Episode 19 - Meet the faculty: Lucy Tulloch’s coaching journey

In this episode, Neil Mackinnon, senior faculty at the AoEC, is joined by Lucy Tulloch, head of faculty and coach education – global, AoEC, for an open and reflective conversation about coaching practice, coach education and what truly makes coaching transformational.

Lucy shares her journey from a 20‑year corporate career into coaching, the realities of building a coaching business, and how her approach has evolved over time. Together, they explore what good coach training really requires, why standards and ethics matter, and how coaching is adapting to an increasingly complex world. 

They discuss: 

• Lucy’s path into coaching and the courage of a second‑career transition
 • How coaching practice deepens beyond models, structure and “good questions”
 • The role of faculty in creating safe, experiential learning environments
 • Why challenge, boundaries and ethics are central to effective coaching
 • What differentiates high‑quality coach training in a competitive market
 • The future of coaching, including AI, team coaching and collaboration 

This episode will resonate with aspiring coaches, practising professionals and anyone interested in the human craft behind excellent coaching and coach education.

 You can link with the speakers here:

• Neil Mackinnon, senior faculty, the AoEC – host
• Lucy Tulloch, head of faculty & coach education - global, the AoEC – guest speaker

Transcript

Neil 0:10

Hello, and welcome to Coaching Conversations with the AoEC podcast. My name is Neil Mackinnon and I am senior faculty at the AoEC. And I am delighted to be in conversation with Lucy Tulloch, Head of Faculty and Coach Education Global here at the AoEC. So welcome Lucy.

Lucy 0:39

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Neil 0:42

This is the first of our conversations on the podcast where we are introducing members of the faculty across the AoEC. And it felt like you were the right person to start off with in your position as head of faculty and also as my boss. So that that also made sense sense to me. So I've got a few questions, and we're going see where the conversation goes. But what I'd love to start with is what is your background pre-coaching? What did you do professionally before you became a coach?

Lucy 1:26

Yeah. So gosh, travel. Travel was mind through my sector. I think I put that down to the fact that I am the child of a military personnel. My father was a pilot. We lived overseas a lot, we travelled a lot, and I suppose in many ways I caught the travel bug. But it wasn't about the travel, it was about the people. And I didn't know it at the time, but it is the people and the cultures and h an beings, I think, that has always been the fascination for me all the pockets of work I've done. So my early, early days of travel after I'd sort of backpacked and done all of that good stuff, was was repping actually, which was very people focused. It was about supporting those people who were away travelling. For me, if I'm being brutally honest, it was an opportunity just to live overseas. I mean, I the work was brutal, but it was it was immersing myself in a culture. And you know, we didn't we didn't live in a hotel or anything like that, we lived in a shared house. We shopped in the local we were fully integrated into the culture, and that was my love, that was my passion. And so I studied business at university and tourism, and then threw myself into working within the travel sector doing a myriad of different roles over the years. I suppose in the last sort of 10 years, I worked in an organisation that was going through a big global expansion, and I looked after remote teams, I have various sizes of teams, so people always at the centre of what I did and and the work I did. And it was the chance to go on a fairly classic sort of management development programme, which had some coaching in it, that was my first real introduction to coaching. And it struck me that if I'd had a coach earlier in my career, what would have been different? And I couldn't, I just couldn't get out of my head. All the opportunities, the missed opportunities, where things had been really tough. You know, perhaps not the best career choices, things that used to make me really anxious and worried about my work, , performance , just performing more effectively and more efficiently, having greater influence, all of these things. It just struck me. If I'd had a coach, what would have been different? What more could I have achieved? And if I'd had the coaching skills, how would that have benefited me as a manager, a manager of people? And I just couldn't get it out of my head. And if I was being coached, I was a bit like, ooh, I think I'd like to have a go at this. And so that was almost the start of the end of my my first career in travel, 20 years. And then at that point, I started to make a bit of a shift and move away.

Neil 4:34

Okay. And and was the first experience one-to-one coaching or group coaching?

