Episode 20 – From jazz musician to professional coach – Neil Mackinnon’s coaching journey

In this episode, the format is reversed as Lucy Tulloch, head of faculty and coach education at the AoEC, interviews senior faculty member Neil Mackinnon in a reflective and candid conversation about his journey into coaching and his philosophy of practice. 

Neil shares his unconventional path from a career in music and the arts into coaching, exploring how creativity, listening and presence have shaped his approach. He reflects on the pivotal coaching experience that transformed his career direction and the process of building a practice grounded in relationships, self-awareness and continuous development.

Together, they explore what it really means to “be” a coach, moving beyond models and techniques to consider coaching as a relational and creative act. The conversation also highlights the role of coach education in developing reflective practitioners, the impact of faculty, and what differentiates meaningful learning experiences.

Looking ahead, they discuss the evolving coaching landscape, including the rise of AI, the importance of ethics and human connection, and the opportunities for coaches to create lasting impact through deeper, more conscious work.

This episode will resonate with aspiring coaches, practising professionals and anyone curious about the deeper human work behind effective coaching and coach education. 

You can connect with our speakers here: 

·       Lucy Tulloch, head of faculty & coach education - global, the AoEC – host

·       Neil Mackinnon, senior faculty, the AoEC – guest speaker

Transcript

Neil 0:06

Hello, my name is Neil Mackinnon, Senior Faculty at the AoEC, and welcome to Coaching Conversations with the AoEC podcast. Normally I'll say I'm delighted to be joined by, and it will typically be one of our other faculty members, but today we are turning the tables, and I'm the person being interviewed. So I am delighted to be joined by Lucy Tulloch, our head of faculty and coach education global here at the AoEC. So Lucy, welcome, and I will hand the reins over to you.

Lucy 0:47

Thank you, Neil. So yes, today it's my opportunity to turn the tables on you as a valued member of our faculty team here in our GB region of the AoEC. So thank you for entrusting me with your hosting duties on our podcast. So I have some questions for you today, very similar to what we do typically on the podcast, but it's really an opportunity for us to just get to know you more. For me, faculty is the beating heart of what we do at the AoEC. You are often the first person that our participants come into contact with when they start on any one of our programmes, and your function in faculty is an incredibly important role and function for the AoEC. And you also have additional responsibilities as our senior faculty and the responsibilities that come with that, and perhaps we'll get an opportunity just to explore that a little bit more as we go through our time together. So as we get going, I'm thinking about who you were before you became senior faculty at the AoEC. Perhaps you could spend some time just talking us through a bit of your background to becoming a coach.

Neil 2:04

So my career started in music. That's what I went to university to study. And I got involved in music education fairly soon after graduating, and also in performing. So I was a saxophone player primarily, and also played flute and clarinet. And my interest was largely in jazz music. I had a real fascination with improvisation, but also playing in backing bands. So I played in all sorts of different backing bands and pit orchestras as a professional musician. I did that probably for the best part of my twenties, and got to a place where I no longer was finding the same level of joy in being a performer. I still very much loved the performing arts, but the desire to be on stage and making music was gradually reducing. And as I've said to many people I've spoken to since then, being a professional musician can be a really hard way to make an easy living. And as much as I'd had an enormous amount of fun and got to do some really interesting things, toured a lot, so got to see a lot of the world, I wanted to pursue being involved in the performing arts in a slightly different way. So I moved into the business side initially through tour management and producing independently for various organisations, and then ultimately landed at a big venue in London, the South Bank Centre. And I was there for 12 years, initially as a producer. I then founded the Touring and Commissions Department and ultimately served as the head of artistic rentals and partnerships. So a career in arts administration followed my first career, if you like, as a professional musician. And it was during my time at South Bank Centre that I discovered coaching. And it was some of the things that I experienced while I was there that signalled the start of my career as initially a consultant and a coach, and nowadays primarily a coach and also facilitator of coach training programmes and as a supervisor.

