For as long as I’ve been coaching – and that’s well over a decade – I’ve been stuck for an answer when people ask – what is it that I do?

Once upon a time I had an ‘out’– I side-stepped the coaching description – and offered up my other job, in TV – making films. Easy! But the issue now is I’m just coaching and when I say, just, I mean that’s my single career objective. Consequently, I’m cornered – with no other option but to come up with a neat and impressive summary of how I spend my week and earn my living.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m delighted to be pursuing one single career, I’m passionate about coaching and the impact it can have on clients and the workplace – but the capsule description still eludes me – has me backtracking and blustering which may leave people thinking I do something shameful or embarrassing.

Far from that, coaching is a rigorous and regulated profession and it’s taken me over a decade of learning – qualifying and practising to get this far – or am I protesting too much? If not protesting then I am procrastinating – playing for time – avoiding the issue – what I set off in pursuit of here is that elusive coaching definition; what is it actually that I do?

I must turn now to one of the UK’s leading coaches – someone I have studied under and worked with and someone I hold in the highest regard; Jenny Rogers – her description goes like this:

“Coaching is a partnership of equals whose aim is to achieve speedy, increased and sustainable effectiveness through focussed learning in every aspect of the client’s life. Coaching raises self-awareness and identifies choices. Working to the clients’ agenda, the coach and the client have the sole aim of closing the gaps between potential and performance.”

It may sound a tad stilted if I trot out this eloquent, if not colloquial, explanation next time I’m party-milling, glass and canapé in-hand, but it encapsulates what coaching is perfectly.

The key, I reckon is that performance noun. We’d never for one second contemplate an athlete – serious about her or his sport, focussed at the highest and elitist level – not having a coach. The sports coach is as essential a part of the performance equation as training and nutrition. A sports coach is vital to motivating, training and guiding their athletes to world-class status. Yet somehow we expect to climb the career ladder, build a business; achieve stretching and seemingly impossible personal goals, single-handed and without support, without any coaching. The truth, of course, is that intervention is key and the right coaching intervention can see you scoring all those career and developmental goals you set yourself. Or am I stretching the sporting metaphor too far here?

The fact is that executive coaching – the discipline I practice – has its roots in sports coaching and sports psychology. In 1974, Tim Gallwey’s landmark book, The Inner Game of Tennis, forever changed our perception of human performance potential and how to perform better.

“There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure in the outer game.”
Tim Gallwey, creator of The Inner Game

In the UK, Sir John Whitmore developed performance coaching within the workplace and the coaching profession has continued to grow ever since. I had the honour of meeting and listening to the late and venerable Sir John back in the early part of my training and have been hooked on the power of coaching ever since.

So whilst there is dividend in the sports coach comparison, of course there are differences. In sport the coach is ever present, in executive coaching the goal is to leave the client after a fixed term – once they’ve found their own action plan and tools for self-development. I work with individual clients and organisations on the same clear principles – always agreeing outcomes and being transparent about methodology. I’d argue too that a great sports coach might not gift you the perfect fix for your wayward forehand but work with you to work-it-out and that’s exactly what a good executive coach will do – work with you to work-it-out.