Lucy 4:39

Yeah, it was one-to-one. I think if I remember rightly, we used to get one coaching session about an hour long each each month. And I was actually talking to that coach, and I can't remember what the context was now, but remember saying to me, you know, you could do this, you could be a coach, you've got you've got the skills and capability. It just planted a seed and I just couldn't let it go.

Neil 5:04

And so I hear that appetite to consider being a practitioner and to begin exploring that. What type of training did you do early on?

Speaker 1 5:16

So I live just outside of Oxford, so I went to Oxford Uni to do a night course, and it was six Monday evenings. It was the winter, I always remember it was cold and dark, and I'd do a whole day at work and drag myself out to go to the university to do these few hours. It was about three hours, and I went with a colleague who was also quite interested. And I remember thinking, this is interesting, and I want to know more. And I was a bit frustrated that it perhaps didn't I didn't take a deeper dive, I think, in those. But it certainly gave me that taster. I suppose in some ways it's the equivalent of our coaching skills certificate. So we did some practice, we learned a bit of theory, there were some models, but I already had the appetite, I already knew that was something I wanted to do. So by chance, I happened to meet a great friend of mine. it was my birthday, he came up for my birthday and we got chatting, and he said, You know what, I'm an executive coach, and I was like, No, I don't know how I'd missed it, but I had, and he told me where what he'd done and his training, and I was a bit like okay. So I started to make some inquiries, and I think, like any sort of big decision where it was, it felt like a significant time and monetary investment. I wanted to do my homework, and I looked around, did some reading, tried to understand the difference between different types of training that were available, and I landed on a level two qualification, so a master's level, and I took the opportunity to go and do that, it was an investment, particularly in terms of time. My kids were very young at the time, I was still working four days a week. , and it was it was a lot of work, but I knew from the moment I started it, it was the one thing I wanted to do.

Neil 7:08

And what did the journey from working four days a week into becoming a professional coach and starting a business look like? And when did that happen in relation to your initial training?

Lucy 7:21

So I did my qualification, went back to work, did a little bit of coaching in-house, and I think I started to have this shift. It was quite unsettling, I think, from memory, this idea that I might be starting to think about leaving my 20-year career behind and to go and do something else. I remember being unsure about what that landscape might look like. and because the kids were young and they were up early in the morning, I remember sitting in the kitchen whilst they were playing and starting to write a bit of a business case for what this business could look like. And I really spent some time thinking about what was the difference that I could make as a coach, who were the people I wanted to work with. And I was definitely in a squeeze at that time, the demands from the board and senior leadership team and my team, I felt really squeezed in the middle, and I kept thinking, these are the people I want to help, but these are the people who the demands are so high on them. Teams are are asking their manager to fix everything and to solve everything, and the senior team are demanding more and more, and I could see this pocket of people who were really under pressure, and that's where my focus went. So I started writing this business plan and thinking about who my clients would be, where would I find them? The million-dollar question, how much to charge, - all of this good stuff. And I started off thinking, could I do a hybrid? Could I do work in my old life plus a bit in my new life? And as I started doing more and more thinking, I made the decision not to and to leave my career behind. And I mean I remember for years people saying, gosh, you're brave. I don't know if I was brave. I mean, it took courage, it took an awful lot of self-belief and I had to back myself really more than anything, that I could just I could make a go of it. And I threw myself into it and started what is now Lucy Tulloch coaching, which I still do alongside my work at the AoEC, and it's still a huge important part of who I am alongside the work I do here at the AoEC. So that's where it sort of started, and I started to think about the type of coaching I would do and who I would coach. And I really leant on my own network to find my my first initial clients and get that first break. And initially I was doing quite a lot of team coaching, and then over the years I've done, I guess, more probably one-to-one than team coaching, but I sense that my my future may be a bit more of a shift into the team coaching space.

Neil 10:11

And I hear the importance of relying on your network. I wonder, as regards business development over those years, what other methods you found effective in creating the organisation that that you now have that sits alongside your faculty role?

