The Naked Coach

Business Coaching Made Simple

David Taylor

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781907293924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

Bestselling author David Taylor returns with his take on business coaching. No fuss. No jargon. Just great ideas.

The Naked Coach is the back-to-basics book on coaching that will make sense of coaching and place it back at the very heart of the business agenda. It will make understanding, learning and teaching coaching simple. The Naked Coach tells real, practical, fun, exciting and above all else relevant stories that you can apply straightaway. David Taylor strips away the hype, jargon and mystery to give coaching a clear definition in all its forms, including mentoring, training, facilitation and interventions of every kind. The Naked Coach explains coaching without being patronising, defines without being arrogant, and does it in a fun, accessible way. It is coaching from a different perspective – yours.

The fundamental principle of The Naked Coach is to be yourself – always. Find what works for you, and do it, again and again and again. Remember. No fuss. No Jargon. Just great ideas.

Journey One

Coaching from a Different Perspective - Yours

1

YOU HERE, NOW

When you were young, you believed in yourself, you were confident and happy. Those feelings have not been lost, they have not disappeared; they are simply buried within you, and whether you unleash them is your choice, and yours alone. Often, when I speak at conferences, I am introduced with the ‘striptease’ music. Every time I have to react as if it is the first time - like the Mars salesperson who hears the ‘Look, it’s the man from Mars’ a dozen times a day.

They do this because they think I am the ‘naked’ leader, or coach.

And I am not.

They are.

You are.

Please be in no doubt, once and for always. Everything I write about is in the public domain. Everything I write about you already know, deep down. And everything I write about is obvious. All I have done is stripped away any jargon, mystery or hype.

Because, as I have said many times before, and will say many more times in this book, it is not only your birthright to be successful, by your own definition, it is your birthright to know how to be successful, at any time, and anywhere.

I read the books that you haven’t the time to, I gather the material so that you don’t have to. All I do is present it in a very simple way.

Which I have to, as it is the only way I understand.

The Naked Coach is about you:

All of you - the you at home, the you at work, the you that leads you, and the you that follows you around. The you that already knows, deep down, what you want and need to do in your life, in your teams, in your organization.

And what’s more, I don’t even mind if you believe me on this one. In fact, I would prefer if you don’t believe in me at all. I want to know if you believe in you.

So, my first question: if not you, then who?

If not you, then who?

Are you in ownership of your life?

Simple test to see if you are in ownership of your life - to do right now. Think about someone in your family, or in your team at work. Someone whom you talk about a lot, when they are not there. Next time you are with them, perhaps just the two of you, tell them what you think, to their face. Be pleasant, be respectful, be professional. However, it is time to stop speaking about that person, and speak to that person.

This is a key moment in your journey of self-coaching - you can either do something about it, or simply read on. All you have to ask yourself, indeed the ultimate question of self-coaching, is -

Does what I am thinking/feeling/doing serve me or others, or not?

If you are not in ownership of your life, who is?

We all want to be popular, well liked. However, do you take it one stage too far - do you need it? If you do, if other people or outside events dictate how you feel about yourself, you are not in ownership. Someone else is.

You must be in ownership of your life, if you are going to coach yourself.

You must be in ownership of your life, if you are going to coach others.

And, most fundamentally, you must be in ownership of your life, if you are going to make your future, your choice.

What do you think? Your Future - By Chance or … Your Future - Your Choice?

Decide which you believe, right now. If you decided ‘Chance’, read on. If you decided ‘Choice’, do not read the next paragraph; go to the one beginning with ‘Choice’.

Chance

Congratulations - you are absolutely right, always have been and always will be. And each and every day, this thing we call ‘life’ will conspire to support your belief - if you believe that such moments are out of your control and only come along now and then, that is what will happen, because it will become self-fulfilling.

OK, so you read that paragraph, anyway.

Choice

Congratulations - you are absolutely right, always have been and always will be. And each and every day, this thing we call ‘life’ will conspire to support your belief - if you believe that such moments are within your control and come along whenever you choose, that is what will happen, because it will become self-fulfilling.

So, if you believe you need to wait for such moments to come along, then wait. When and if they do, please rejoin the book then. And, if you believe the second, what you read and what you do next will have a transformational impact on your life.

I love those words ‘a transformational impact’. ‘Transformational’ is something way beyond ‘Change’. If you freeze water, it becomes ice. Yet, when melting it reverts to water. These are changes. Temporary shifts in state. If you burn a stick of wood, it becomes ashes. It can never become wood again. This is transformation. When a caterpillar - a slow, creeping, wormlike creature - undergoes metamorphosis, it emerges as a delicate and beautiful butterfly capable of flight. This is transformation. A permanent shift in state. And I suppose the biggest transformation of them all was the big bang, the transformation into the known universe.