Lucy 4:40

I love your story, and I've heard it many times. In various things that we've done together, I've I've heard your story many times, and yet I still find it really joyful to hear. Maybe it's because the nature of your background is like it feels exciting and different, and I'm you know, if I was as a coach, I'm naturally curious and fascinated by what people do and how they do. And I'm wondering about your your interest in your music now. A re you still connected with playing in a way that brings you joy now that you're not doing it as part of owning a living?

Neil 5:33

Not so much in playing. I don't really play any instruments and haven't done for quite a long time. I'm very interested in the practice of creativity at large in lots and lots of different ways. Now I do occasionally pick up a guitar or sit down at the piano. I haven't played saxophone for a very long time. I enjoy attending concerts and theatre and contemporary dance and all the many other things within the performing arts, but not so much as a practitioner nowadays. And in some ways, it speaks to a broader fascination with the concept of creativity. That one of the reasons I stopped playing was to free up more time and energy to explore how creativity shows up in a multitude of other ways. And so I suppose I'd say a headline answer could be I believe I am still creative. I believe coaching is a creative act, and yet I don't really play music anymore.

Lucy 6:50

I love the ability to see how creativity still exists in the work that you do. That's how I experience you to be highly creative, whether it's solving a problem or being a more creative coach. So I definitely see that, I recognise that in you. So you're in this newer phase of your previous life, and then you start to look at coaching as as the next step. Tell me a little bit more about your stepping into your coach training.

Neil 7:27

Yeah, so I'd been at South Bank Centre for around three or four years, and I faced a really complex problem. Nowadays it would have the term a wicked problem with lots of moving parts and all sorts of intricacies and complexities, and I couldn't fix it, despite best endeavours, despite over-efforting and crashing around in a multitude of different ways, and my then line manager suggested I work with a coach, which I initially resisted because I didn't have the faintest idea what coaching was, and ultimately, after some coaching from him, lo and behold, it turned out he himself was a trained coach, he got me sat down in front of a coach that I did work with over the course of several weeks, and I had such a powerful and impactful experience working with her and getting the support necessary for me to work through the many ways I was getting in, I was the obstacle and getting in the way of making meaningful progress on the problem I was facing. It was much about the who as the what that sparked an interest in learning about it as a practice. So I began reading books and listening to podcasts and watching videos and attended a couple of fairly bad coaching courses and ultimately was offered a place on a coaching programme that involved various other cultural institutions in London, where they brought together a cohort to go through a four maybe five-month coach education experience. It was focused on coaching as a style of leadership. And I vividly remember at the end of the first day of this five-month experience coming home to my wife and essentially saying, I think my career in arts administration is in jeopardy because I've found something that is more exciting and I feel enormous energy about, and that definitely continued through the remainder of that course, and there was lots of opportunity to practice those skills in the way I led within the organisation, and also an encouragement to begin developing a coaching practice outside of that.

Lucy 10:00

Yes, I was going ask you when you were going through the training, what were your thoughts about how you were going use it? How do you - where did you get to in that thinking?

Neil 10:09

So at that point, I had a desire to begin working as a consultant, and I had a memory of being independent earlier in my career and had thoroughly enjoyed running, or I was self-employed, but finding work as a musician and being involved in in different projects and not being beholden to one organisation, and so those things were in place, and when the coaching came along as a practice that I could invest in, become better at, and hopefully offer sufficient value to the world that there would be a value return ultimately that might pay me, then it it was unclear what that was going to look like, but I had some sense that it would complement the consulting work I was hoping to do.

Lucy 11:06

And your experience of working with a coach led you to go on to do more training. Can you remember what it was about that coaching experience that left a lasting impression on you?

Neil 11:20

I think the big headline is she got out of the way in the process. She was more than sufficiently grounded, centered, present, and available to remain completely decentered from the process and skillfully, carefully, and lovingly hand me back to myself and the many ways I was creating obstacles and problems. That's the big headline was there was something going on in the relational field that I hadn't yet experienced, and that she had participated in training and ongoing personal development work that afforded her the opportunity to facilitate that space. I got this sense of sitting with somebody that because they were okay, I was okay and I could work through stuff.

Lucy 12:24

Yeah, such an important aspect of being a coach, being able to hold space, listen well, ask questions, and not be an expert in the room.

Neil 12:35

Yeah, absolutely.