Lucy 10:28

My goodness, I know that I can be the world's worst procrastinator. I'd find anything to do other than have to do business development because it was the bit I hated. I just thought, oh God, in my corporate life, someone always done it for me. And I got to do the bits that I really loved. And suddenly there's no IT team and there's no marketing team. And I think a piece of advice my aunt gave me, my aunt's got a fabulous business and is a fabulous businesswoman, and said to me, do what you're good at and let others do what they're good at. So I immediately got an accountant. I remember people saying, Oh gosh, you know, you could do your own tax return. I was like, no, let's give somebody else that job to do. And I spent a lot of time designing logos and choosing brand colours, anything to not do the business development side, and of course, push against the shove, and eventually you get no choice, you have to start doing that. And so for me it was about relationship building, it was reconnecting with people, talking about the work that I do now, I was doing then. It was about saying, this is the shift - you knew me in this life, and now I'm in this life. This is the work I can do. And dare I say, a little bit of fake it before you make it, really having to just put put myself out there. And I remember working with a sales coach for quite a few months, really learning how to sell myself. Actually, I found selling in on behalf of another company easier, but suddenly I was having to really sell myself. And I am struck by what we do at the AoEC on the practitioner diploma, and we talk about who am I and how do I coach. What an amazing tool that is, because whilst you're learning, you are starting to think about how you might talk about who you are and the work you can do. And I didn't have that when I started out, so I had to really learn on the job how I was going to influence organisations and individuals to work with me. And I was I was fortunate enough to to be given my first really big opportunity by somebody I knew from my past life in in travel, and I'll be forever grateful for that opportunity to do some work for his organisation. And I worked for him for a number of years, and it started off as sort of team coaching and then into one-to-one coaching, and then he passed my name to people within a networking group he belonged to, and then I got the opportunity to work for another organisation for about three months, and off the back of that, I got some one-to-one coaching from somebody who was looking to transition out of that organisation, and it just snowballed over time, and it continues to do so. And I think it's fair to say for many coaches, the recommendation model is a very strong one. So I don't advertise really, I'm just fortunate that people share my name and my details, and then I have the opportunity to connect and see if there's an opportunity for me to work with my clients as I do now.

Neil 13:39

And it definitely resonates with my experience as regards referrals and it being a relationship economy. And so you're there, you're practicing, you've built up a referral pool. When did the AoEC as an organisation begin to come into your field of vision and what happened that drew you towards it?

Lucy 14:03

A few things happened. Some legacy pieces were there. So I was becoming more and more frustrated that there were people in the world calling themselves coaches, and they'd done not a single hour of training and development. And I think you and I would recognise them as mentors, consultants. Coaching became a buzzword, - people would call themselves a coach without really truly understanding what it meant. And I'd had some great schooling, and I thought we are trusted to hold a safe space for our clients, and you never know what's going to come up in a coaching session. And the thought that there are people out there who do not know how to do that safely, but might think that they do, used to really get under my skin. And I used to almost apologise for wanting to get on my soapbox and put voice to that, but it really used to really worry me. And so COVID happened, and the sector that I predominantly worked in was really badly hit, and that was a double-edged sword because I lost some of my biggest contracts because I put all my eggs in one basket, and that was a good lesson to learn for my business. But what it did is, it created an opportunity as well for me to work more in the career transition space, which I fell in love with. This idea that I could help people to see their true skill and value and influence and impact beyond what they thought they knew and understood about themselves. I have only ever worked in travel and now travel aren't recruiting because of COVID. What on earth am I going to do? I mean, that for me was like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to open this Pandora box and discover with you who you really are and what you could go on to do that at the moment you can't see it, you know, it's sort of over here somewhere, and you can't quite see it. And so I fell in love with a type of coaching or a space for coaching that I hadn't anticipated. And so I was really excited about, and I suppose I had a lot of lived experience about moving careers and changing careers and what that required. So are these two things in play at the same time? And I was approached by university to potentially start up some coaching within the university setting, and I thought that's quite interesting. But the timeline was too far ahead. I think they were talking three or four years time, and I was like, Yes, you know, really interested, but it's but it's just too far away. When you get a bit closer and you know a bit more about what you want to do, let us talk again. Then out of the blue, the phone rang, and it was an old colleague of mine who worked at the AoEC who said there's this opportunity in faculty, and the first person I thought of was you. And I was like weirdly that these two things had happened in really close proximity, and I so I said, Yeah, let's have a conversation, and that's how it started.

