Alignment unlocks impact

Many people come to coaching in search of impact. They have goals to achieve and situations to turn around.

Inevitably, as we explore together, certain behavioural patterns begin to emerge. It could be a habit of avoiding difficult emotions, distrust of teammates or a long-standing fear of rejection.

They realise that this pattern seems to have a life of its own, independent of particular situations.

Failing to address the pattern is like walking into the same meeting with a parrot on your shoulder, squawking and shitting everywhere. Refining your PowerPoint skills or improving your public speaking is not going to help. Nothing will be heard over the parrot.

When my client realises that they don’t want to live at the whims of a parrot, we’ll pivot to understanding the pattern itself. This isn’t therapy—we can explore the origin of the pattern, but we’re more interested in how it shows up now, how it impacts situations today, and exploring new ways of operating.

Resolving patterns creates alignment. This is nearly always what people actually want. Alignment means you have inner clarity, confidence and the ability to consistently focus in one direction. It’s like suddenly fixing an out-of-tune guitar string—something resolves and the song instantly emerges.

Alignment allows you to more effectively engage what matters to you and to do it with less effort. This isn’t some fanciful claim, but the inevitable result of not fighting yourself at each step. Alignment leads to joy, impact and fulfilment.

Recognising this, some coaches focus almost entirely on inner alignment. But the trick is to cycle between them as appropriate. This is the skill of coaching, which I often describe simply as obstacle clearance. That obstacle might be a pending situation which requires some planning and interpersonal acumen. Or it might be a familiar habit of procrastination that is putting your delivery at risk.

p.s. my friend Derek Haswell explains his coaching practice in these terms, and I’m using plenty of his language here.