Category: Student Stories

Here is the next instalment from Wise Goose student Helen Tyrrell on her journey to becoming a coach. She’s celebrating new clients arriving, one through Wise Goose ‘Find a Coach’ Directory, and getting to grips with self-employment with the help of a friend. She has had some great feedback on previous posts, so do read on…

So, things roll on…. and over the last five weeks I have had the privilege of undertaking a pilot 5 step programme to ‘authentic self-employment’  led by one of my fellow Wise Goose students, Mhairi Mclean.

Many big questions for me were addressed by this short programme and my impossible mountain now looks- well sort of more achievable – maybe. I find I am also less attached to outcomes. The element of fear seems to have dropped out, and, gradually, new clients are beginning to arrive. Of course there are a thousand unanswered questions and things are still as precarious as can be, but I have begun to feel a change. So what has happened?

I can’t reveal all in a dramatic gesture because it is something about the way the course was delivered that has reached me. However I can reveal some learning about the art of exchange: exchange of ideas, thoughts and listening: authentic conversations. If business is a dance between your own needs, talents and skills, and the needs that the world brings to you, how do you navigate that spot? One answer is by bringing your authentic self to every conversation and by listening: both practices which work well with coaching – and which help me understand what is going on out there, beyond the limits of me, in a very real way. Any needs that show up in those conversations do so in a very personal, specific way rather than being faceless, guessed at, generalised, so it is easier to recognise where and if I might help. I also have the chance to become the client when I meet a person or service that fills a need of my own. Everybody wins.

The other part of the programme that has me still mulling is the area of my chosen business values:  balance, courage and financial sustainability. Thinking though the value of balance has required some deep reflection. What does balance mean in a business context? For me balance means not working all the hours God gives! it means occasional fallow days in the working week,  time for my creative projects, for my friends, time for care of body and for proper care of the ‘household’, our immediate environment– a true ‘ecology’, where we remember that eco once meant ‘household’ in Ancient Greek. The sort of balance that allows me to give of my best and most creative self to my clients, rather than a burnt out shell.  It is easier said than done. Our ‘always on’ culture of perpetual summer is deeply ingrained in many of us, myself included. It’s also more radical than it might sound. Received wisdom says work ethic is rewarded. My creativity workshops were called ‘Play Ethic’ to remind myself of the value of play time…. and yet, still an inner critic harps on, dismissing this approach as frivolous, lazy, entitled, privileged, out of touch with reality, with necessity. Is it? And if yes, how impoverished are our lives by this? How do we navigate the tension between said necessity and, well, life?

Maybe that goes to the heart of my coaching practice as well. It is said that you are best placed to teach what you yourself have had to learn – or in my case go on learning. If you too feel that your best life choices are also often assailed by that inner critic, or that you face a tension between necessity and your lifestyle of choice perhaps we could explore it together through coaching? There is much richness and relevance to your struggles and they have a significance beyond you, to the culture we live in. Maybe you would like an open, free, unstructured  conversation to see if we have a sweet spot exchange of skills or money? Or maybe you’d just like to talk – I know I would! Drop me a line!  And of course if you want to know more about Mhairi and Business and Freedom and that amazing 5 step programme, drop me a line too. Who knows she may run it again before too long!

Image by Helen Tyrrell

Here is another instalment from Wise Goose student coach Helen Tyrrell, as she treads the ‘narrow path between vulnerability and expertise’. This is a paradoxical topic, rarely discussed in coaching and we wish her well on her way to becoming a vulnerable expert.

As well as being a coach, Helen is Processworker and Creative, with a background in Art, Business Operations and Human Resources, you can find out more about her work atwww.consciousorganisations.com I hope you enjoy her post as much as I did, and do leave her your comments.

I had some nice feedback about my previous, opening blog for Wise Goose. Getting to this point has involved rigorous training:  a minimum of 60 hours of independent coaching practice, over 125 classroom hours, and closer to 200 private study hours, plus peer and professional supervision, much reflective work and an extensive portfolio to submit. In an unregulated industry this is a far cry from a 2 day online coaching course and launch!  This is a serious undertaking.

As I organise the records of my 60 hours of client sessions for my portfolio, I can see my progression, my tendencies and weaknesses over the last year and a half, but also my strengths, talent and commitment to coaching practice. An absolute cornerstone of the Wise Goose training is honest, self-reflection. No sugar-coating. No overblown claims. We need to be like a clean pane of glass, unmuddied, as far as possible, by our own automatic triggers and responses – or at least able to recognise and ‘bracket’ these where possible – so as to respond to the client from our own best place. This requires a high level of self-honesty.

So, I had nice feedback about my blog. And people said it was vulnerable. Is that a good thing? Was it too vulnerable? Too honest? Should a coach not, by definition, be somebody supremely sorted? Where does vulnerability feature in that? After all, I have many years of experience, many qualifications and much training – should I have focussed on all that rather than on the real, raw edge I find myself at? Maybe. But if I did that, my blogs would be a marketing exercise rather than a genuine point of interest. Not a bad thing, but a different thing and to my mind less valuable here.

Vulnerability seems to be fashionable these days. We are encouraged to show it, as leaders, as coaches – and we all know it is easier said than done. Sometimes we get around this by showing it after the event, from the luxury of a safe place.  As in… when I have so many clients that I am turning them away, say, then I can be vulnerable and admit that launching was challenging! Hmmm – question: can vulnerability ever be in the past tense? Can you really show vulnerability from a safe space? Vulnerability, by definition, isn’t safe! Maybe I was mad to allow it into my writing given the need for robust certainty at this delicate juncture.  

To be sure, coaches – and other professionals – don’t, in my experience, much like to show vulnerability. At the very least we prefer to bill ourselves as the expert, and there are some coaches who like to trade on an air of guru-like wisdom. There seems to be a slightly bogus cult of personality in the wider coaching field that I perceive is generally absent from its sister profession of psychotherapy, which relies instead on training, professionalism and self-awareness – the same skillset that we need to be good coaches. Yet perhaps because coaching works on fewer and less regular hours per client, over shorter timescales, and is more associated with business than medicine, coaches need to attract clients differently. We have to get smart. We find our niche. We choose to appear in our ‘expert’ role. And that’s no bad thing – why should anyone buy a coach’s services without proper kudos and credibility?

Yet here’s the thing: what makes us experts is lived experience, so being open and vulnerable about that needs to be part of what we do. And here’s the other thing: in our industry it is the client who is the real expert: they are the expert in their own lives! What the coach brings is training:  listening skills, self-awareness, ability to question, knowledge of a few useful, effective techniques to prompt insight and change and, above all, interest – in life and in the client. We know the client has all the tools and expertise to rise to their challenges creatively, and it is that expertise we are interested in getting at.

So as I launch, I find I am treading this narrow path between vulnerability and expertise, mostly zigzagging from one side to the other unable to stick to the sweet spot I’d like, but then, that’s life!

So, is it really OK to be vulnerable as a coach? I still don’t know, but I’ll keep you posted! For now, I have a portfolio to complete…..