Why Coach?

At risk of being self-indulgent, allow me to explain my own coaching journey and capabilities that might assist you. 

Life and working life are complicated. It can help to talk things through. Bringing structure to the discussion can assist. If the coach has some experience in your industry, it will help you more.

In my own experience, having coach-management helped me most in empowering self-belief and trust. I noticed that having discussions with people removed from the details and politics can give a helpful perspective.

Since starting up Release Life Sciences, I have retained two business coaches. Their different strengths helped me at different times. During the setting up phase, it was helpful that my coach had also set up a business so was able to couple practical advice with coaching questions. Later, I had been lucky enough to have achieved being ‘too busy’ and the break to ‘get coached and plan’ really helped my longer-term strategy development and thinking.

Real life situations have helped me to learn profoundly – for example, bereavement counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), being a mentor for children in crisis and working with adults with learning disabilities. This is because the connections made are deep and behaviours are less guarded than in the workplace. Using the 2022 parlance – these experiences are full of authenticity.

In the most recent years, I have qualified as an England Athletics Leader in Running Fitness. I was honoured to serve as chair at my running club. An initiative I am proud of is called You Can Run, which is a coached version of the well-known Couch to 5k Programme. We aim it at new and returning runners and in the past couple of years around 50 runners have participated. Getting running is part of the story. Friendships have formed, supportive networks have been created, health, wellness and prevention of future health issues have been reduced. In this example, as with the one that follows, coaching is all about the individual, getting to know individual motivations, fears and aspirations. Yes, applying a framework that can help the whole group but tailored individual attention and thinking makes such a difference.

Now I am lucky to be a coach for my daughter’s football team. The Football Association’s training echoes that of England Athletics – it is all about the individual and giving feedback to players that helps them. Learning and practising the technical parts of football is important. However, this is 30% of the total coaching. Clear communication, confidence building, teamwork, discovering motivation and celebrating all improvements are the key parts. Especially giving individual feedback, championing progress and re-framing experiences.

I chose The Co-Active Training Institute for my formal coaching training. Their philosophy is to coach the whole person and their training is 80-90% practical. During the course we would see a demo of real coaching and then practise in groups from ‘one-to-one' coaching, with an observer to ‘many-to-one’ coaching. Learning by doing in action! It was interesting how much self-awareness the course generated, as well as learning to coach with more structure and adding to the coaching toolbox.

Shall we talk about work for a bit? 

I have worked in the life sciences industry for over 20 years, in companies varying from 10s to 1000s of employees, across several functions, as an individual contributor and leader. This has given me the opportunity to see matrix organisations come, go and come again, with many different management systems, development programmes and approaches. This is the 30% parts – the technical. I have collected and developed ways of working systematically, cracking open challenges, tackling them, and achieving growth (usually!). I love product development, from concept to commercialisation, to lifecycle management - so ‘coach’ can mentor in that area too, if it helps you.

When I coach, I consider it an honour and I feel determined to help each individual client. Or more properly – help you to help you. Many of my clients work in understanding disease states better and developing diagnostics and treatments for symptoms. Coaching is not therapy; however, I strongly believe it can help in developing empowering positive strategies to help you make meaningful progress in your career and your life. Adding to your strengths, focus and wellbeing.

Contact RLS today to find out more how we can support you!
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