Several people have asked me recently how to become a coach. Some want to set up a coaching businesses. Others want to take a coaching approach to leadership and management, even to being a friend or parent.
Coaching is something I very much encourage - and I'm lucky to work at a university, UAL, that runs an internal coaching programme. But it can seem a leap. So how do you go about it?
The first time I was asked this, my answer was a bit rambling. I’ve now had a chance to give it a bit more thought - so I am posting what I should have said below. I'm thinking of tidying it up and posting it on my main site (especially now I have some new photos from the brilliant and appropriately named Jane Looker).
How did I get into coaching?
I started my career in the creative industries. I went into higher education to help others have similarly rewarding experiences and avoid some of the mistakes I'd made myself. I made plenty of mistakes as an academic too. I still remember the first lecture I gave, and it was awful: I'd written out a whole script. It wasn't death by PowerPoint. It was worse.
I didn't stay that bad for long, which was good news for the students I was teaching and the leaders and entrepreneurs I was soon training. But I was still giving people answers. They were answers that worked for me - but they didn't necessarily work for anyone else. I realised this most acutely when working with people in different contexts like Ghana and Jordan.
Over time, I started to realise that my role wasn't to give answers. It was to create the conditions in which people could find answers for themselves. At some point, I realised I was coaching - and set out to find out more about it.
Becoming a coach
Unusually, I started off not with individual coaching but with team coaching. I am very grateful to Alison Fletcher and Elinor Vettraino at Akatemia for introducing me to Finland’s pioneering 'team academy' approach to enterprise education. I ended up visiting Tampere and Jyvaskyla to see team coaching in situ. I gave myself concussion in the process, but that’s another story. I was hooked.
Suddenly I had a very different perspective on the leadership and management experience I had as a music manager, magazine editor and Associate Dean.
This background is by no means typical. Most coaching is still 1:1, although team coaching is growing fast. And most coaches come from the corporate world, typically from HR. But the good news is that coaching - unlike mentoring - is largely sector-agnostic. The client is the one who should have the domain expertise. The coach's job is to help work out what to do with it.
Does coaching work for everyone?
So far, the results I have seen have been spectacular. I have experienced this as a client: I am lucky enough to have been coached by Jonathan Passmore, and I found the experience transformative.
I'm happy to say I think I've had a positive impact on the people I've coached too. One - an external client, not a colleague at my university - had spent a decade and a half in an organisation he despised - without applying for anything else. After three sessions, he was landing interviews for new jobs. The funny thing is that he hasn't actually moved jobs: he has decided he is, in fact, happy where he is. At first, I felt that we'd failed . But I saw him again recently and saw that, by dipping his toe in a few alternative work environments, he's reframed his current role and was now content in it. From someone who'd previously given his role a 2/10, this was a win.
Another client, again external, was regularly working until after midnight. Within a couple of months, she had regained work-life balance - and overcome a fear of public speaking into the bargain.
However, it's worth saying that coaching tends not to work so well if clients aren't willing to change or if client and coach are poorly matched. I'd advise you to have a chat with a few coaches before committing to working with anyone. You need to click.
It's also important to distinguish coaching from mentoring, which tends to be more master/apprentice (even if the line can be a bit blurred: I've written a whole other post about this here). I'm not here to argue that one is better than the other, but to show up in a coaching relationship expecting mentoring - or vice versa - is a recipe for disappointment.
Neither is coaching the same as counselling or therapy. It's vitally important that mental health issues are referred to an appropriate professional.
Sounds great. Where do I start?
As a coach, I often find myself encouraging clients to take a first step. Actually taking a step, even a small one, is far more productive than the bigger steps you only dream about. Even if it turns out to be a step in the wrong direction, at least you know. You can try a slightly different path.
The poet and consultant (yes, that's a thing) David Whyte has a brilliant poem on this, called 'Start Close In'. (I recommend hearing him read it aloud). It's all about not getting stuck in imagining the second or third steps of a journey but, instead, taking that first step out of your comfort zone.
Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra covers a similar subject from a different perspective. Rather than trying to find your 'true self' through endless reflection, understand that we all have multiple possible selves - and we discover them through action. The key argument is that we shouldn't wait for knowledge before taking action. Action comes first.
Action - 'starting close in' - is the way to start coaching too. For me, it was a visit to Mondragon University in Bilbao that started my interest. For you, it might be something very different.
My next step was to find out a bit more through books (among them, Radical Candour by Kim Scott, Challenging Coaching by John Blakey and Ian Day, Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore and Leadership Team Coaching by Peter Hawkins).
Then I did a couple of qualifications. I have a PG Cert in executive coaching from the Institute of Leadership and Management (thanks Angie Turner and Virginia Raymond of the British School of Coaching).
Unless something goes very wrong, I’m also about to get a PG Cert in team coaching from Aston University. It might even be, as at my university, that there's an internal programme at your organisation you can join. I also attended various CPD sessions through the Association for Coaching. It's also worth looking at the EMCC and the ICF.
Do I think I'm some kind of coaching guru? Yes. I have it all figured out. Listen to no-one else.
Seriously, part of the reason I wanted to write this post is that I am very much aware I don't come from a typical coaching background. But I also know I didn't get to spend a decade in the music industry because of any great innate talent on my part: it was a combination of learning and luck. This is also true of my time in higher education: I still wince to recall that first, heavily scripted lecture.
Well, the same goes for coaching. Your route in will be unique to you but if I can do it then you can too. The main thing is to take that first step.
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