Neil 17:11

And again, we come back to this relational piece around creating opportunity and an introduction. You referenced the two questions that we tend to ask throughout our flagship programme, the practitioner diploma, about who are you and how do you coach? And I'm trusting that over the the course of the remainder of our conversation we'll continue to learn more about who you are. But I wonder if we took a perhaps a slight tangent and looked specifically at how you coach, what are the important influences as regards your practice when you're with a client?

Lucy 17:53

It's a lovely question. I think when I first started out as a I'm a very structured person. I a process, and I think I sort of thought that coaching was a bit like that. It was a process that I could just follow. I remember, and I often share this with our participants on the practitioner diploma, and they say, Have you got a list of questions that I could almost learn verbatim? And I'm a bit like, oh, that was me. That was me. If I could just learn these great questions, this will make me a great coach. And I do have some questions that I always love to ask. There's no two ways about it. But I think the coach that I evolved and I'm still evolving into is one that is really letting go of any structure. And again, it's something I say all the time to our participants is I feel liberated when I coach because it allows me to not know the answer to anything, it allows me to just be wholly present with the person in front of me and be curious and interested about who they are and what they're about. And it's such freedom to not necessarily have an agenda, and yes, our clients or whoever it is that we're we're coaching is has something they want to achieve, but knowing and trusting in a process that will evolve and meander and flow to an end result really is about who I am as a coach now. The confidence to be able to just be fully present with my client and sit and see where it goes. And I think I am deepening my coaching over the years. I've picked up a few other tools along the way. I really enjoy doing more sort of trauma informed coaching. I like a deeper dive with my clients, and that might not be everybody's cup of tea, and there's some very clear boundaries where that sits in the coaching space. And for me, it's about really dialing up what it means to be human and to be connected with another human being, and recognising that we all have stuff that that has happened that always is going on for us that lives within us. And we're definitely not going into the therapy space, we're definitely not sort of spending that sort of time and depth in the past, but it is being aware so that we can make more sense of it in terms of what the future looks like and what we want to do with that. So I've sort of dipped my toes into that sort of area, and the last few years I've been doing acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy. So it's a great complement to my core coaching skills, which sit at the foundation of who I am and how I coach. So great presence, really listening, listening to what's not being said as much as what is being said, using questioning, but using myself as an instrument as well. So recognising how I feel when I'm in conversation, learning from our founder and CEO, John Leary- Joyce, to be mortgaged out, you know, use what's happening in in the moment to to help raise awareness for our clients. So connection, the acceptance and commitment therapy is very values-based, which I think is a really useful tool in in coaching as well. You know, what do we know about that sort of in a compass, which is our values, and how can we use those with our with our clients, whatever their challenge, whatever they're bringing to coaching, can often be a really useful place to work from. So I think over the years, I've collected a few things the way, I think that that are still shaping me as a coach. it's very relational. I have to say I like the messy stuff. So when I'm working with organisations and I'm talking to HR directors and talent managers, I'm always a bit like, yeah, I quite like the messy ones, you know, the ones that are the people that are really having a tough time, and you as an organisation are having a tough time knowing how best to support them. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I'll definitely work with them. So that I find really appealing the type of coach that I am today. I always say I could be a more creative coach. We teach it on the practitioner diploma. I am really working on this because I don't think it's my natural go-to, and yet when we do it and we teach it and we see our participants do it, or when I'm being coached and someone uses a more creative technique, I'm like, oh my god, that's so good, it's so effective. And I don't do it as much as I should do. so I'm I'm working on that.