Lucy 12:37

Yeah, wonderful. And you do some training and you're starting to think about the work that you might go on to do in your own right. Before we step into you starting your own business, I was struck by some of the thoughts you might have had during your coach training. So, as you were going through that process, what were you noticing about yourself and the skills that perhaps you'd acquired over time and who you are as a person? And and what did you recognise as being in your toolkit already to be a good coach?

Neil 13:18

I think that initial training was a reminder that I had done a lot of training in listening through my time as a musician, and particularly when working with bands that because of the nature of the type of music I played, had to connect, coalesce, and perform with relatively short periods of time together, or often with music that was very new to us. There was a demand to be listening in a variety of different ways to what was going on around you. I think also I'd had some experiences with types of self-development and specifically practices such as meditation, and also to some extent some breathing work that I'd done that allowed me to get into states of presence purposefully and intentionally. Those are the two that jump to mind. I think also perhaps because of the way I am wired, I'm quite patient and I've this combination of patience and tenacity within a structure. So this this opens up a whole area of fascination for me around time and structure and chronology and all sorts of other things. So I think to some extent it perhaps comes from my music training again, that as a musician, it is common to develop the capacity to subdivide time in a multitude of different ways consciously and to switch between different tempos. And this isn't about playing fast and slow or about being able to play minims or semi-quavers, but but rather knowing where you are temporally, both in the micro and the macro, and I believe there's something about that through the years of being a musician had already been developing that I've found useful as a coach. And I get as I try and explain that, it might sound a bit woo-woo and a bit out there, probably not the first time I'm going sound that way in this conversation. , but that's the other thing that occurs to me.

Lucy 15:49

I think it's wonderful, and the reason I ask the question is because my experience of going on a coaching journey and training and learning to be a coach is the reflective piece, this ask that we have on our programmes and on any coach training programme, this idea that the more we can get to know ourselves, the more it can influence who we are and how we coach. And so hearing you talk more about those sort of foundation pieces that you've acquired over time without knowing how they might play into your coaching have unknowingly played a part in helping you to define who you are and how you coach. And as you know, these are two very important questions that the AoEC and underpin so much of what we do and the work we do with all of our participants. This idea of we invite people to tap into those two questions and explore them. So it's my opportunity to ask you who are you, Neil, and how do you coach?

Neil 16:58

Yes. What's what's funny is those questions have a meaning on a multitude of levels, but there is two levels that I've returned to them repeatedly. The first one was as a participant on the practitioner diploma. So my initial coach training was with a different organisation, and crucially it wasn't accredited. And so when I chose to more fully step into coaching as a way of working and as a way of generating income, I decided to look at accredited courses and spent a good amount of time researching what was available and ultimately alighted on the practitioner diploma with the AoEC. And I remember part of the process of going through the programme as a participant was me having, again, it's back to this balance of structure and freedom to investigate that question through the lens of a practitioner. So rather than self-investigative for the sake of self-knowledge purely, there was a framework that allowed me to deliver value through relationship. And the thing I noticed was first and foremost, I am someone that benefits from being in coaching style relationships. So I had a real juxtaposition of the way I was taught when I was at university from the classical tradition and the jazz tradition, a particularly didactic, do-as-I say mode as a classical musician, and a very facilitative, coach-like, supportive, power with mode as a jazz musician, and so I learned part of who I am is someone that works well in that context, both as a coache and as a coach. The other thing was back to your your point about the capacity for reflection, and and certainly something that I know we go into in a great deal of detail in the practitioner diploma. I am someone that finds reflective practice enormously useful. I don't always find it easy, but I never regret doing it, both after the well, most of the time during it, most of the time, certainly after the fact, and definitely in hindsight when I've built something on it. so I think I learned those two things on the practitioner diploma. As regards how I coach, there's been an enormous journey since participating in the practitioner diploma to where I am now. So I think the model that I came up with on that course has shifted, changed, developed, fallen away, and I'm now in a very different place through having done many more hundreds of hours of coach practice. And how I explain it now is essentially based on four principles that coaching is relational, and so I am someone interested in being connected relationally, and that the that is typically where the work will happen is in the relational field. So there's a there's a lot of gestalt in there as well. That as coaches and coachees, we benefit from inviting the whole person in, so we are not just brains on legs, but there is a lot more to us, a lot of other data centers that we can tap into to access a great deal more useful material for meaning making and for progress, whatever that might mean in the context. That we need to balance structure and emergence in the awareness of what's happening in the system around us, and although coaching models are useful, they are not the be all and the end all, and spontaneous creation of form occurs through things that emerge that nobody could have expected in the moment, and then the fourth of the four principles is and again here here I disappear off into the ether of woo-woo, essentially presence that all we ever really have is now, and anything outside of that is a a construct, and so when we work to deepen our presence together. With each other in any given moment. A lot of things that can happen that can be really useful. And there's lots of stuff around coaching, and certainly how I believe coaching best works that supports us to deepen that presence and become more fully available in the given moment.

Lucy 22:29

I'm wondering if you've got a top tip for us on how you get present to go in, because I know in a busy life, that ability to ground myself into myself when I might be sort of moving from one character client to the next or from one task to the next, you know, being able to get into that headspace can be challenging sometimes. Is there something that you go to, something that works?

Neil 22:57

I suppose for for me in the moment is a systems check. So what's going on somatically? What do I feel in my body and and what am I actually doing? So a big one for me is breathing. And again, this may speak somewhat to your question about what had I brought from my earlier life to bear on how I coach. As a saxophone player, I spent many hours a day, both when studying at university and as a professional, breathing enormously deeply in order that I could support the column of the air that allows the saxophone to make a sound. And so I've continued with breath work and I'm less involved in exercises now around it, but it's certainly something I'll bring my awareness back to. What is happening with my breath? Where am I breathing? So one for me, and this won't be true for everyone, but it tends to translate to most people, is if I'm breathing in my chest and higher up, it's probable that I'm less centered and present than I might be if I gradually soften into breathing more deeply and using my diaphragm to I think of breathing down rather than breathing in. Often trying to control one's breathing becomes like trying saying to someone, just relax. it's so I use that word soften into purposefully. It's almost like a letting go of whatever tension there might be to get connected to a deeper rhythm and process of breathing.

Lucy 24:55

Thank you. So we've learned quite a lot about your past and what took you into coaching and your training, and a wonderful top tip there. And I would love for you to share a bit more about your coaching business, what you do, who you like to work with, how that has evolved over the time as well.

Neil 25:16

Yeah. So when I finished the practitioner diploma, I was working as a consultant and doing all sorts of different types of work, and so began building coaching in, and within I'd say probably two years, the consulting went from close to 100% of the business down to 0%, and the coaching was what was taking up all the space. So outside of my role as senior faculty at the AoEC, I primarily coach and supervise one-to-one, and that is through a variety of different relationships, some of them between the people I coach direct with me, some through organisations that I do work in, and some through associate pools that I'm a member of. So often large corporates will have a pool of associate coaches that they use for coaching projects or for one-to-one coaching as and when is required, and I'm a member of a few of those. So that's my primary work , more of that is coaching than supervision, although I do also supervise people individually. I'd say largely I'm connected to those opportunities through my network, and that it has been a gradual build over the years that I've been coaching through referrals. I think, like you, I don't do an enormous amount of advertising. I don't really do much. I write occasionally, I occasionally speak on podcasts, but much of it is through word of mouth, introductions, and being sent opportunities and asked if I'd be willing to connect with people and have a conversation really. So that's kind of the structure at the moment. I have done some team coaching. I recently did the systemic team coaching certificate with the AoEC, which was wonderful, and I find it an interesting area. I'm open and am involved in some conversations about that potentially becoming another area that I spend some time in, but primarily it's one-to-one work at this moment.

Lucy 27:56

Yeah. And when you're doing your one-to-one coaching, is there a particular sector or an area that you particularly enjoy working in?

