better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

It’s Okay To Ask

25 May 2020

I love being a business coach. It’s such a privilege to work with people and collaborate on problem solving. I love being a psychotherapeutic counsellor too and supporting people to make progress with difficult issues.

Coaching is not counselling and vice versa.

However, what ties the two together is that in both cases we have to identity a need and ask for some sort of intervention.

There is no shame in feeling down, or feeling stressed and tired. There is no shame in not knowing how to lead our team, or run our business.

We are all dealing with the long term stress effects of lockdown, massive social changes and vicious economic upheaval.

There is no blueprint we can fish out of a drawer to help us. No map we can use to navigate.

Therefore, it follows that what counts is creativity. School teaches us what to write and what to draw, but it rarely, if ever, gives us a blank sheet of paper and says …you decide, you can be creative and do what you like here.

Without creativity we have to rely on old maps, which in the context of running our business, are to a large extent, useless.

We might ask, so what’s the point of coaching or counselling then, if we are all in the same position?

The answer is that it’s often impossible to be truly creative on our own. We fall into pre-existing ways of thinking and end up with pseudo-creativity. We invent the answer that we secretly wanted all along.

Creativity means challenge and support and friendly collaboration. Working with someone else means we become a team of two. We double the amount of brain cells at our disposal and can benefit from the shared interplay between them.

New perspectives are created and shared. Progress is made.

And the key that unlocks this potential is to ask for it.

Asking is often the most powerful thing we can do to help ourselves and support our business.

It amazes me that so many people are trying to tough it out on their own. I don’t mind if you don’t want to call me, there are lots of coaches and counsellors out there. However, do you have someone you and your team can call on?

If not, please ask.

Keep well.