Coaching: Spinning our Wheels

Here’s a question I hear from time to time.

What is coaching for?

It’s a simple question, but not necessarily easy to answer.

We may think about leadership, success, being in the top 1% of performers.

Often it’s less about the big visible breakthroughs and more about realigning a small link in the chain that’s grinding against the rotating cogs.

One of the times where we misalignment happens is when we get stuck on one idea. 

We spin our wheels toothlessly. The cogs turn but without their teeth properly put in place nothing of any great note happens.

Or maybe we spin them with the chain just a little out of sync. It makes that nagging metallic clicking sound. 

Click. Clunk. Click. 

Every rotation. Every time.

It’s sometimes hard to hear, and nearly always hard to spot.

As a freelancer or creative person this can be even more challenging. After all, this is probably a system and style of our own design, and as we’re so deeply invested we can’t see, hear or feel where we’ve become impeded.

Coaching can help us clarify the long view of why we’ve got the cogs and the chain in place to begin with (our vision and purpose), and then go about finding where the misalignment is and taking steps towards making changes that get us rolling smoothly again. Cogs in motion, no clicks or clunks, positive movement towards where we want to go.

But it’s not so much about fixing the problem itself. It’s often more about discovering what may have caused it.

Once we know the root cause it’s usually fairly easy for us to see what’s going on on a more tactical level.

The most exciting part is we may be surprised what else we notice.