Neil 28:08

So I've often said I'm demographic agnostic as regards sector. I'm more interested in psychographic, and so I think like many coaches, I'm drawn towards clients that are in some ways similar to me. I think that's a massive generalisation, but I'm not altogether sure it's not wrong. So I like working with people that are committed and enthusiastic about the practice that believe in coaching as a way of getting more of what they want, whether and that can be self-awareness, it needn't be a particular type of performance with a particular type of project that are up for considering where their responsibility lies as relates to the things that are happening. I think I mentioned earlier in our conversation that first experience I had working with a coach was a really clear situation where I was the obstacle, and it was many of the choices I was making and and things I was doing that were creating the challenges. And so my hope is to work with people that are willing to be truly investigative about where the burden of responsibility lies to make change, and there may well be responsibility within the system too, but I'm I'm fascinated by our locus of control and where we have agency and choice. I do find myself drawn towards people interested in creativity, and I'm at great pains in a lot of the things I talk about to be super clear that creativity is not the sole preserve of playing musical instruments or drawing pictures, and it is absolutely available and observable in banking and in the healthcare system and in secondary school teaching and in hiking and a great many other things. It is a way of being, regardless of what industry you're operating in. So I find I'm drawn towards people that are willing to think about things differently and be disruptive and consider not continuing doing things in the same way, and that often leads me towards people with an entrepreneurial spirit. So I've quite a lot of work with founders and also with people through the various early stages of funding around ideation and beginning to prepare for post-build scale-up. I'm fascinated by people at large, and as long as I'm with a client that wants to be there, it's probable I will connect to some spark they have that will lead to me enjoying the process of supporting their work.

Lucy 31:14

I found myself nodding a lot. I think it's maybe all coaches feel it, but that spark when that person who's next to you wants to be there and they're as curious about where it's going to go as we are, that's yeah, that feels pretty special. So I'm thinking about the fact that you've done our practitioner diploma, you've done our advanced practitioner diploma as well. And I'm wondering what did you take from any of those programmes or either of those programmes that set you up for success?

Neil 31:46

I think first and foremost, building on some of what I've already said, the extent to which, in a structured way, coaching has supported me to develop my self-awareness has been life-changing in every respect. And that is absolutely true of the practitioner diploma and of the advanced practitioner diploma. So through investigating this question of who am I, and again not in a navel-gazing, narcissistic, self-obsessed manner, but rather in a how have I become the person I am, how might I better understand that in order that I can facilitate that for other people, has been enormously powerful in building a successful practice and also in building a successful, intentional, values-led, ethically sound life. I am an absolute sucker for variety, and I think what the practitioner diploma and the advanced practitioner diploma when we were running it did is offer a variety of models, schools, tools, frameworks, psychological points of view, and much else beside, and did so in a way, again, that was structured but allowed me as a participant to pick and choose the bits that resonated and follow my interest without missing out on the criteria that I was being assessed against. I read something earlier today that said variety without rigour is just restlessness, and that really struck me. And I think the rigor with which it's done on both courses in order that it doesn't overwhelm people with unnecessary information, but gives enough for you, for me as a participant to play and experiment with and get a sense of how does that sit with me? What does it feel like when I try using the GROW model in a coaching conversation? What's my experience when I endeavour to embody more of a coactive approach when I'm working with someone? How might creative techniques feel as I begin to use them? In awareness that each of the things I've just mentioned can be a lifetime's journey of practice, but getting first hand experience in a safe space to play with these things and get a sense of do they do they fit? What resistance might I be experiencing to them? What might that tell me? I think the other thing is hopefully clear by now, coaching does not exist in a vacuum, and I was on both courses brought into a network of relationships with the members of the cohort that was extraordinarily rich and powerful in terms of the diversity of industries, of perspectives on coaching, of experiences as professionals and as humans out in the world doing different things that I couldn't have imagined a better opportunity to engage with other views and approaches and build relationships in meaningful ways that without question did and continue to inform my practice as a coach and also my facilitation as a faculty member.

Lucy 36:00

Yeah, absolutely. And we now have the professional practitioner diploma, which is a global programme . It brings a much wider global lens and that variety that you talk of so that you get the chance to to experiment and practice and experience and decide, you know, what's resonating, what isn't? And I certainly know from my own experience in my coach training, there are things I didn't pick up and run with at the time, but have circled back and re-examined, re-explored as my as my coaching practice has developed as well. So we ought to turn the lens now to your role in faculty. What does it mean for you to be part of the faculty at the AoEC?

