Picture the end of a day spent in meetings. You’ve talked about priorities, given feedback and helped somebody else decide what to do. Your own difficult conversation is still waiting. So is the question of whether you are spending your time on the right things.
Perhaps you used to finish the day with something you could point to: a piece of research, a design, a problem you had worked through. Now much of your work happens through other people. It can be harder to tell when you have done enough, or what doing the job well should feel like.
Coaching can give you somewhere to examine that change. Not a performance review, and not another set of instructions about the kind of leader you should become. A conversation in which you can work out what matters, what is getting in the way and what you want to do about it.
You don’t need a perfectly formed goal
You might arrive with a decision: whether to apply for a role, how to approach a conversation with your manager, or what to stop taking responsibility for. You might arrive with something less tidy. Work feels different. You keep replaying the same meeting. A promotion you wanted has brought a kind of work you are not sure you enjoy.
We can begin with that. Part of the work is finding a useful question, rather than expecting you to have answered it before we talk.
A concern about confidence, for example, might become a conversation about expectations. What have you actually been asked to do? What have you assumed you must do? Where are you waiting for permission, and where do you need a clearer agreement with someone else?
Those questions do not assume that every difficulty is yours to fix. A lack of authority, an impossible workload or conflicting priorities will not disappear because you think more positively. Understanding the situation means noticing both your choices and the conditions around them.
Start with one moment
If you want to explore this before speaking to a coach, choose one recent moment at work that stayed with you. Keep it small enough to describe: a conversation you avoided, a decision you took back from somebody, or a meeting where you left unsure what had been agreed.
Write down what happened before explaining why you think it happened. Then ask yourself what you wanted at that point, what you did, and what you were trying to protect. You might have been protecting the quality of the work, a relationship, your time or your sense of being useful.
Look for one thing you could clarify or try differently. That could mean asking your manager how they will judge a decision, agreeing which choices belong to a colleague, or saying what you need before taking on another piece of work. It does not have to become a plan to change everything about yourself.
If you find that difficult to untangle, the moment itself is something you can bring to coaching. You do not need to turn it into a polished account first.
Coaching, mentoring and advice
Sometimes you want to think through a situation with someone who will listen carefully and question the assumptions inside it. Sometimes you want to hear how an experienced person has approached something similar. Those are different kinds of support, and it helps to be clear about which you need.
My background is in technology, design and research, and I offer coaching and mentoring for people working in digital professions. That experience gives us shared context; it does not mean my answer should become yours. Where advice or mentoring would be useful, we can agree that explicitly rather than letting it take over the conversation.
I also use visual and creative activities to explore thoughts and choices. If talking around a problem leaves it feeling tangled, putting parts of it on paper may give us another way to look at it. We can discuss what helps you think, rather than assuming everybody needs the same approach.
You can explore coaching with me or read more about how coaching works.
A conversation before a commitment
If this sounds relevant to what you are dealing with, you can book a free consultation. It is a chance to talk about what you are looking for, ask questions and see whether we would work well together. It is not a promise that coaching will solve every difficulty at work.
You do not need to have written a set of goals. Bring the question you have, even if you are still working out how to ask it.