Neil 23:15

And I'm really with the substantial range you're already covering as relates to the the tools that you've picked up along the way. And I also hear the core skills woven through there and everything synthesised through you as the practitioner. I wonder if you were to be a more creative coach, what would that mean?

Lucy 23:41

I think that I'm working really hard on using the other side of my brain, like moving away from being more task-oriented. I think that's you know, that is just who I am at the core. And to be, I don't know how to describe it. I guess I think I'm a naturally quite courageous person. I think I I step into things even if they feel uncomfortable, like I will really apply myself. I think sometimes when you've been coaching for a long time, I think the tendency might be to get a bit into a habit of coaching in a certain way. And I think it's such a shame because there are so many different things we could do. So I think my more creative side will be about just mixing up and seeing what happens, like having a go. There's no right or wrong, is there? I mean, we try an intervention, and if it enables our client, then brilliant. And if it doesn't, we move on to the next thing to see how that might help. And so I think it's about getting out of a habit and being more creative. And I have toyed with things like Play-Doh and Lego, and we teach objects, and I just think objects is such a simple intervention. We could do it in the desk. I'm in the clutter I've got on my desk today. You know, I can pick anything here, and it could be really insightful for our clients. So I think it's about just pushing myself a little bit to get out of a habit of coaching in a certain way, and really continuing to develop myself.

Neil 25:14

I'm going reel myself back in from delving deeper into creativity and following my natural bias and bring it back to you and the focus of our conversation today. I get a real sense of the energy of your appreciation for the range of what's possible through coaching and the opportunity to work with clients. And also, I have from the years we've worked together, a very clear sense of your energy around the coach education space. And I wonder what does being a faculty member at the AoEC mean to you?

Lucy 25:56

Gosh, it's hugely important. It makes me feel quite emotional just thinking about it. I feel like it's such a privilege because I know that coaching changed my life. I have seen it change our participants' lives, I know what it does for our clients. And so every single programme that we start, every single time I sit in front of a cohort, whether it's virtually or in person, the anticipation for me is sometimes overwhelming. Doesn't matter how many times I do it, I look around that room and I see all those faces, and I am so excited for the opportunity and the possibility. It's sometimes hard to put into words just how transformational it can be. And so faculty has a really important job, and I have the privilege now of being able to support our faculty team. And the conversations I have with faculty now really remind me of the function of faculty and the importance of it because we are teaching through facilitation and coaching skills. So there are some skills we want to impart on our participants, and yet the unexpected often happens in the room because as we are learning to be coaches, we are learning so much about ourselves, and so we hold a really safe space for our participants, and it means that stuff comes up as people are starting to learn about themselves. It is the unexpected benefit of going through a programme like ours, is the opportunity for learning and self-awareness, and I think it's underestimated sometimes that experience. And faculty do an amazing job to create a safe space for our participants. I love the fact that our programmes are experiential, which can be, I'm sure, slightly daunting on day one of module one to think, oh crikey, they're going to ask me to have a go now. And I really don't know if I know anywhere near enough to have a go. And that's okay. And we're all in the same boat. We all started somewhere. I love that. I love the anticipation of what might happen and the journey that we take them on. And I don't want to sound like an X-Factor journey, it is a journey, and it's a privilege to watch where people start and where they end, and it's not always linear, and and that's okay too. And faculty are there. , they put so much, so much into that support to enable that learning to happen. So, faculty, it's hugely important to me personally, and the experiences I've had, and people I've met along the way, and the team that we have around us, but also for the experience of the participants as well, which is just amazing.

Neil 29:13

Yeah. And we've touched a little on some of the programmes that we offer at the AoEC, specifically mentioned the coaching skills certificate, which is a two-day introduction to coaching, really, and also has the opportunity to have that active experimentation and concrete experience. But the flagship program really is the practitioner diploma, which offers participants seven days of contact time over three modules and an assessment day. And it's probably as faculty the programme that most of us deliver on most of the time, not to say that there aren't various other programmes out there, but I wonder for you thinking about all the many things that go into that experience, into that programme, what sticks out for you as bits that you particularly enjoy or have a particularly strong feeling about?

