I’ve always been a diplomat.
I think it stems from childhood; as an eldest child in a sometimes fractious household, I often found myself cast in the role of mediator between arguing parents. It was my self-appointed job to calm things down, to find common ground, and to move things forward.
I took this mindset into my working life. Resolving IT issues was far more about managing human relationships than it was about technology. The same was true in management, then management of managers, then customer people relationship management. Find the pain point (that’s usually the easy bit!), take the heat out, and find a path to a better place.
It seems a common pattern; formative childhood experiences shape personality, which in turn informs career path. The lessons we learn when we are young stay with us, sometimes hiding in plain sight, throughout our careers.
It took a period of extended overwhelm, followed by burnout, followed by working with a therapist for me to understand my own behaviour pattern, and its link back to those difficult days in childhood.
But here’s the thing; a pattern can be a trap, or it can be training. If understood and harnessed, something born of a negative can become a positive. In my case, through decades of practice, I had become very, very good at building teams. At building consensus. At building confidence in others. And the more I did it, the greater the reward became when those teams and individuals met with success.
Coaching is my logical conclusion of that journey. It is the purest expression of working with another person to help them calm life’s frenetic pace down long enough to take stock. To find the common ground where open and honest exploration can take place. And to unblock, unlock, and move things forward towards a better place.
I’ve always been a diplomat, and I’m happy to say I always will be.
