WHY COVID SHOULD CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE YOUR BUSINESS COACH, FOREVER

WHY COVID SHOULD CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE YOUR BUSINESS COACH, FOREVER

It’s getting hard to remember a time when being slick and polished in your online business world really mattered, isn’t it?

I don’t mean that now, after months of lockdown, we happily turn up to business calls in our scratty PJs with cereal crumbs in our hair.

I’m talking about the time when an occasional conference call from home was preceded by threats and/or bribes to keep our partners/kids/pets as quiet as little church mice so that no one would know we were at home, or video calls where we tried to look and sound exactly as if we were in our usual glass edifices rather than sitting at our kitchen table.

I’m talking about a time when we went out of our way to keep our work life and our home life looking as separate, disconnected and far apart as possible.

And while we’re recalling those bygone days, let me ask you this: how did that feel?

I’m willing to wager a large bet of your choosing that it felt like jolly hard work. Artifice. Plate-spinning. Maybe even deceit. Well, it would, wouldn’t it, because you are one whole person. Work You and Home You are not two separate personas, but the chances are you’ve spent years trying to behave as though they were.

Of course, our collective lockdown experience brought us a whole host of new plates to spin, let’s be honest. The baby’s hungry, the dog needs to go outside urgently, the toddler needs you to judge their painting RIGHT NOW, the tweenie needs help to unravel the unsolved mysteries of this algebra thingummybob, and the teenager may or may not be listening to something educational through those earbuds. Oh, and your Zoom presentation to the Board, or your weekly live teach-in to your Facebook group, starts in precisely three-and-a-half minutes!

And even if your lockdown has been childless, and the paragraph above is nothing but an exhausting litany, I’ll bet you’ve had your own new challenges to manage in these unusual glimpses into your home life. Even if it’s just your cat waving its backside at your boss. (How DO small animals   know exactly where the laptop camera lens is?)

But in the midst of all this new craziness, that same collective lockdown has created a new kind of liberation for us. We’re all in the same boat, for one thing, and everyone knows perfectly well that we’re working from home with all the messy life stuff that goes with that. And so we’ve all given each other permission to be real. Authentic. Honest and open about who and where we are. (And let’s be honest, we’ve all LOVED seeing the personal side to our colleagues or our favourite online expert, haven’t we?)

But what does this have to do with coaching, I hear you ask? Why should Covid and lockdown change the way we see coaching, forever?

For me, it has proven something to the world that many of us knew already: ‘life’ and ‘business’ are not two separate entities (especially for women in business). The things that help us and the things that hold us back don’t sit in neatly separated boxes.

And it’s why I am so pleased and so proud that I am trained, qualified and experienced both as a life coach and as a business coach.

After all, now that you know how intertwined life and business really are, wouldn’t you want to work with someone who can help propel your progress in all areas of your life? Does it still make sense to work with a life coach who can’t help you with your business needs, or with a business coach who can’t help you unblock the life issues that are getting in your way?

And now that you know how much your different roles depend upon each other, how can you hope to grow, develop and get better results if you focus only on one aspect of your progress?

So, if you’re an action-taker and you choose to work with a coach to get better results, don’t do it with one hand tied behind your back. Make sure you work with someone who can help you remove the blocks and accelerate your success as the real and whole person that you are.