Lucy 30:21

It's very hard because I love it all. Particularly strong feelings about so I think my head goes to module three when we we talk about the role of challenge in coaching. And maybe this talks to my issues around coaches who have not been properly trained. Maybe that's my little hang up. But coaching isn't about having a cosy cup of tea, it's not always about a comfortable conversation. And we talk a little bit about challenge and the role of challenge and the role challenge can play in a coaching conversation, and my head went there because I think that it's an interesting part of the learning journey. You know, they've done lots of practice around listening and asking questions and thinking about the structure of a conversation, the sort of things you know you might want to include, or the flow of how it will be, how it will work to be effective. There's something about the the role of challenge here. And the reason why I think it stands out to me is because actually, if we're listening really well, we see the opportunity to challenge a perception or an assumption, or challenge the way something is being seen, see if there's another alternate opportunity to see it in a different light to really enable our participants and our clients to see a bigger picture around the scenario that they're in. So I particularly like that. We also spend time talking about boundaries and coaching, it's often a hot topic, isn't it? How do I know that I'm not being a therapist or being a counsellor or being a coach and not a mentor or a consultant? And I think that's a really interesting conversation to be having, and that weaved into ethics. You know, as coaches, ethics are hugely important. So that stands out to me. What else? I think there's something about the community that we create. So when a cohort comes together, they are forging probably an unexpected bond of an experience, and there's a lot of vulnerability that's in the room as they coach each other across across the seven days, really getting to know each other. That's a really unexpected opportunity for our participants. It's a great networking opportunity, great way to meet people across a myriad of different sort of sectors and industries and jobs. But that strength of that community that we create, I think is is really powerful. Everything we teach, people can put into practice straight away so they can go out into their day jobs and do it already. Listen better, be more curious, ask more questions, challenge more, be clear on boundaries, empower other people, not have to fix all of those things. I think just come to life and can be used straight away, and they can really feel the benefit of them straight away. Feedback, like we have a really strong culture for feedback on the programme and that's a great opportunity to learn, isn't it, when we get to hear some great feedback from our peers and from faculty on how to grow and improve. I want to say that in our day jobs, we don't get a lot of it, or you know, it's pretty sporadic. And across these seven days, you get lots. You're always building and growing. So yeah, I hope I answered your question, but it's hard to pinpoint one thing, it's lots of things.

Neil 34:14

Yeah, absolutely. There's plenty there. And you've touched in a few times on the importance for you of proper coach training. And I wonder if we you might speak to the accrediting bodies. So our practitioner diploma, triple accredited by the International Coaching Federation, the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, and the Association for Coaching. And what those accrediting bodies mean to you, what they mean for us at the AoEC at large, and what purpose you feel they serve in the wider coaching ecology?

Lucy 34:54

I do think it's an important part of what we do at the AoEC. The triple accreditation for me is a standard that we we meet and exceed, actually. I think we're delivering at a standard expected by the bodies. We have expectation for our participants to be meeting that standard, and we have our own set of standards as well. You know, we know as an organisation the quality of the coach that we want to see at the end of our programmes. And my my role at the AoEC is about upholding that. So it's it's hugely important. There are three amazing organisations, and they're quite different actually. So for me, it's like buying a house - you sort of open the door, see what's going on, and decide which of the bodies you might want to then go on to accreditate yourself with. And in a world where I believe strongly in standards and quality and ethical practice, all three of them speak to that on a very high level. So that's woven through everything that we do as an organisation systemically, and our belief in being doing the right thing, the behaviours that they ask of us as coaches, I think again, the things that we have weaved through our organisation as a whole, and that then flows all the way through into the work that we do and the way in which we teach and our expectations of our participants. So I'm really proud of our standards. I know we ask a lot, but there's a reason for that. So when I think about when our participants leave us and go out in the world and be coaches, there's a quality and a standard that they can be proud of. It's a badge of honour that they can say that they have trained with us. And a world where you've got this badge, this opportunity to say, well, this differentiates me from an another coach, I think is really important. Many organisations will ask for some some evidence that you have got a high level of training and that you are accredited with one of the leading bodies globally within Europe or the UK. So it's a great differentiator from perhaps yourself and somebody else who may or might not have that that badge of honour to say that's what they they have, both in terms of training and in terms of accreditation. So I think they're valuable assets.

