So, this is the half-century, for those cricket fans among us. I remember reading up on how blogging works at the outset and there was a suggestion that 50ish posts was the point at which a blog can start to gain traction. After a hiccup at the start, it feels like I’ve hit my stride and rhythm with it all. With that in mind, I thought I’d take this opportunity to look back at the best and worst posts so far (as voted for by the feet of the blog-reading public) and think about the process of blogging and some of the quirky things that have come up as a result.
The original germ of the idea for blogging about coaching came back in 2022(ish). I’d been having regular conversations with people in the public sector about coaching, coaching networks and the nuts and bolts of both individual and group practice. While it’s always nice to be in demand, I was also finding that I was repeating the same points to different audiences and that much of it was culled from my brain and experience, rather than in a neat book that I could point to.
The risk of getting disillusioned by having to repeatedly talk about something which I love, prompted me to think about the ways in which I could get some of the advice and learning out of my head and onto the page, in a place that I could point to that would allow people to pre-read or follow up after our chat. I’d done a couple of NaNoWriMos and so contemplated writing a book covering the basics, or writing factsheets or newsletters. But my natural happyspace is chipping away at a thing, little and often. So I decided to write it up as a series of blogs.
The first thing to tackle was the thorny issue of how, as coaches, we describe what we do. I penned a page about coaching and how to elevator pitch the concept in a way that the lay person could understand. Over the 15 years or so that I’ve been coaching it has been heartening to see the growing awareness that people have of what coaching means and how it works. To begin with it was seen (bizarrely, and polarisingly) either as something remedial for people who were about to be sacked, or as a perk for executives. Nevertheless, it is something that we still, as a profession, struggle to convey to people, often getting muddled up with mentoring or sports coaching (training). I’ve long felt we need a new word for it, but we’re probably stuck with ‘coaching’ for now.
I then proceeded to do nothing else for a couple of years until mid 2024. At that stage James and I had started to discuss going into business on the coaching work, together. We chatted, as we did circuits around Roath Park Lake, about what things each of us could do to raise the profile of our work professionally. James decided to take the (very tricky) approach of producing free-to-use coaching templates and tools ( https://www.aspirationexperts.com/resources ) through which he’s done a great job of producing resources that anyone in the profession can key into.
I decided to use it as the nudge to get on with writing the next episode of the blog (this time, an intro on how I’d taken a circuitous route into getting qualified and practicing as a coach). I jotted down a short list of other topics I would cover and got to work typing away. I committed to doing one a fortnight, and figured that if I got into the swing of it before the business launched I’d then have a bit of a back catalogue to show off on day one. The little notepad of ideas for future blogs got longer, I started blogposts and in my meandering way realised that I had much more that I needed or wanted to cover. Once I’d got into a bit of a rhythm, I decided that I would lean into the “coincidental” theme of the blog, and feel free to digress to draw in all the weird and lateral ways in which coaching had criss-crossed with my day to day and other interests. I’m a firm believer that coaching works at its best when it is done holistically, and so by roping in a wide variety of inspirations I hope that I’ve been able to build up a picture of how a person can draw on the full breadth of life to inform and enrich their coaching practice.
It’s been interesting to see what posts have caught on, and which ones have been left to languor, so, without further ado, I’ll take you through the top three and bottom three posts from this initial 50.
The bottom 3:
At rock bottom was “Wasting time on a Friday afternoon, and other philosophy”, which is possibly down to the catchiness of the title. The blog drew on the stoic philosophy of Epictetus and Seneca to help think about how we (and our coachees) can sometimes feel the pressure of the speed of life these days, but how that was ever thus. I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope the small handful of readers who clicked through enjoyed reading it. In hindsight I probably should have flagged it more clearly that it was about work/life balance. A more popular topic with coachees than Greek philosophy, in my experience.
Second from the bottom was my debut post… Though it’s knock-out stuff (I promise), I feel less bad about this not being read, as I was not really promoting the blog for the first few months and, generally speaking, the blog is read by people who do know about coaching and so aren’t keen to wade through something that teaches them to suck eggs. That said, I do think that, as a profession, we could do better at articulating what we do to the uninitiated and so it’d be interesting to hear how other people set out the stall.
Performing mildly better, but at a point where the blog was getting regular readers, and so comparatively disappointing, was my review of the Swn music festival in Cardiff last year. It was quite distant from the coaching theme of the blog, and maybe was a stretch for longtime readers, but I thought I made a good stab at explaining how going to festivals and conferences is a neat way of expanding your palette. We all have approaches or things that we gravitate towards out of habit or taste, but it’s nice to periodically burst those bubbles and stretch out towards more eclectic angles. I also flagged some great bands to check out.
The Top 3:
In true chart fashion I’ll run this 3,2,1… Can you guess the top post???
At number 3, is my recent post about how to frame return on investment for internal coaching. It’s a topic that regularly crops up when I’m talking with other coaching leads and is by no means easy to articulate. The post runs through the approaches that I’ve taken to explain the value of coaching to the business over the years, and also to help contextualise the less quantifiable aspects that are every bit as valuable, but maybe more easily overlooked. A nifty reminder for me that, even though the blog now does steady numbers, people are generally coming along to it for practical stuff.
At number 2, was my post about imposter syndrome. Again, I think I could have chosen a catchier title, but it seems that many of my readers do love Einstein, so maybe not. Imposter syndrome is certainly a regular theme that comes up in coaching sessions and I do always find it interesting how exceptionally talented people can still be plagued by it. There are now studies and approaches that you can take to address it, and so it was nice to have a short exploration into that on the blog.
Aaaaand, at number 1 (by some distance) was “Drew 550 different shoes today, it almost made me faint”. The title comes from a Lou Reed/John Cale lyric about Warhol and the blog looked at how evolution, rather than revolution can be a great way of making a change without having to tear everything down and salt the earth. Changes (through coaching, or wherever) can be most sustainable when we take stock and look to keep what’s working and what we value in life, and tweak the stuff that’s not. I quite like that this is my most-read piece, but suspect it’ll be knocked off its perch at some point in the coming year. It’s nice to read back and still feel it is nicely framed and relevant.
So, there we have it. I’ve got a notebook full of nifty stuff for the next fifty posts and it might be fun to revisit this for the 100th. One thing that has surprised me, doing the blog, is seeing the wide range of places that people come into it from, and it’s been a real pleasure having an eclectic array of conversations and introductions in real life that have spawned from something that I covered.
There’s also the odd quirk from the reporting metrics, which makes me pause for thought. A month or two ago I had someone come to the blog in the early hours of the morning. They read my review of “Why? – the purpose of the universe”. I hope they’re doing okay, and I hope they enjoyed the review.
All my old blogs can be accessed via the Throwback Tuesday page on the blog: