Why do I coach? 

DR A F MERCHANT

A question I have been asked sometimes. I was a doctor for so many years. Why change?

You can be very good at something, even exceptional at it, but it might not be quite what you really thrive at as a person. Think about that yourself: you might be very successful,  but all success comes at the expense of something. It depends what that something is, and how you can control for it. I loved doctoring, but it was taking a toll on my wellbeing: my main tool was, and remains, my very finely tuned empathy. As a doctor, I gave of myself to an exhausting extent.  I was extremely socially oriented- I fought for causes, but unlike my peers, I couldn't, or rather, chose not to, draw the line in where to stop, where to restrict my ambition for helping patients. I worked way too hard. Many of my patients, through the extent of their disorders, were needy to the point where no amount of help would truly help them. Even though I saw this, I couldn't help but keep trying. Occasionally this would really move them forwards, but mostly, it damaged my health and energy. I had to stop, to draw the line in a detached way. But when I did, I found the job to be dull and uninviting. Something had to change.

In large, complex organisations, pay and progression are largely unrelated to how efficient or productive you are. Mediocrity is a frequent, paralysing result.

As I became more senior, I took a broad approach to learning: I wanted to learn about business and entrepreneurship, which runs in my family (the surname is a clue, derived from our heritage in the Burmese Anglo-Indian diaspora). So I enrolled in a postgrad leadership programme at Oxford's Business School. The average age was around 50: these were experienced leaders, at Chief Exec and Chair level. While there, I noticed how much my input seemed really valued in the seminar-style sessions in my class, most of whom were senior execs from business and industry. I got approached by a couple of my peers, asking for my opinion on situations and problems they encountered at work. Solutions that seemed natural to me, seemed genuinely revelatory to them. I guess my training had made me unconsciously competent in understanding people more generally.

These were exceptional people, achieving as highly as they did, but they also had very normal everyday problems, often to a greater degree than the average person on the street. I found myself helping and advising them with both their talents and their everyday issues. and they were only too glad to take on the advice and put it to use. They were more than able to do so; improvements were dramatic, and very transformative. One thing led to another, and after finishing the degree I agreed to do some psychological skills consulting (as I called it then) for a couple of these talented folk as they went about their business lives. This work grew, and was fast becoming a parallel track.

Coaching, properly done, is that: making you the most excellent version of yourself, set apart from and valuable to everyone else.  

When you work for the government, all the language of innovation and productivity is there, but it is almost impossible to enact. The NHS in the UK is brilliant in many ways, but at its worst, it can be slovenly and complex, resistant to change, and not performance orientated in the true sense: patient outcomes are not instrumental in deciding if your work is competitive or not. In large, complex organisations, pay and progression are largely unrelated to how efficient or productive you are. Mediocrity is a frequent, paralysing result. Doing private coaching work I found there were none of these issues; moreover, I had the freedom to innovate and make my service truly bespoke to my clients; something that was almost impossible to do in my day job. I had met a fascinating and dynamic person in Jonathan. Here was an experienced businessman who had served as CEO and Chair in his own career, but had taken to consulting roles over the last decade. He was keenly insightful into the transactional and softer elements of business skills, and used this in consulting roles. We hit it off, like a dynamic duo. I left medicine in 2014, and we formed the company then.

We took on a number of projects, applying ourselves to what arrived on our desk like a pair of eager young entrepreneurs. It was a vitalising and rewarding experience, and remains so to this day. It is genuinely rewarding to do what I do: I bring out excellence in people. It's like a hunt, every time: every person's excellence is in an area which is entirely unique to them. That is, of course, the very definition of exceptionality. I have become evangelical about it, I must admit: if you see what I see, you would be too. So many of us do not know our individual potential is at all, let alone how to access and unlock it. Coaching, properly done, is that: making you the most excellent version of yourself, set apart from and valuable to everyone else.  

What is Attentive Coaching?

I coach people in to become masterful of their mindset; this requires them to be attentive to the full range, power, and less visible elements of the mind in their performance. Most of our clients are already accomplished, very good at what they do, and established in their field. Technical skills are not what they seek: they want to be effective above and beyond what their technical training does for them. They are right in their intuition: Research conducted with Fortune 500 CEOs found that 75% of long term job success depends on people skills, while only 25% on technical knowledge. (Source: Carnegie Mellon Institute and Stanford University).

Attentive coaching is about making the person more effective when they are already brilliant at their job. Effectiveness comes only partly from technical skill. The rest of it it lies in understanding the self as a whole, as a psychological being. This is attentiveness. 

Looks easy enough. 

But it really isn't. 

 The problem is that you are reading this stuff with your logical mind; as such, you are not registering it with the primal (instinctive, sensing, experiential) side of your mind. Essentiall,y your inner caveman is alive and well, and he can help or hinder you: if you ignore him (or her), you might just be OK, but you will not be complete. No way. It feels like you have your feet both on the accelerator and the brake, but can't let go of either. 

You end up going off thinking you know how to do something, but you can't seem to apply it. Attentiveness does not develop one iota by reading;  any more than you can learn to ride a bike by reading about it. It takes careful practice, and application, and feedback, very specifically to how you are wired as an individual. In practice, I am the guide who does that with the client.

Contact us:

I am happy to respond to informal and formal queries. 

Professionals seeking coaching can contact me through my firm's email enquiry page.  ingramfaraday.com