Neil 37:27

Yeah. And I wonder from your vantage point or viewpoint and your global remit in your role, what else do you notice about the programme operating globally? So we're a partnership organisation that has a number of global partners operating in many territories around the world. I wonder what what you're able to share as regards how the programme lands in other territories and what you notice from working more closely with the global partners.

Lucy 38:01

Yeah, it's fabulous. So the cultural side really appeals to me, as you know, my travel background means that it's just brilliant because I get the opportunity to work, certainly on a monthly and if not weekly basis with lots of our partners around the world. And they chose to partner with us, I think, for the same reasons as I was just saying, the importance of who we are and what we do and what we stand for. Most of our global partners deliver in English, but a few of them do in their native language, and it means that people can access a really culturally diverse programme if that's what they choose to do, and that opportunity is there, different time zones. the different partners offer different programmes. So our professional practitioner Diploma, our level two, is run from the UK currently, but is accessed globally. So it's really multicultural, both from a faculty perspective and from our participant perspective. So it's a real joy to bring those different lenses to the work that we do and think about what else do we need to know and understand and appreciate as coaches when we think about language, culture, religion, anything that might show up in our work and with the work that we do with our with our clients. The programmes are exactly the same, so it doesn't matter where you choose to learn in the world. and yeah, for me it's about diversity, it's about the opportunity to learn with different people who might see the world differently or have different lived experiences from our own.

Neil 39:42

We've covered a good amount in relation to the programmes, in relation to the organisation at large. For perhaps listeners that are shopping around, as you did way back when, when looking at coach training, what else do you feel it would be useful, interesting, or worthwhile sharing in this conversation?

Lucy 40:04

I think thinking about how you want to use your coaching is probably a good place to start. You know, where do you envisage that you will be working as a coach? Is it going to be an internal coach? Do you want to start your own coaching business? All of those things I think are really interesting considerations. But at the heart of all of that, I think it's about the quality of the training that you're going to get. Because if you can get those foundations right, everything else can just be built on top of it. Getting the fundamentals embedded at a high quality, and for me, the world's your oyster. And in a world where AI is here and it is present and it's not going away, there are things that AI are going to be able to do and do now, which we do as coaches, asking questions, identifying goals. These are really standard skills, really valuable skills, standard skills, AI can definitely do that. But thinking about how to be a really human relational coach is more than that. And I think all of our programmes are about thinking about what the world is going to need in the future, complex human conversations, leadership. I think it's more than AI, and I know that AI is going to develop and grow. The flicker of a facial expression that you just keep seeing, and it presents a curiosity. Like what else might be going on? What is the curiosity behind what else might not be being said? AI can't do that, but a great, well-trained coach can do that. And what could that mean for that individual? What could it mean for an organisation to have that level of awareness for by that individual and as an organisation? What you know, what could it achieve? And for me, if I was shopping around today, I'd be looking at quality, I'd look be looking at something that's very ethically led, I'd be looking at highly experiential because I think that it is in the experimenting that we are developing those very human skills of working one-to-one with the client. I think team coaching is very much a consideration for someone thinking about where they might want to go with their coaching. If AI is going to support people on a one-to-one, how is AI going to support a team that's much more complex in terms of the dynamics and the systemic issues and challenges? So that would definitely be a lens for me if I was in the market to buy now.

Neil 43:22

Yeah. There is no question that the oncoming increase in AI usage is materially affecting many landscapes, and the coaching landscape is not immune. Thinking for a moment beyond AI, what else do you think is useful to cover as regards the coaching landscape at the moment?

