I guess I’m a coach now
Feels weird to be calling myself that but it’s technically true
When I was figuring out how on earth to navigate maternity leave as a content creator and then after baby was here and I was back to work but having a bit of a crisis, coaching really bloody helped me. And not just 1:1 coaching where I was paying someone but peer coaching also had a profound impact on me. I’m reluctant to become one of those people who experience something personally and then get evangelical about it (a definite risk as someone already with a bunch of followers online!) but in my consultancy work this year I have noticed myself doing many of the things my coach was doing with me. Adding a sprinkling of coaching into my sessions with clients has been great but I felt a bit like I was mimicking rather than really knowing what I was doing (this is very much how I feel about it, I never got any feedback like that from clients!) And so I thought I could help people even more if I actually knew what I was doing (lol) and had a proper understanding of how coaching works and the skills involved.
So last month I did a week long Intensive Coaching Skills course. And that my friends, makes me a coach. Coaching is an unregulated field, unlike medicine, law, therapy etc… anyone can call themselves a coach. But there are ways of getting certification and accreditation (what’s the difference between the two? I’m still unsure). The course I did was Step One if I do want to go down the certification route, which I’m still um-ing and ah-ing about. It doesn’t help that I’m currently 10 months into trying to conceive for baby 2 and so my life feels in limbo and it’s difficult to make any decisions that mean committing lots of time and money when who knows if/when this pregnancy/baby will come.
But the course itself has already equipped me with so many new skills and knowledge that I can bring to the 1:1 work I do with content creators and freelance creatives. Two of my biggest takeaways were:
✨ listening, and I mean really listening, is hard. We did some specific active listening exercises but also through all the practice we did we had to be listening very closely and I had a headache at the end of the first two days from listening so hard. It made me realise how much my mind is actually wandering in general conversation. Real active listening takes so much intense concentration it actually hurts.
✨ not giving advice is also very hard. It is so easy to slip into advice mode and try to fix someone’s issues but that is not what coaching is about. One of the key principles of coaching is believing in the clients’ own resourcefulness. They have all the answers and it's the coach's job to give them a structured and non-judgemental space to think. I think I would find it much easier to coach people who do something that I know nothing about. When I have knowledge and expertise in an area it’s hard to shut up the advice-giving part of my brain.
It feels very weird and cool to be back at the beginning of a learning journey again. While there was always more to learn in the sex ed space, I felt like I’d stopped learning, so it feels good to be working that muscle again.
But where do I go from here? I want to explore certification but where and when? The organisation I did the ICS through offer certification but it does all seem very geared at people in the corporate world working with corporate clients. Of course I would still learn a lot doing the course but would it be the right fit for me? And there are so many orgs out there offering coaching training, everything from mega-corporate to completely woo-woo, it’s hard to know what’s legit or not.
So here I am - just a creator consultant, mentor and coach (and very much still a content creator herself) standing in front of my laptop - asking you to subscribe…
Sorry couldn’t help myself but if you would like to work with me in a 1:1 capacity, you can get in touch via the contact form on my website.
🌼 My Patreon has had an update! I didn’t immediately change anything about my Patreon after stopping my sex ed work at the end of last year because I wanted to properly settle into everything first before making any changes. And now I have, it’s become clear to me the ways the Patreon needs to change to reflect my current work and what perks are available to you guys 💛
Tiers have new names - daisies, marigolds, and sunflowers!
And there is more content available at the lower tiers (e.g. the book club is staying available to ALL Patrons and the monthly livestreams have moved to the now £6 tier).
This is the new structure:
🌼 Daisies £3 - access to Patreon-only posts, The Common Room Discord server, early access to YouTube videos, book club
🧡 Marigolds £6 - everything above PLUS monthly reading lists and mini reviews of books, tv, films etc., access to the patron-only podcast feed, monthly livestreams
🌻 Sunflowers £20 - everything above PLUS a mini care package and postcard with a personal thank you from me after 6 months at this tier
Also, we have a new addition to The Common Room Welcome Pack! With the help of the community I've created a TCR TBR. This is a PDF download of a list of books that many people in the discord server regularly talk about and recommend. So if you've read any of these I'm sure you'll find someone to talk about them with, and if you haven't yet, consider it a bookish introduction to the community!
As always, the Patreon is entirely optional! It’s just there for folks who want to support my videos, get bonus content, and also connect with other folks in the community 💛
🧩 Carcassonne - a new board game fave! Our neighbour recently moved out and was selling some of his boardgames so Dan and I obviously went round to get a few. We got Pandemic and Zombicide (two co-op games we’ve played before with friends but didn’t own) and a new one (to us), Carcassonne. We have played it LOADS and it is so good. You’re building cities and roads by placing tiles down and you can sabotage each other, there’s different rules that can add layers of complexity and the sort of map thing you end up making also just happens to be very pretty and aesthetically pleasing. It’s 2-5 players and games are relatively short so an all round win for us in terms of the kind of games suited to parents of small children.
I read books based on my personality type - we did Myers Briggs and Enneagram and I think it is safe to say that I have become a Count of Monte Cristo fan girl. And I’m currently working on another reading vlog where I’m reading books based on my zodiac. Three books, one for each: sun, rising, moon!
We are currently reading Will I Ever Have Sex Again? by Sofie Hagen (affiliate link) for the Doing It Book Club over on my Patreon, we’ll be discussing it in the discord server on Thursday 10th October at 8pm BST! If you’ve read it (but even if you haven’t) and want to chat about the book then please come join us! (the book club is available to every Patreon tier)
I loooooove Carcassonne. Did you know it has many expansion packs? After a while you get the gist of the game, so these expansion packs add new types of tiles, new game mechanics and new play styles. I would mostly recommend Traders & Builders, but there are many fun ones.
Oh and I also absolutely love Pandemic. They also have several Legacy versions, in which you play sort of a quest line, with several games that form a story together. Depending on how you completed the game, you have to change things to the playing board, which could benefit you (or not) in next games to come. Also your characters get more and more epic the more games you play. We do this regularly with the same group of friends. It's really fun, because you are working towards a bigger goal than just game together. And it really helps to keep the board game nights going.
Just had to share my love of board games haha. Have fun playing the games!