Executive Coaching - what's that all about then?
One of my favourite coaching films is ‘Coach Carter’. Based on a true story, Coach Carter takes on failing a US college basketball team and not only turns them into a team with an enviable winning streak, but also into individuals who achieved well academically. He changed the course of these young men’s lives and the generations that would come afterwards.
He had a profound impact.
One of the things he repeatedly said to them was ‘What is your greatest fear?’ They didn’t know what he was after. Sometimes he’d say ‘What is your greatest fear, is it that you are inadequate?’ Still they didn’t understand.
Then, at a pivotal moment in the film one of the team stands up from his studies and quotes an extract of this poem.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
What an amazing film and whether you are religious or not, what an amazing quote.
This quote sums up the power of coaching for me. What a wonderful experience it is to allow ourselves to shine and in doing so give others permission and encouragement to do the same.
Where will the ripples of your personal development stop? No one can answer that question, just be aware that the ripples can have a profound impact.
Are you ready to find out more?
How it all started
Coaching is at the core of what I do. Whether that’s within sport or business, I absolutely love seeing someone grow into their full potential and remove the shackles of fear and doubt.
Aged 17
At just 12 years old, my form teacher wrote on my school report ‘Sport is not Emma’s forte’. Wow - what a label to apply to a child. I’m pleased to say that he was wrong. I have gone on to play, compete and coach in many different sports. Sport got me into my higher education course at 18.
Me, aged 17
Was it because he told me that I couldn’t that I found a way through? Actually no. At the time I believed him. When I moved on to secondary school, I somehow stumbled upon the sport of trampolining and I loved it. I loved it so much that it wasn’t just confined to school. I’ll never know how good I could have been as an athlete, as I choose to stay with a recreational club rather than one where progression and performance were the focus. But trampolining became a passion.
The youngest you could qualify as a coach was 18. So at aged 17 I approached the governing body to enquire about courses. There was a course just before I turned 18, and they said ‘that’s ok, we just won’t give you your results until you turn 18’. And so it started. They forget though and I passed my first award at 17. I could now coach children and adults up to a basic somersault.
I went on to further qualifications including coaching trampolining to disabled athletes, judging and advanced coaching.
It wasn’t just about the qualifications, though. I learned to really watch. I learned to understand the physics and mechanics of what I was seeing. All of that was of no use though unless I could explain what I was seeing and coach the athlete into a better way. All of this is done in a hazardous environment and at speed.
I learned to translate the theory into relatable information. Behavioural flexibility is key.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
If the message didn’t have the desired impact, find a different way to explain until it does. There is little point in telling a child to use moments of inertia to control a twist or a somersault, but you can tell them to pull their arms into their chest at the beginning of a twist and then open them wide at the end to control the move.
I shared my joy of trampolining with many children and adults through my small club.
I went on to obtain coaching qualifications in other sports such as diving, football, lacrosse and open water swimming. I love to learn and I love to help others improve and share the joy of sport.
As an athlete and as an executive, I love working with a coach and exploring the art of the possible. A good coach tells you what you need to hear (which is not always what you want to hear!) and shows you what you cannot see.
I don’t want to be told that everything is perfect. How can I improve? Instead I love finding those small, incremental changes. Just one degree change in direction seems almost irrelevant, but keep going in the new direction and your destination is very different.
Feedback is the breakfast of champions
Today I coach aspiring channel swimmers and my role, whilst helping them physically prepare for the challenge, is more about the mindset. But at heart, they are the same as many of the people that I have coached in other sports. They’re kids, in this case ones who have grown up enough to hold down jobs and yet still have the same dreams that their younger self once had. They dare to dream of accomplishing this amazing, life changing event.
Where does NLP come in?
First a bit of background
The phrase NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) was created by Richard Bandle and John Grinder when they created the concept of NLP. One was a linguist and the other a mathematician.
They asked the question “How are people excellent?” By modelling people who were at the top of their field, they were able to identify the core traits that contributed to the excellence that they saw.
There are some presuppositions of NLP which may or may not be true, of course. The observation is that those who act as if they believe that they are true, tend to get better results!
Repect for the other person’s model of the world. In order to create change effectively in a client, you do not have to believe what he believes. It is not your responsibility to change a client’s model of the world through an attempt to convince him of yours. When you respect another’s model of the world, you effect change rapidly by using the foundation of his belief system.
The meaning and outcome of communication is in the response you get. We are taught that by clearly communicating our thoughts and feelings through words, another person should understand our meaning. She will respond to what she thinks you said. You can determine how effectively you are communicating by the response you get from the person you are communicating with. In addition, when you accept this presupposition, you are able to take 100% responsibility for all of your communication.
Think back to my example of coaching a child and using words and visual demonstrations in a way that they would understand and not the physics & theory of what I wanted them to do.The map is not the territory. The words we use are not the actual event, nor the item, that they represent. Although the words we use to describe an event are chosen to represent the event, the worlds themselves are not the actual event itself. NLP is the art of changing our map to create more choices.
People are doing the best they can with the resources they have available. A person’s behaviour is adaptable to the situation. His present behaviour is the best choice available, and has a positive intent for him. A person’s behaviour is not who he is. Accept the person. Support and assist him to change his behaviour.
