The more you carry, the fewer places there are to think out loud.
Almost every conversation has a purpose attached to it. A decision to make, a position to defend, a team to lead, a client to keep. Even the people you trust arrive with a history, a perspective and a stake in what happens next, so you get very good at thinking for the room. And if you are building something on your own, there is often no room at all, which turns out to be a version of the same problem.
Sometimes what you need is somewhere to think before you know what you think. I work with people who want one hour to do exactly that.
You got very good at something, and then what you are responsible for grew wider than the thing you were good at. More of the day goes on judgement now and less on the work itself, the decisions carry more weight than they used to, and the people closest to the situation are the ones it would be awkward to think out loud in front of. Or there is nobody close enough to ask, which is quieter and no easier.
Most of the people I work with are very good at what they do and they can see clearly what is going on around them. What they are looking for is the direction, and the shape of the action they want to take, while there is still room to choose it rather than commit to it.
The thinking is usually already there. It has just not had anywhere quiet to finish.
People who are used to being the one with the answer. Established in what they do, carrying real responsibility for how things turn out, and curious about whether the next stretch is meant to look like the last one.
Most arrive with something specific. A role that has grown into a different shape. A team they want working differently. An idea they have been mulling over. A decision about staying, leaving or building something. A pattern that keeps repeating whoever the other people in it are. A value they have been overriding for so long they have stopped noticing.
It usually starts with something at work, because that is where the pressure shows first, and it rarely stays only there. What the hour gives you is somewhere to put the thing down and look at it, somewhere to say the reservations you have not said out loud anywhere else without it being weighed against you, and somewhere to settle on the next thing you are willing to do.
An hour, every two or three weeks, on video. You bring what is actually occupying you rather than a prepared agenda. I ask questions and mostly stay out of the way.
We start with a thirty minute conversation and decide from there. Most people then settle into a run of five or six sessions, which is long enough for the real blockers to surface and for progress to be visible against what you set out at the start.
I will not hand you my answer, because the answer you arrive at yourself is the one you will actually act on.
Where my industry experience is useful I will say so and put it on the table as information, and the decision stays where it started, with you.
The work conversation and the life conversation are rarely separate and I do not pretend otherwise.
What we do is anchored in your work, and everything attached to it is allowed in the room.
You already have what this needs. What is usually missing is the conditions to think in, not the capacity to work it out.
Awareness creates choices, and choices are what a decision is actually made of.
I work with you from a place of knowing that you are resourceful, and that the choices you have made so far were the best ones available with what you knew at the time.
That is not flattery. It changes what the questions are for, because we go looking for what is available now rather than for what went wrong then.
Coaching, mentoring, training and therapy get used interchangeably and they are different tools with different jobs. I wrote a plain guide to the differences, including the situations where coaching is the wrong answer.
The most common mix up is seeking coaching when the honest answer is training, because coaching feels more senior. The second is seeking coaching when therapy is the better fit, and a good coach will say so early rather than work around it.
Twenty years building analytics and delivery functions from India for global organisations. Data and delivery is where I am fluent, and if that is your world I will understand your context faster than most coaches will. It is not a requirement.
The thing I actually spent twenty years doing was translating between people who wanted a decision and people who had to build the thing, usually across time zones and usually with someone unhappy at one end. That conversation is the same in every function.
The purpose is to work out whether there is something worth coaching and whether you want to do it with me. Both answers are allowed to be no.
Sessions on video.