Walking with a Question... Going Analogue and Coaching Yourself

As an executive coach, you would expect that I would be wanting to promote my coaching services and encouraging you that you need me as your coach. However, part of my role is to enable you to think more deeply, improve your self-awareness to make your own decisions. This practice does not always need the guidance of a coach.

Learning to coach yourself can be a lucrative ability for any leader. Speaking with many clients, two of the main challenges they face in enabling this is finding the time to focus and where to start. For many leaders, finding an amount of time and the environment to support self-coaching can be virtually impossible.

Coaching is designed to enable you, as a leader, to think more deeply improve your self-awareness and enable you to reflect. Whether you are at work or home, there are constant distractions.

One simple method I have seen to be effective for some clients is "Walking with a Question". With the pandemic, many of us began to integrate work meetings with walking outdoors, to get some fresh air and exercise, and reduce stress, and this trend has continued as a good example of health and wellbeing at work.

Taking this one step further to enable self-coaching, I have recommended to clients this practice of "Walking with a Question". The following outlines how to do this:

• Go analogue. The digital world we live in creates an environment where we are always on and readily accessible. However, while this has its merits, it also comes with many negative results. To focus and truly enable you to be self-aware, you need to disconnect from this digital world - hence the idea of taking a walk.

• Take a walk. Taking a walk gets you out of the office. You can leave the office behind (and potentially your phone!), reducing distractions and interruptions. Walking on your own provides a safe space for you to reflect and work with your thoughts.

• Walk with a Question. Taking a walk is not going to enable you to solve every problem, but it can give you time to think about one specific challenge. This concept is focused on identifying one question for you to answer while on your walk. This may be around your career development, a situation or issue at work, or a decision that needs to be made. Identify the question you want to focus on while walking, write it down, and then start your walk.

• During the walk. Focus on the question. Think deeply how to answer it, analyse challenges and reflect on the impact of not answering this question. Consider using coaching tools to guide your thinking, for example, the GROW model. One additional tip... carry a notebook and pen. From experience with clients, some have found this approach very simple but very effective, formulating an answer to their question, exploring options and designing actions, but... then forgetting key points as they couldn't jot it down!