I’m not sure I’ve always wanted to be a coach. If it had come up in a careers advice session at school, it wouldn’t have been a choice I knew existed, or one anyone would have predicted for me. Even now I’m still figuring out what it means to be one.

Three of my four grandparents were teachers by profession, and I think I was lucky enough to learn a lot from them before they passed. Some of those lessons are still bubbling away, years after our last physical interaction (I could talk about some spiritual interactions, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day 😀 ).

Summer holidays with my grandparents, both art teachers, both very different in approach, gave me and my sister the chance to play, learn, draw and just explore being kids with them. War babies with a passion for art. Collectors of old toys from all over (they had a museum full of toys we couldn’t really play with). A heavy helping of “waste not, want not.” A passion for knowing and finding out. My grandfather on the other side was a DT teacher, practical, stoic, ordered, tidy, especially after battling polio and losing his wife at an early age. The opposite in many ways, but there’s something in me that came from both of them. A desire to help, to inspire, to be useful. It’s led me, in some ways, to where I am, and maybe to where I’m going.

So with that bit of background on me, I’ve found myself wanting to explain my coaching journey. Maybe it’s more for me than anyone else. It’s an ongoing process, and writing it down feels useful.

I’ve been working in a CrossFit gym, calling myself a CrossFit coach, for 15 years now. It’s been a huge part of my development. Coaching people, meeting them where they’re at, getting people excited to move, sweat, explore what their body can do while not taking it too seriously, it’s a challenging process, and not one I’ve got right all the time, but something I strive to improve at and care deeply about. In the way I coach group fitness, I’ve called it coaching, but honestly it’s more training, teaching, mentoring, with some coaching sprinkled in.

Maybe it’s useful if I define the terms, so you can see where my thinking has shifted.

Mentoring: using skills you’ve learned in a specific area to upskill someone else in that same area. Experience driven, specific. Advice and answers are easy to give here, though it can touch on more exploratory work too, getting the other person to think and act in a way that reflects them, while still holding on to the knowledge of someone who has been through a similar, or theoretically similar, process.

Teaching: this is vast. There’s usually a curriculum to follow, or a set subject to learn. Lessons can inspire thought, but there’s some knowledge giving or exchange happening. The teacher may not know everything, but they share a lot of what they do know. Good teachers inspire further work and open up new avenues.

Coaching: originally I thought this was more like the two above, but I’m learning now that the word holds a different meaning to the one I would have associated with it before. It’s more about being part of a collaborative effort to find new ways onto the path or direction someone wants to go. It’s led by them, but maintained by the coach. It’s not giving answers, it’s finding them in the person. It’s holding non judgemental space, considering the person’s unique being and life experience, and knowing they are whole, with the potential to become who they want to be on their own. Maybe they just need a bit of help getting there.

This isn’t to say these three roles don’t overlap, or that there aren’t more ways to split them up, but it’s an interesting distinction to sit with.

I used to think a coach told you what to do, or knew what to do. In my eyes, the coach started to become a guru. Someone called me that once, as a joke, a tongue in cheek remark that stuck in my head like something I needed to work out, it didn’t feel like something i wanted to be. And it got me curious.

What a guru says goes. Not like a dictator, more like a calm, all knowing being. It all makes sense and seems simple, which I love, but in reality it can fall short. Reality is messy. It has history, it has consequences, and it has a tendency to not be something you can do in isolation, without thought or care for others. A guru can think they know it all, which could be a bit of a problem, but what’s worse is it makes people think that what they know isn’t right, or that they need someone else to sort things out for them (this I don’t love). A bit like following the sat nav to a destination you should know how to get to by now, following a guru doesn’t let you learn. It just lets you lean on them.

For me, coaching right now is about being useful to people. Helping them fix the bits that have been ignored, pushed to the side or to the back of the mind. The things they know they want to do but have neglected. The thoughts they want, but can’t access. The way they want to be, but aren’t acting like it. I want to set people up to become the people they want to be.

Why would anyone want that? We all get stuck. We all drift away from our values, or hit points in life where things just shift and we ask ourselves what am I doing here, what’s next, why am I struggling with this. We all get there, and yes, we may be able to work our way out in our own time, or with help from friends or family. The difference with a coach is that you don’t get weighed down by Aunty K telling you what to do, or your mate Kev giving his ideas and experiences, or someone saying “it’ll be fine.” You need time and space to think, to dive into the cracks without judgement, but with care. Without advice, but with compassionate unknowing. A true space for growth, on your side of the fence.

What am I going to be doing from here on in? Training, talking, writing and voting each day to be a good coach, dare I say it, a great one. I’m excited, inspired, and I think my grandparents would be interested, happy and proud to hear about the direction I’m headed.

Have you ever tried coaching like this? Could be the move…