As a coach, something I wrestle with often is endings. Last week, as part of some personal development I'm doing via the Academy of Executive Coaching, I had a session with my mentor coach where this came up as a topic and we spoke at length about it. I pride myself on building deep relationships with clients and so, when those relationships inevitably reach the end of their useful lives, there's a certain sadness when we part ways.
Naturally, I recognise the value in these endings, in that they typically signify that the client has achieved what they had set out to through coaching and no longer have need of my services. That is a compliment, of course. And it's ultimately why I do what I do; because I want to make a difference to people. But it still comes with a sadness.
This was a big change I encountered when leaving corporate life and setting up on my own. Some of the coaching relationships I had in my days as an internal coach in a large financial services institution certainly continued on beyond the useful life of the relationship. In that world, the client and their department weren't directly paying for the service and there were always new topics to discuss and delve into, so there was no urgency to close a relationship off. In some, we pivoted, re-contracted and moved on to new and valuable topics, but there's no doubt that other once-productive coaching relationships turned into periodic coffee chats, simply because we enjoyed each other's company! This was partly due to the way our team operated, where there was no real appetite to end relationships, particularly with senior stakeholders, but it was certainly also partly through choice,
Nowadays, that type of situation happens to me rarely and only in pro bono cases, because the paid work I do is typically bought in blocks of a specific number of sessions (normally from 4-8 at a time). Additional sessions are added at the conclusion of a block, only if there's a need to do so. Thus, over the last (almost) three years, I've said hello and then goodbye to a large number of clients as they move on at the end of our time together.
When those endings come, there's a sadness and a sense of loss. It's not the dramatic loss that you experience when someone passes away or when a romantic relationship ends, but there's the severing of a closeness and it leaves a small gap in your life, knowing that those regular meetings have ceased.
The topic got me thinking about conclusions in other parts of my life. Do I react in a similar way when other things come to an end? And if not, why not? Well this week has already featured a couple of different endings. Firstly, on Sunday, the Pirates played our final league game, bringing the 2024 season to a close. And today Harper went back to school, drawing a line under her Summer holidays. So have those brought on the same feeling as the end of a coaching relationship? Well, no, they haven't. So I began to explore why.
The answer, in my case, seems to be one of perspective. In both the cases of ending the British American Football season and in the end of school summer holidays, they're followed by something. The end is, at the same time, a new beginning.
As the Pirates season comes to an end, which it did on Sunday with an uplifting 36-12 victory over a team we haven't beaten in nine years, it brings with it the promise of an off-season, with time to reflect and plan and prepare and re-tool and to go again in the new year. We have built extremely good foundations and there's an anticipation of where we go from here. That's exciting and allows for action, growth and improvement!
When Harper's summer holiday finishes, she goes back to school, joins a new class, learns new things, builds new friendships and has new adventures. We've had a lot of fun through the summer holidays, but the end of one thing leads into the beginning of the next, and again, that's exciting!
With coaching relationships, I've previously always looked at the end as just the end. I won't coach that person any more. We won't have regular meetings. I won't see them again for some time, or maybe ever, in some cases. And there's a sadness to that. But perhaps the secret to this lies in focussing not on what's ended, but on what's beginning. For the client, it's the next stage of their discovery, their reflection on the insight they've gained and the chance to grow and prosper as a result of the work they've done. And for me? Well it's a chance to find and begin working with new clients. To reflect on what I learned and discovered about myself as a coach through the work we did together. To consider how I use that insight to go forward as a better coach and have even more impact. There is opportunity in these endings that I'd perhaps been blind to before now.
Reframing challenges and difficulties can feel unnatural when you're immersed in them and it takes work, but there's huge value in it. What situations are you facing where you could benefit from looking from a fresh perspective or reframing a challenge into an opportunity? And how might a coach be able to help?
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