What you can’t help doing
Moths drawn to the light. By tedgun from Getty Images.
“What is it that you can’t help doing?”
That’s the question Executive Coach Joella Bruckshaw posed to me during a Lunchclub meeting last year.
I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
When it doesn’t feel like work
I can’t help puzzling out things, noticing what’s different, improving the flow, bridging the gaps.
Therein lies the contradiction. What I’m describing isn’t coaching! Like, at all.
So, how the heck does that work?
It took me a while, but I found an answer to that one, too.
The coaching context
Coaching is not about offering solutions, fixing things, or solving other people's problems for them — if you meet someone calling themselves a coach and that's their understanding of what coaching is, they're selling you something else.
Coaching is about having meaningful conversations that surface the insights and answers that help others to move forward with their own stuff.
All the recommendations, fixing, plans for improvement — that's more like consulting.
And how you arrive at those solutions? That’s usually done through research and design.
But back to that question…
In my case, I can’t help doing doing the consulting and UX bits, along with my coaching, too.
So I bring them into the mix. But only where it makes sense to do so; where it’s actually helpful (and expected and welcome). Experience tells me when to offer a hat-switch. And you do, too. In fact, I’m following your lead most of the time, whether you realise it or not. I secretly love that part — it takes the pressure off. Which makes the work more fun and meaningful. Less like work, especially hard work.
“What work do you do that doesn't seem like work?”
— Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap
When we don’t know
Some people spend their whole lives answering these questions. Others are fine with having their work be just that; it’s enough. Satisfaction, or “passion”, may come from elsewhere. All of it is ok.
But it’s worth thinking on. Maybe even having a conversation about
I give immense thanks to Executive Coach Joella Bruckshaw for posing this incredible question, “What can’t you help doing?” For more insight on how she helps people be who they can’t help being, read her insightful post: Context is Everything
