How I Work
I start with you and the situation around you.
Most problems do not sit inside a person alone.
A difficult role may also involve a difficult system.
A loss of confidence may have something to do with the environment around you.
A habit that once helped you may no longer fit what your role now asks of you.
So when we talk, I am usually trying to understand two things at the same time:
What is happening around you?
and
What is happening in you as you respond to it?
I find that one without the other is often incomplete.
Sometimes what looks like a problem is really a pattern.
We all develop ways of responding to life.
- We wait.
- We prove ourselves.
- We avoid conflict.
- We take on too much.
- We look for approval.
- We stay with what we know.
After a while, these responses can begin to feel like personality.
“That’s just who I am.”
Perhaps.
But sometimes it is simply a response that has been practised for a very long time.
That distinction matters.
Because if something is a pattern rather than destiny, you have more choice about whether you still want to use it.
I am often interested in who you are being.
It is easy to focus only on behaviour.
What should I say?
What should I do?
Should I stay or leave?
Should I speak up?
Should I apply?
Those questions matter.
But sometimes I am more interested in what sits underneath them.
Who are you being in this situation?
- Are you being the expert who needs to know?
- The loyal person who does not want to disappoint?
- The rescuer who keeps stepping in?
- The outsider waiting to be invited?
- The capable person still waiting for permission?
The answer is not a label.
It is simply another way of seeing what may be shaping your choices.
I try to make complexity easier to see.
I have spent a large part of my career in learning and learning design.
That has left me with a strong dislike of making difficult ideas sound more difficult than they need to be.
If something useful can be explained through a question, a metaphor or a simple distinction, I would rather do that.
For example:
Are you trying to make the system work — or build a system that works?
Are you responding to what is happening now — or to what happened before?
If you already had the next role, how would you be operating differently today?
A useful idea should help you see something.
It should not merely sound intelligent.
Sometimes the game has changed.
I sometimes think of life as a game that keeps changing level.
At one level, you learn what works.
You become good at it.
Then the choices get harder.
- The choices get harder.
- The consequences travel further.
- More people are involved.
- And the old moves do not work quite as well.
That can be frustrating.
It can also be interesting.
Sometimes the question is not:
“Why am I struggling?”
but:
“What does this level ask of me that the last one did not?”
That is often where development begins.
Coaching is part of how I work. It is not the whole of it.
I am trained as a coach, and coaching matters to me.
Questions matter.
Reflection matters.
Your own authorship matters.
I do not want to hand you my answer and make you dependent on my thinking.
But I also do not believe every useful conversation has to stay inside one method.
Sometimes I ask a question.
Sometimes I tell you what I am noticing.
Sometimes a model, metaphor or distinction helps.
Sometimes my own experience is relevant.
And where I genuinely know the terrain, I may mentor.
Where I do not, I will not pretend that I do.
Sometimes the most useful thing I can offer is a direct observation about:
- what you are avoiding;
- where you are waiting;
- how others may be experiencing you;
- what the next role may require;
- or what possibility you are not yet acting on.
The method should serve the person.
Not the other way around.
I want you to leave with more agency.
I use the word agency quite a lot.
I do not mean control.
Most of life is not under our control.
I mean the ability to see what is happening, notice how you are responding, and choose your next move more deliberately.
There is a larger part too.
You are not only living inside a world that already exists.
You may also be one of the people helping create what comes next.
- A new way of working.
- A better team.
- A different product.
- A more useful idea.
- A career that takes a different shape.
- A life that looks different because you chose to build it.
To me, agency is partly about becoming less governed by old responses and more able to take part in what the present moment makes possible.
What might happen in a conversation?
There is no fixed script.
A conversation may begin with something very practical:
“I need to decide whether to take this role.”
or
“My team depends on me for everything.”
or
“I know I should be operating differently, but I don’t know what that means.”
We may stay with that question.
Or we may discover that the useful question is somewhere else.
Sometimes the shift comes through a challenge.
Sometimes through a laugh.
Sometimes through a long pause.
Sometimes through one sentence that changes how the whole situation looks.
The aim is not insight for its own sake.
Something should become different afterwards.
What might change?
The work is different for everyone.
But I often see movements like these:
Waiting → Shaping
Expertise → Perspective
Doing it yourself → Building through others
Approval → Your own point of view
Solving the problem → Asking if it is the right problem
Doing the role well → Growing beyond the role
Sometimes the change is visible quite quickly.
Sometimes it takes time.
Sometimes the first useful outcome is simply seeing the problem more accurately.
That is often enough to change what happens next.
What does an engagement look like?
We normally begin with a conversation.
There is no need to arrive with a perfectly framed coaching goal.
We first understand what is happening.
Then we decide whether I can genuinely help.
If the answer is yes, we decide what kind of work makes sense.
That may be a short piece of focused work.
It may be a longer coaching engagement.
It may include mentoring or perspective where that is useful and appropriate.
The structure should fit the situation rather than forcing the situation into a package.
If we work together over time, we should be able to answer a simple question:
What is becoming possible now that was not possible before?
A final thought
I do not believe the future is waiting somewhere fully formed for us to discover.
Much of it is still open.
That is why I am hopeful.
Not because I know how things will turn out.
I don’t.
But because not knowing also means there is still something to shape.