I use transformation as a description of the result of what you do.

Only you can make that choice.

Only you can make that transformation.

Your life - your choice.

The power of this book is yours - it is you, decided by, and only by you. This book is not about what you read, rather what you do with what you read. I believe there is one reason above all others that many, many books do not inspire people to take action - because most fall into one fundamental trap: they assume the power of any communication is with the communicator. And it is not.

The power, and effectiveness, of any and all communication is with the receiver - you - and the action that you take as a result.

Please don’t get me wrong. That decision and action may not be to travel to the moon. It may be simply to do nothing and relax, or to tell someone you love them, and mean it. Or to receive love provided by someone close to you.

Love plays a massive part in preparing people for a leadership role. I’ve been helping my fiancée (Claire), who is about to take on a leadership role at work, to build upon her confidence. I could teach her all of the numerous techniques I’ve learned over the years. However, I found the most effective way was simply to show love and trust in her. Even when I thought she might stray off track, I let her; and I made sure that I was there if she fell.

Tony Knill

What is a ‘huge’ decision for some may be ‘small’ for others. It is your decision, your life, your adventure. So this is your book, not mine. Because being a Naked Coach is about being you - it is about coming home to be who you already are. It is about finding success, by finding yourself.

Being successful, by being you.

In a world that so wants us to be like everyone else - as thin as ..., as successful as ..., as ...

Imagine that everything you have ever done, all that you have ever known, and each thought you have ever had, comes down to this very moment. As you read this. Because it does, and to every moment that you live.

How powerful is that?

And how powerful are you?

Transformation, by being yourself. How cool is that? Having a transformational impact - on your own life - by simply being yourself.

In your life I expect you have heard the following phrases:

‘You are good’
‘You are bad’
‘You are a great ... ’
‘You are not so good at ... ’
And so the list goes on.

The words and opinions you heard and took on board as truths from the day you were born right up to this very moment as you read this.

I now offer you a different perspective:

You are
You are here, and now:
Wherever you have come from
Whoever you have met
Whatever you have done

And in that is a miracle so powerful and a truth so deep, that whatever you are thinking right now, as you simply realize that you are, perhaps you are filled with joy, energy and hope.

Think about what made you: the timing, synchronicity (coincidence?), and delicate biological tuning - the whole process of making you - is perhaps the finest example of sub-conscious self-coaching ever. An ovum needed to be regularly released each month from your mother’s ovary, a process that could only proceed if a complicated cascade of hormonal events took place without interference. This egg then needed to be able to move freely along an unblocked Fallopian tube where it could be fertilized by a sperm and then reach the womb. The sperm had to be healthy, mobile and numerous, although only one ultimately penetrated the egg and formed an embryo with it. Think about that leading sperm, full of a desire for life - do you think it ever thought to itself, ‘I don’t feel like doing this today’ or ‘I think I’ll give up now’?

The many processes that must occur at precisely the right moment for the creation of you, were, and are, astounding.

And the miracle continues: the lining of the womb had to be receptive to this embryo so that it could embed itself within it and begin to produce the hormones necessary to maintain the pregnancy thereafter.

Any one of these sensitive and essential components of fertility could easily be upset by a number of unfavourable factors that would have resulted in you not being here, and who you are, today.

If what people say about you is important to you, as it is to many, your birth-day was a critical day for you. Everyone rejoiced. Everyone. They asked you your weight without adding the word ‘diet’. They looked at you and made ‘gaga’ noises without fear of their own embarrassment. And they loved you without condition. Without condition. And you so loved in return.

Love conceived you, love made you in the warmth of your mummy, and you were loved on the day that you were born.

‘It comes like the waves in the ocean,’ my mother told me. ‘Powerful, strong and rhythmic. Unceasing. Wave after wave.’ She was right. In labour with my son, my first child, he and I are carried over crest and trough, and we let go, freeing ourselves to be swept into birth. I feel and see my body writhing, snakelike...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• PREPARE …
• Journey One - Coaching from a Different Perspective - Yours
• Journey Two - Self-Coaching - Applying The Formula to You
• Journey Three - - Your Coaching Relationships
• Journey Four - - Be a Truly Authentic Organization
• Journey Five - - Coaching the World
• Journey Six - - Fulfilling the Promise of Your First Few Seconds ...
• INDEX