The library / Beyond Coaching
Recollections of a Coach
What actually happens in a coaching room, told by someone who has spent years inside one. Not a method book. A book of moments.
Every coach carries rooms with them. The executive who finally said the thing he had rehearsed silence around for years. The conversation that changed direction on one small question. I wrote this book to keep those rooms from fading, with every name and identifying detail removed, and everything human kept.
It is also, quietly, a book about becoming a coach. Between the recollections sits my own story: the training rooms, the teachers, the weekly hours I still spend in the client's chair myself.
Keep scrolling to move through them.
Ahmad was in his mid twenties, energetic and respectful, and he came to me wanting to improve his personal organization. Partway through, I noticed two things. He spoke about himself negatively several times in under an hour, and he would not meet my eyes. So I asked him, on a scale of one to ten, how much he liked himself, and he thought for a while before he answered.
There is more of this story in the bookTariq reached out after reading one of my articles. He was a senior IT executive, and he told me his company no longer consulted him on the big decisions. When I asked why, he said he was not decisive; he needed time. Then he mentioned a new technology he had turned away from learning, and I began to see the shape of what was really holding him back.
There is more of this story in the bookAhsan was a project manager who had clashed hard with his own manager, and the friction had grown so heavy that he developed a backache in his twenties. In one session I asked him what percentage of the relationship he was responsible for. He said ten percent, and the rest lay with his manager. So I asked whether he would work on that ten percent, and I watched something in him shift.
There is more of this story in the bookAfter a workshop, Abu Faud told me the one thing he wanted to change was to quit smoking. I asked how important it was on a scale of one to ten. He said eleven. Then I asked about his level of commitment to actually quitting, and he smirked and said two, and chuckled at his own answer.
There is more of this story in the bookAli ran a large team at work, owned a business, managed one of his father's, and was a partner in a friend's firm, and he told me it all came easily to him. Within months he was exhausted, and his wife had begun to say he was never really there. Together we laid out where his hours were actually going, and what we found on the page was hard to argue with.
There is more of this story in the bookI met Fatima during a workshop I called Time Thieves. Her work was piling up, and she told me she could not seem to finish anything. When I asked why, she said she found it difficult to say no to her colleagues; she feared looking bad in their eyes. Then I asked whether she only said yes at work, or in the rest of her life too, and she went quiet.
There is more of this story in the bookIn a team exercise, member after member said the same thing about their leader Hussain. He almost never handed work down, so some of them sat with nothing to do while he stayed until eleven at night. When I asked him why, he told me his people were not good enough, so he did it all himself. So I asked him one quiet question about where that path was taking him.
There is more of this story in the bookA man in his late twenties came up to me after a workshop with a strange request. He asked if I could help him change his parents. He described a household grown tense and full of harsh words, and he wanted them to soften toward him and his wife. I asked him what exactly he wanted, and the first small step we took was not the one he expected.
There is more of this story in the bookNaseer complained that his wife did not give him time, did not listen, did not even cook for him, and he asked me to speak with her. When I did, I heard the other half of the story. She felt lonely and isolated, and she had been carrying thoughts far darker than Naseer knew. From there the work turned toward small, quiet changes that could keep the daily conflict from starting at all.
There is more of this story in the bookIrfan and his wife had been married seven years when a breach of trust opened between them. He had shared a private matter with his brother while seeking advice, and word of it had traveled back to his wife through someone else. I asked him how he thought she felt, and he acknowledged the mistake at once. But the way he chose to apologize is where the real difficulty began.
There is more of this story in the bookAbdul Rahman came to me distressed by mood swings that would arrive most weeks and linger for days. In our sessions he kept returning to his elder brother, and to an anger he could not fully explain. I suggested he write a feelings letter, a private letter never meant to be sent. He called it silly at first, so I asked him to treat it as an experiment.
There is more of this story in the bookFarhan came to me because his temper was hurting his sons, and his eldest, only fifteen, was being beaten almost daily. Wanting to change, he built himself a penalty. Each time he lost his temper he would get up and pray. When I asked how many prayers he had offered that week, expecting a high number, his answer surprised us both.
There is more of this story in the book