Lucy 43:48

It's a competitive market. There's a lot of coaches out there. but there's also a lot of work. The sector is growing and it will continue to grow. It probably is a slightly flatter line than it than it has been. I think it's indicative of the fact that coaching has been around for a fair number of years now, but it is still growing, and then there is a lot of work out there, there's a lot of need out there. So there's something for me about differentiating yourself from others. What could you add to your toolkits, whether that's an accreditation or if it's a tool? I think coaches are very good at learning. So there's this temptation to bolt every tool possible and that might not necessarily be necessary , but there's something about how do you differentiate yourself from from somebody else. I remember in the early days of my coaching practice, people say you've got a niche, you've got a niche, because how can you market yourself if you haven't got a niche and thinking, oh, I don't want a niche, I want to coach everybody. And you can coach everybody, but there's something about how do you want to be known? And so maybe it comes back to the question of who am I and how do I coach? You know, how do you go out and find the people that you want to coach? And that will change and that will evolve as you develop your skills and start to work out what you what you love to do and perhaps what you don't like to do, the people, the organisations, the sectors, the type of work you don't want to do. So that's all a great opportunity. So find what you're interested in. that doesn't mean you have to go and buy every single thing that's on the shelf. It's about that incremental move towards. I think the other thing is work with other coaches. It's an amazing community and an opportunity for you to learn from other coaches, but also if they are working in a space that's not their area of expertise or their area of interest, there's always an opportunity to bring other coaches in on work, and that goes both ways. So that's always a great opportunity for collaboration and learning and and doing work together. I'd be thinking about how AI fits into your coaching work, - what that might look like. I know that coaches are all playing with it and experimenting with it to see how it fits within their organisation. That might be worth an exploration.

Neil 46:27

Thank you. And as we begin moving towards the end of our conversation, I wonder what in this moment for you as a practitioner and looking into the future is getting you most excited about your practice, about the opportunities available.

Speaker 1 46:52

What gets me excited is collaboration. It's the opportunity to work with other coaches and to support them, you know, especially on sort of bigger pieces of work, because coaching can feel lonely sometimes if you work on your own and you have your own business. So the opportunity to work with others is great. You know, it really helps us to be more creative and to bounce off each other. So the opportunity right now could be, and it's certainly making me quite interested, is the opportunity to pitch for for work and with other coaches so that actually you can pool your resources, pool your skills, and , perhaps approach organisations for some of those bigger pieces of work, especially if you're just a coach on their own. That's very interesting. I am definitely on a mission to get back into team coaching. It's been a little while since I sort of parked it a little bit and have really been focusing on my one-to-one supervision and mentoring. So that's getting me excited. I think that the market is asking more for team coaching. You know, there's lots of reasons why organisations want team coaching over individuals. Some of it is financial, some of it is logistical and practical, and much of it is because that's where the need is to help teams work more effectively together. You know, we are still working in a very hybrid workforce, and as people come together and work more in offices again, reconnecting, getting teams to be more effective together, I think is definitely on the increase.

Neil 48:41

Yeah, wonderful. Thank you for your time and also for sharing so freely and and so widely. I wonder any final thoughts as we bring our conversation to a close. Thank you for letting me share my story and my insights. You know, it is for me, coaching has been life-changing and it has certainly changed the direction of my life. It is my second career. And sometimes I think, oh gosh, you know, I wish found coaching earlier. And actually, what I love about being able to be a coach as a second career is all the things I can bring to it, and that's not to say that the coaches that we see who are, at the start of their career have anything to bring. They absolutely do, they haven't learned all the bad habits first and foremost. But there's no regrets because there's so much to add. I did a podcast for the AoEC a few months ago about portfolio careers, and there's such a great opportunity to take the wealth of knowledge that we have. And whilst we don't go into coaching knowing the answers it's lovely to have that life experience behind me as I do my work. So I don't think it matters where you are in your career if you decide to do take the leap into doing it. The possibilities are endless, both in your personal life and in your in your corporate life as well. These are skills for life. so yes, I think regardless of what you know or think you might use the skills for, I think it's being open to the opportunity and the possibility of of coaching skills. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us on coaching conversations with the AoEC.

Lucy 50:50

My absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.