As a regular swimmer I enjoy the relaxation and play that comes with swimming. I also enjoy giving myself a challenge. Over the past year I’ve engaged a swimming coach to help me improve my swimming technique. The results are beginning to pay off. My strokes are better, my style has improved, and I realise how long it can take to shift long term habits.
I’m sure many of us can relate to this from various aspects in our lives. While my internal motivation is to swim well, the external help and motivation comes from working with a coach. She helps me change my habits by making me aware, correcting my swimming strokes and suggesting supports like a pool buoy and paddles that are helpful for buoyancy, efficiency, strength and endurance.
It’s similar for business professionals and teams. As a coach I work with individuals and teams to help identify areas and opportunities for learning, much needed reflection, positive changes, exploring options and making choices that are meaningful. Coaching provides space for busy professionals to have quality time to mull over, articulate and make sense of the competing priorities that demand attention.
This is communicated to me by clients on a regular basis. People come to value the coaching time. It allows people to get their heads and bodies out of the ‘busy’ work and give space to a more reflective and considered mindset which is so needed in complex and uncertain environments. Coaching is a co-creative process, and I see the shifts clients make during coaching and the positive change it brings not only for themselves but the ripple effect that flows out to the people and systems around them.
Buoyancy most definitely comes to mind when I think about coaching. Its associated with resilience, optimism, enthusiasm, flexibility, the ability to rise, lightness, these are qualities I look to create space when coaching clients.