At the University of East London, there is still a heady air of excitement and energy left over from the US Olympians staying at the university campus – a pride, in that hard work and coaching had been high on the athletes list of reasons for success. I got a sense that I am catching a wave of fresh interest and respect for coaching and its plethora of applications in society.
I am still smiling and enthusiastic despite: getting stuck in a lift on my first day, regularly getting lost in the vaults of the university, Google-maps failing me when I needed it most, a number of tube line disruptions, and feeling overwhelmed with new information and learning expectations. A serendipitous collision with Debs (another full-time MSc student) at the reception desk reassured me that I would be okay – we share a similar journey. STAY CALM!
Being part of the full-timers on the course, meant I was quickly thrown into the deep end, so to speak – joining the second year students for our first teaching day, and exploring aspects of self and others. Yieks. There was also an invitation to practice coaching skills straight away. WHAH?!!! ….. But, it was okay, I guess…
Along with the bombardment of interesting new information, there is a compulsory request to ramp-up 24 hours of one-to-one coaching logs before December…WHAH?!!!!….Who?…Me? (12 if part-time)…
We gotta start coaching clients now?
… that’s when I figuratively ‘hid under the bed’:( Still there and quivering. Where am I going to find my coachees, and what do I do and how? Panic-stricken…It seems I am one of the fewer students who have no experience of coaching, and am not working (let alone having a coaching vocation). Talk about taking bigger bites than my mouth can fit. STAY CALM!
One of the module tasks involved group work, such as either writing a definition of coaching, or drawing a model of coaching. Feeling self-conscious, I did not reveal my love of art, so I joined a small group who liked words – Mission Word Expert. Quickly I became part of the ‘I am not the slightest bit artistic group’…which suited me at the time. The lecturer then swiftly switched the task to ‘word people’ drawing a definition of coaching, and ‘arty people’ writing a model of coaching….I guess he was moving us out of comfort zones, which is a typical coachy thing to do.
Golly, I am going to have to pretend to be a ‘non-arty wordy person’ to remain part of the gang.
We had 20 minutes, and 19 of them were spent carefully defining the words, before a picture could even be created….I patiently waited , as clearly my two team members were much better ‘wordies’ than me – I was just pretending to be ‘word expert’ . We had 60 seconds to go and arty results were required as a matter of urgency!!! I quickly thought about stick-men and balloons, and drew a shorter version of the drawing below – Bingo! It worked, and after initial team uncertainty in my sketch idea, there was a real sense of team effort – in a kinda crappy drawing, fab wordy kinda way… RESULT.
Anyways, I doubt this blog adds value to any reader out there, but I do intend to write about insightful evidence-based nuggets of coaching information and learning in the future. But, I guess this is a blog about vulnerability, uncertainty and a call to adventure! I trust in the process, and that soon I may feel the confidence to get out from under my bed, and stop quivering. Anybody else hiding under the bed?
