John Coleman

Education

• Degree in History from the University of East Anglia
• Studied at London Business School
• MA in Coaching and Mentoring from Oxford Brookes University
• Fellow of CIPD
• Counsellor training at Waverley Abbey
• Trained as a Spiritual Director with SpiDir

Employment history

• Management Trainee for Plessey Communications (1984-6)
• Worked in training and consultancy since 1986
• Co-founded Cygnet Business Development (1989) and became CEO
• Co-founded Plover in 2003
• Worked as a Programme Coach on the University of Oxford’s MBA (2004 – 2011)

About Me

In my early twenties, I had an older brother who suffered horribly from some serious mental health issues. He spent a fair amount of time in and out of hospital. I watched, I tried to help, have conversations that might heal. It was a terrible time in the life of my family. It’s not that I wasn’t able to help, I didn’t really even know where to start. Looking back, I think that some of the things that I said and did just got in the way. But as I worked through my own sense of inadequacy, one thought was forged in my soul – I wanted to find out how to help ordinary people live more fully and work through the difficulty and pain that life so often throws at us. I think that’s where my vocation started.

So I found a role in a people development consultancy and started my apprenticeship. This period of my career taught me a lot of skills and fundamental attitudes about helping and growing people. I was blessed with several inspirational mentors who knew how to develop people. As I moved into team leadership, I learned the skills of growing a business too, learning how to manage people, deliver an operation, make profits and deal with clients. By the time I was 30, I found myself MD of a small people development consultancy. It was a role that turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I think my model was that if I handled people decently, made sensible decisions and worked hard, all would be just fine. However, I found the wide range of responsibilities, the constant unexpected challenges, the daily pressure to deliver financially, along with the complex people management side of things, extremely challenging.

However, I gradually learned the craft of leading a company and managing people, though looking back I wasn’t a gifted leader. But I did master many of the core skills and the harder aspects of the role. And the more I developed my skill set and grew as a person, the more our business grew. This is a link I have seen time after time in my work: if the leader develops their skills and deals with whatever personal issues in themselves that need dealing with, the team or organisation that they lead is far more likely to grow. As we say earlier on this site, when we invest in the organic side (people and culture) of our lives and work, long term high performance follows. But when we focus on high performance and forget about issues of flourishing and culture, performance almost always suffers.

My role is about getting alongside clients, and walking with them through their challenges and transitions

By the time I was thirty nine I was worn out, beginning to feel unhappy in a way that was affecting home as well as work. I took some time out, got a coach and made the painful decision that I wasn’t cut out to be an MD. I decided to focus simply on doing the work and being a coach and an educator. Looking back the previous decade taught me an enormous amount that I bring to my coaching. We can be very successful on the outside (the company was succeeding when I left) and struggling greatly inside. Success – or as we talk about in our work flourishing – requires a lot more than hard work, external skill and decency. Flourishing requires really knowing ourselves: our strengths, weaknesses, drives and potential blind spots. Flourishing requires a strong inner life and a set of inner skills, we need to know how to manage our emotions. Flourishing needs a vibrant spiritual life that keeps us connected to beauty, goodness and hope. Flourishing requires the help of others. (I looked for a lot of help during this time, and – looking back – my openness to help saved me).  And flourishing requires working through very difficult issues in ourselves and with other people – there’s no getting around working through painful issues and decisions.

So I trained more fully to be a coach and haven’t looked back. For almost two decades, I have had a wonderful career planting, building and growing; investing my time helping people flourish even more. I  worked on the University of Oxford’s MBA and Executive MBA programmes with leaders from across the world. I also worked on a number of assignments as a coach that involved me travelling to Asia and the US. I worked with Oxford spin-out companies, NHS research, the world of green energy, academic publishing and exciting start-ups. It has been a privilege to be given the opportunity to serve immensely capable people who were doing significant work. Most of my role has involved long-term coaching assignments, and I have found that by being involved with clients over a substantial period of time, I have been far more able to help them flourish for the long-haul.

As I look back on my last couple of decades as a coach, my role has been about clients giving me the opportunity to get alongside them and walk with them through their challenges and transitions. I like the coaching concept of being allowed to be someone’s soul friend for a while.  My coaching has involved a lot of listening and understanding stories, perspectives, ideas, hope and fears. Asking good questions, listening and reflecting back have probably been my most used coaching tools. Setting up and having conversations that matter for clients has been at the core of my coaching. But I also see my role as someone who brings emotional support, encouragement and believable optimism to clients. Personal and professional development is an emotionally demanding process and we all need support through that process. But I do also see my role as providing insight, feedback, inspiration and even challenge at times, however this has to be at the right time and in the right way. Of course, it’s better when we come to our own conclusions and work out our own solutions; ultimately we all run our own lives and make our own choices about what we do and who we are. There are times, though, when I also think we all need some wisdom from outside of ourselves. Through my work with people, one of my main aspirations as a coach is that I can help my clients develop a stronger sense of identity. I love the thought that in some small way, I can play a part in helping clients become more of their true selves, their best selves.

I hope this gives you a feel for some of the experiences I draw on as a coach, and the perspectives I have developed. Of course a lot of my thinking has been shaped by research, reading and training, but my own life experiences have burned deep convictions into my coaching practice: organisational growth comes out of dealing with the people issues first; flourishing requires facing reality; believable optimism works, credulous optimism doesn’t; it is vital that we listen to our bodies and our souls; soul-mates and guides are life-savers; success at work doesn’t always lead to a flourishing life; the first function of leadership is dealing with our own issues; when we become more of our true selves, life is so much better. Most of all, my own life and work as a coach has convinced me even further that greater flourishing is possible for all. My Christian perspective is that divine beauty and goodness gives everyone an opportunity to get in on the flourishing life. I agree with  Dostoevsky when he said, “beauty will save the world.” My secular clients (most of my clients don’t share my faith) wouldn’t frame it that way, but whatever perspective you have on life, I hope that this web site and my own story gives you some more believable optimism that you could could flourish even more.

If any of this this resonates with you and you think I could help you as a coach, do reach out via the Contact Us page on this website – I am always available to have an initial chat free of charge. I take more rest these days and walk in the Cotswolds and the beautiful Devon and Cornwall countryside. I try and spend time with my wonderful family and am learning to play the classical guitar better, so I may take a few days to respond, but hopefully look forward to engaging if you do want to talk. And do feel free to get our monthly article on flourishing (there’s no charge) – you can sign up on the Personal Development Coaching Page.