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Nikki Hinksman - The Value of Coaching

Nikki Hinksman - The Value of Coaching

Katie.Dix / 10 May 2019

The Value of Coaching

We lead frenetic lives, with little time to reflect on how or why we’re doing what we do. We spend our lives inside our own heads and this can lead to self-imposed limitations.

What I love about coaching is that it provides the opportunity to take a step back and reflect, building greater self-awareness. This provides us with the ability to be conscious of the impact of our thinking on our behaviours and turn habitual responses into conscious choices.

Case study

I’ve been working with a client recently who was being incredibly hard on herself. A self-confessed perfectionist, she expended lots of energy beating herself up for every perceived imperfection. Full of fear of things not being ‘just so’, she spent hours writing and rewriting presentations to her boss, sat silently in meetings in case she said the ‘wrong’ thing and hardest of all for her, whilst she wanted to put her name in the ring for a promotion, she could only see all the reasons why she wouldn’t get it. Stuck in such intense self-judgement, she was finding it incredibly hard to do anything.

One of my core principles is to choose curiosity over judgement. To be curious about what benefit the fear might have, curious about how thoughts lead to feelings and behaviour, curious about options for doing things differently.

During our sessions together we leaned into the difficulty of perfectionism and were able to expose the root causes of it, ultimately finding new ways of thinking and behaving that are starting to achieve different results, ones that are more aligned to what she really wants.

Coaching has helped her to become more curious and less self-deprecating. By adopting a more pragmatic approach, taking a moment to reflect at the end of each day, she now jots down what’s gone well and what hasn’t. This physical list has helped her to become more aware of what is taking her in the direction she wants and what isn’t. This helps to create a greater sense of balance; it’s an opportunity to recalibrate her approach each day and ask herself,

“What can I do differently tomorrow to generate more successes?”

When we are in a state of self-judgement, it creates a lot of stress for us. For me one of the benefits of greater curiosity is that it is a much gentler and kinder approach to ourselves which calms our nervous system. And we all know when our stress levels are lower, our performance is better.

What can coaching do for you?        

  • Coaching provides the opportunity to deepen our understanding of our motivations and habits and explore ways to create new ones.
  • Coaching helps us to achieve our goals by breaking them down into manageable chunks and proactively working towards them
  • Our engagement with our roles, our teams and our families can be transformed through coaching - allowing us to contribute more effectively, to feel happier and more fulfilled in ourselves.

Nikki is leading an event kindly hosted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch on June 13th. Register here for your tickets. 

We have a wide range of coaches and coaching packages available, contact Katie to learn more.

 


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