Cuff Coaching

  “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.” ―  Stephen Hawking This week I've been reading the book "The Advice Trap : Be humble, stay curious and change the way you lead forever." The majority of this book I understand from all the work that I do in coaching and the readings that I do linked to coaching. As a coach we need to be curious. We have to ask the questions without giving the advice. It's something that we have to practice - and master. We so often want to fix the problem, to jump in and give our two cents (especially when we can easily see the solution). But this doesn't help the person that we are working with. Our job is to help them come up with their own solutions, their own ahaha moment.  So why is curios...

 Challenging conversations are something that occur often in a leadership role. Over the last few days I've had a few of them. We all hate difficult conversations. And yet they are something that we have to have often - whether it is in our job, with our kids, with our partner and so on.  I have yet to identify anyone that puts their hand up and says "yes, I'm happy to have that difficult conversation!" Instead the amount of times that people readily put their hand up and say "I hate having difficult conversations and am not good at them so can someone else do it?" is endless. No-one likes difficult conversations - there is something so confronting about having to have them. We tend to spend most of the time predicting what might happen if we have it, we tell our own story in our head over and over, we try to guess what the outcome will be, we have the conversation in our head...and so on and so on (sound familiar?) It's our fear of the consequences that...

This week I have been planning and organising my oldest daughter's 21st birthday. Whilst in the midst of all of the planning of the food and organising all the other bits that we have planned it has provided me with an opportunity to really think deeply about her character traits.  One of the traits that I connect closely to her is Courage. The dictionary defines courage as " the ability to do something that frightens one, be brave, show strength in the face of pain or grief." This got me thinking about what courage means for individuals and if she is even aware of this strong personality stance. From her teenage years she has demonstrated courage in all sorts of forms and has had the strength to say what she believes and to show up when she can't control the outcome of the conversation. I am immensely proud of her for this - especially when she has made some difficult decisions that have had an impact on her - but she has never wavered from her courage to speak up.  ...