is there another way?
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What other options are available to you? Have you noticed that you have this pattern of putting this as a this or that? What do people who already have this thing that you're aspiring to, do differently than what you do? Or, you know, any number of different things.
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But the point about it is, I'm not telling you the answer. I'm bringing questions that help you to consider things from a different angle, open up your perspective, think differently, bring some distinctions sometimes.
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So I'll often bring a distinction or a way of comparing the way that you're thinking with a different way of thinking that opens up the possibility for you to have more choices and better discernment, so considering the options that are available to you differently, so that you can make the right best choice for you, in your given circumstances, situation with your boss, your objectives, all of that stuff.
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And I think the bit I don't want to dive too much into here, I suppose, is the where coaching overlaps with counseling and therapy and those types of things because that was one of the really interesting questions that kind of came out of the conference I attended with all these therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists and people with ISTs in their job titles was, well, where does coaching fit in all of that stuff?
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Well, my coaching operates kind of at the fuzzy edges of those types of disciplines because firstly those types of disciplines cover an enormous range of different activities in the same way that coaching does.
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So, different coaches coach in different ways, have different methodologies and preferences and types of things that they'd like to work on. Same with counseling and therapy and those types of practices, you know, you might have something that's like a CBT, which is quite prescriptive in its process, or you might have broader talk therapies that are very, how are you feeling about this thing?
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And then, actually, it's a lot of, exploration of how did you get to the situation that you're in. There's a whole massive, great big range. I think what is helpful to consider is my way of coaching it certainly is to I'm interested in working with people who have options open to them and who have some range that they can work within.
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If you feel like you don't have range and by range that might be emotional range or it might psychological range, for example, if you are suffering in the depths of depression, coaching might not be the rest the best intervention for you.
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If, however, you've got some range, like you are feeling kind of overwhelmed by stuff, but you fundamentally know if you could find some time to think, you could figure it out. That's range. That right there is range. Definitely bring that stuff to coaching. And what else do I want to say about this?
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Yeah, I guess my particular take on coaching as well is I really want to help you or clients to find their sturdy, robust centre and to not get waylaid or stuck in thought processes that are very entrenching and unhelpful, and instead to be able to get back to your healthy grounded self, the one the part of you that is able to make decisions and know what your goals are and act in your best interest and take different perspectives in the process of getting there.
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That all might sound a bit abstract, and I guess this is a bit of a tricky thing to discuss as a one-way transmission. So if you have questions, that might be helpful. Send me your questions either by email or on LinkedIn. More than happy to chat, because I do think it's interesting to consider how coaching relates to other types of work.
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If you're curious about working with me and what that's like, I really think come to Strategy Hour. It's completely free. There isn't really any active coaching unless there's a very small group and we've got loads of time and everybody's up for it. So, it's low stakes.
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You don't need to have anything figured out. Just bring all your stuff and we'll sort it all out together. If you've got questions about is this the sort of thing that might be good to bring to coaching, bring it along to Strategy Hour and we can have a chat about and then I can tell you whether coaching would be a good fit for you or not, or we can have a quick intro call catch up and we can talk about that.
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The point being, you don't need to suffer with stuff alone because I think that is, you know, compounds problems harder than anything else is trying to figure it all out alone. If you need some extra mental bandwidth, particularly if you're at a level of seniority where you're not getting that from a manager or some, you know, anybody in a kind of supervisory capacity related to where you are, which let's face it, as you get more senior is actually quite uncommon to have anybody available really to do good quality thinking with.
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Then come along, come to strategy hour. Let's see what we can sort out with you, or you know, see what you can sort out for yourself with that bit of support. And then if we need extra support, we can have a chat about it. All right, I think that's all for now.
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Thanks so much for listening. Take good care and hopefully see you at Strategy Hour very soon. Put a link in the show notes to where to join. You just register once, and then you can show up to any calls that are that work for you in your calendar. Drop me any questions you've got on email.
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Otherwise, I will speak to you in another episode very soon. Thanks for listening. Bye.
