20 years ago, I was asked if I would be interested in participating in a trial coaching programme at the Investment bank I worked at.
I was in my mid-30s, I had 15 years behind me in my career and was a senior trader at this Investment Bank.
My initial reaction to his request was defensive.
My immediate thoughts were ‘Does they think something is wrong with me?’, ‘Why do they think I need coaching?’, ‘Do they think I am not good enough?’
The irony was they had approached me because they thought I would be one of the most receptive people within the business to this idea.
I decided to participate in the coaching when it was pointed out that it was being offered to me, not because they thought I wasn’t ‘good enough’, but because they thought I was.
Coaching as a Positive Force.
The coaching turned out to be incredibly powerful and truly transformative in so many ways.
It ultimately had a profoundly positive influence on my trading performance, my career, and even my life.
10 years later, I made the choice to become a coach. I now coach clients both in the Financial Markets industry and increasingly in other fields.
Yet I still feel that the broader perception of coaching is not too different to the reservations I expressed when the coaching was offered to me all those years ago.
Often the reaction I get when I talk to people about coaching is for them to get defensive.
I get this, I have been there myself. But I am also aware this thinking is misguided and risks a huge opportunity lost.
The way to think of coaching is as an investment which can create powerful changes and transformation and can catalyse far stronger performance.
How Coaching Helps Drive Positive Change.
Imagine you are driving along looking out the front window of your car.
Your vision may appear to be clear, but over time the windows have become dirty and mud splattered
There are blindspots all around, and parts of your view are obscured by clutter in your car.
Becasue of this you start to drive more cautiously, more slowly, more conservatively.
You are still on the road, but as a result you are getting to where you want to at a far slower pace.
Meantime other drivers are getting ahead of you and finding alternate routes, whilst you prefer to continue on the same road you have always used.
This happens at the individual level, it also happens to leaders, teams, and whole businesses.
Because this happens slowly overtime, the negative affects are not often visible or noticeable.
Changing analogies somewhat:
The seeds of your success are sewn well before the harvest is reaped.
However the faultlines of failure are also being shaped outside of your field of vision.
When an earthquake strikes, the damage which results occurs because of faultlines and fractures formed many years earlier.
These faultlines become increasingly unstable over time. The same is true in business.
Your competitors and rivals may have been getting ahead of you for a while.
When you finally notice you are in reactive mode, by then often it is too late and responses are far too inadequate and often very costly.
Coaching helps declutter, it helps clear the windows and remove the dirt.
It helps reveals blindspots and opens the view revealing new and different perspectives.
As the process unfolds you start to see new routes and alternative paths.
You start to become aware of how you look from the outside in, as well as from the inside out.
You may even develop the ability to see beyond the horizon, over hills and around corners.
That is powerful, it enables you to start becoming proactive!
The faultlines and fractures may still be forming, but your are proactively getting ahead of the danger, and building in greater resilience to threat.
Coaching as Proactive Driver of Growth
The coaching i underwent in 2000, and whic I now offer is Inner Game coaching.
inner Game Coaching empowers you. It helps foster new awareness, different perspectives, and greater coherence.
Because of this you are able to find new answers and solutions to your challenges.
It can help you identify new opportunities, and more effectively implement the opportunities you are already taking.
In turn this enables you to start more effectively leveraging your strengths, whilst also making you more aware of threats you had ignored and overlooked.
Using coaching proactively is one of the most powerful ways to dynamically improve and generate stronger and more effective performance.
At Alpha R Cubed we work with businesses in the Financial markets and beyond to help them explore how coaching could help them, and to construct and implement powerful coaching programmes which can help drive stronger and more effective performance. support busiensses to drive performance.
If you are curious about how we could help you, or any aspect of our work then please email me steven.goldstein@alpharcubed.com.
