This week's Coach in the Spotlight is Sue Brown. Today she shares her coaching journey and how it has transformed her own life as well as those she works with. Sue runs her own coaching business with a focus on supporting people who have lost their ‘sparkle’, and is also using her coaching skills to help those living with cancer or in recovery from treatment.
I have always been a peoples' person and during a long career in the voluntary sector, I have worked with people and supported change, bringing people together to listen to each other and take action. So, when I first came across The Coaching Academy, coaching was something that really interested me and by the end of the first day of the free 'Introduction to Life Coaching' webinar, I was sure that this was something I wanted to do. My journey was interrupted by the pandemic, but once I started training and practicing coaching, I could see that I could change my career path and do something that is effective and can be applied to so many situations.
Coaching has benefited me in so many ways. The training makes you look at your own life, values, beliefs and goals before you start working with anyone else and that is enlightening! Reflecting in this way helped me come to the decision to give up a full-time job in order to make the time to qualify and practice. Then practising with other students as well as people outside of TCA, I could see the change it brought them – and that gave me a great feeling that I knew I needed to continue. Coaching has helped me understand myself better, as well as others and now I have a much improved work life balance and feel healthier and happier as a result.
The pandemic started around the same time as the 'Introduction to Life Coaching' webinar so it was a year later before I registered for my training. I am a great believer in lifelong learning and the resources I was given supported me to learn and things gradually fell into place. The learning sessions are available at different times, which made it easier to slot them in before work or at lunchtime or in the evening. And I really looked forward to the live online training sessions on a Saturday. Having decided to work part-time so I had more time for my studies, I knew that was absolutely the right thing for me to do! I loved meeting and working with other coaches and this allowed me to do that more and really gain from sharing thoughts and practice.
Definitely ‘the ‘lightbulb' moments that I see people experience during coaching is the most rewarding part. Seeing that change happening in front of you is amazing – it creates really great energy. And knowing that I still have it in me to learn new skills is pretty rewarding too.
When I am not working in my own coaching practice, I work for an organisation supporting local voluntary and community groups – and coaching skills really help in getting a good understanding of someone’s point of view and experience, so that I can represent them fully and accurately. I am a much better listener that I was! I started my coaching practice, The Crossroads Coaching, in December 2022 and am focusing on supporting people who have lost their sparkle as I would put it! In other words, have got into a rut with their working or personal lives and need a helping hand to find a new way to do things!
I specialise in working with people after cancer treatment, an area where coaching has immense value; life after cancer can be seen as an opportunity for change and also a time to take back control. On my website I like to share blogs that help those in recovery from treatment.
I am not a great reader so the opportunity to watch videos as part of that learning has been very valuable. Peer-to-Peer sessions were also great and the live online training sessions are a wonderful opportunity to learn a lot in a short period of time and interact and practice with other coaches.
If you are a people person and want to love what you do, definitely consider coaching as a career, you won’t look back!
Thank you Sue for sharing your inspirational coaching journey with us!
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