I have reminded myself of this one on many an occasion in the corporate world. At the end of the day, I don’t think that anyone comes to work to do a bad job and I’d go as far as to say, we all intend to do a good job. It doesn’t always work out that way. We can find ourselves stretched too far, placed under stress. We can find ourselves in a role above our previous abilities and our current abilities haven’t yet caught up. There are all manner of situations that cause us not to be as effective as we would like. That doesn’t make your or your colleague better or worse than each other.Behaviour and change are to be evaluated in terms of context and ecology. All meaning is context dependent. Much of what is said is taken out of context. When information is placed back into the original context, the meaning is often different.
I bet you’ve seen examples of that or had your own words quoted out of context!People have all the resources they need to make the changes they want. People themselves are not unresourceful. They are experiencing unresourceful states. When the client changes his state, he then has access to all the resources within him to accomplish whatever he chooses.
Bet you’ve experienced that too. That seemingly insurmountable hurdle that suddenly seemed irrelevant or inconsequential when you looked at things differently.The system (person) with the most flexibility (choices) of behaviour will have the most influence on the system. This is the Law of Requisite Variety. This means the more options you have in the variety of techniques available to you, the more choices you will have. The more choices you have, the more able you are to change.
I remember being told a story about a toddler having a tantrum in a supermarket (nothing unusual there!), what was unusual was the adult’s response who also threw themselves onto the floor, kicking their arms and legs! Shouting, pleading, bribing had made no difference. This approach stopped the toddler straight away! I’m not suggesting we all do that, but it does emphasise the point!There is no failure, only feedback. If a person doesn’t succeed in something, this does not mean they have failed: only that they have not succeeded, YET! They can vary their behaviour and find a different way of achieving their outcome. If what you are doing isn’t getting you the results you want, do something different.
There are no resistant clients, only inflexible communicators. Resistance shows a lack of rapport and is the result of inflexible communication.
So, if we believe for now that these presuppositions are true and the coaching engagement works with them, then you should have every confidence that you can achieve amazing results by using a coach who will help you see what you cannot currently see and whom will tell you things that others have not yet dared to say.
What is executive coaching?
I suspect you’ve got the picture already. An executive coach is there to help you release your full potential.
I sit outside of your line management. As such we can have open conversations about things that you may not wish to discuss with your manager or things that may not seem relevant to your current job.
An executive coach help you unpick events that happen at work.
An executive coach can help you work out what you want from life and from your career and enjoy both even more.
An executive coach can challenge your existing thinking to help you improve in your current role or make step changes in your career.
An executive coach can help you prepare for your next promotion, can help you take on the mantle of your new role, help you switch career paths or even help you transition from the world of work to retirement or self-employment.
What to expect in this investment in you?
The first thing that I’ll ask you to do is to complete a client engagement form. This will delve into what you’re aiming to achieve and also to get a baseline around your learning styles, your health & vitality, your lifestyle and also start the process of understanding your purpose in life and how that has developed during your life so far.
We can meet in person, or via zoom.
There are many different patterns our sessions and we’ll find the way that works best for you. It could be regular monthly hourly sessions or a cadence of a longer session one month followed by shorter calls for the next two months.
Change doesn’t happen just by turning up. It happens when you challenge your way of thinking and you come to realise that there are other ways of approaching something, and that the meaning that you took from an incident or situation may not be the only meaning.
Expect to have viewpoints challenged.
Expect to receive ‘homework’. Assignments that challenge your current thinking, that aim to expand your mind.
Expect to come face to face with limiting beliefs and have them called out. I can help you remove them too. Imagine that - negative emotions and limiting beliefs, gone forever.
Expect to start feeling different, more positive, more empowered. Expect to want more.
Why work with Paddlefish Panda?
You already know that I have been coaching since I was 17. That’s more years now than I care to admit! Sports coaching has exposed me to people performing at their very best and those that are struggling with what’s happening in their head.
Channel swimming is a real leveller. The channel doesn’t respect your seniority, your age or your experience. It just sees you in your swimwear aiming to achieve something amazing. The same is true of training. I don’t actually know the professions of all the people that trained through Dover Channel Training, because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make them a better or worse swimmer. I know we’ve seen nurses and medical consultants, engineers and artists, lawyers and lorry drivers, shop workers and accountants, teachers and train drivers, military personnel and charity workers to name a few. I’ve learned to work with the person in front of me, using whatever is needed to make the progress required.
I’ve also had a long professional career. I started in a local authority before moving FTSE companies. I’m a Chartered Management Accountant. I hold an MBA from a leading business school. I’ve held other chartered statuses along the way too. I’ve been a senior finance leader in two of the largest companies in the UK. Whilst finance has been my profession, it’s been used in a business transformation context for over 15 years.
Whilst undergoing leadership training, we completed a number of psychometric tests, one of which was around the ability to see patterns. It seems I’m in the top 2% of the population in this skill. I’ve only ever been this way, so I take it for granted a little. It does mean that I can piece together seemingly disparate parts of your life and see patterns that we can use to make change not just in one area, but changes that will improve the whole of your life.
I’m also a master practitioner of NLP. I like to model excellence. I hold a NLP coaching qualification.
I’d like to help you be the best that you can be.
To find out more, use the form below to get in touch.