Neil 36:47

It's a great privilege. I have been with the organisation as a faculty member for a little over four years now, and I think initially it afforded me the opportunity to get to know the practitioner diploma in a completely different way, which was fascinating how it is structured and what sits behind the experience that participants have. I am one member of a faculty body in Britain that is peopled by extraordinary professionals. I have the opportunity to learn from them consistently, both when we facilitate and also in some of the conversations that we have, and I get to work with an extraordinary range of participants through facilitating what I believe to be one of the most extraordinary education experiences available, and that is beyond coaching. I think its scope for building awareness for participants that wish to go deep into the self-development journey available is profound, and so I feel enormously privileged to be afforded these opportunities. As I've said, I think creativity is incredibly important for who we are as a species, as humans. I think coaching fundamentally is a creative act, and having a bit of a soapbox to chat to other people in a meaningful way and encourage them to believe that they can strike forth and be more creative in how they work with others is also really important. And I'm under no illusion that many of the people that come on the practitioner diploma aren't necessarily going to set up shop as a full-time executive coach and will be utilising coaching as a practice, maybe having more coaching-like conversations, and maybe simply utilising some of the skills in their roles that they're already doing and are perfectly happy doing. And I think being at least party to and some tiny part of facilitating that process where people can go out and have more meaningful relationships and do more meaningful work is is a real privilege.

Lucy 39:37

They're very special programmes to be part of, and the opportunity to yes, create some of the magic, I think, that is often hard to put into words actually until a participant is on the programme, and the privilege of watching them go on on their own journey is very special. What's worth a participant knowing about the practitioner diploma that perhaps may not be immediately obvious, do you think?

Neil 40:06

I was really lucky when I was looking at the landscape of coach training offer offers and attended a number of open days. And when I came to the open day for the AoEC, I encountered several graduates from the programme, each from completely different industries, speaking really honestly about not just the wonderful, enlivening, enriching experiences they'd had whilst taking part in the practitioner diploma, but also the bits that had been perhaps somewhat uncomfortable and had asked of them looking at things that they'd perhaps somewhat avoided, and that's not intended to sound scary because I don't think it is, and of course, everybody is in control and does what they wish. But what struck me thematically was without exception, each of them had translated the experience they'd had on the practitioner diploma into something meaningful after the event. It wasn't a course that they'd done, that they took the handbook and put it on a shelf once it was finished and thought little about it until they next tidied out their bookshelf and went, Oh, yeah, I went on that course a couple of years. The people I encountered had taken the course between one and I think seven years prior to speaking at this open event, and each one of them had translated the things they'd learned about themselves, the things they'd learned about coaching, and the things that they had learned about human development into meaningful change in their lives, in the lives of those they worked with, and in the organisations that they were part of. And so I think having an awareness that although there is an investment of money and there is without question an investment of time and energy and commitment, there is without question a return on that investment, and you get to choose what that looks like through the way that you utilise the learning, discovery, awareness, relationships, and network that you access through participating in the programme.

Lucy 42:39

I think that's really beautifully captured, and it reminds me of the essence of a coaching conversation. The two things map beautifully on top of each other when we show up as a client and our commitment to that time and the financial investment, and yet the outcomes are infinite, really. It's really up to us. It goes back to your point about choice, you know, the choices that we have. So let's turn our lens in this latter stage to thinking about what the future looks like. And I know we've talked about it many a time, and I wonder if you would share with our listeners your thoughts on what the coaching landscape looks like now.

Neil 43:26

I think a lot more people nowadays know about coaching and have an experience perhaps of working with somebody that calls themselves a coach. I'm often in conversations with people that are exploring coaching from a multitude of different angles. It may be considering coming on one of our coaches. It may be somebody that's heard I've been able to support somebody they're connected to as a practitioner and may wish to work with me on a one-to-one basis. And my first area of investigation tends to be to test the definition of coaching. So it's probable that if you've got this far in listening to this episode, that you have a sense what we offer at the AoEC is accredited coach training that comes from a place of the coach being non-directive and supporting someone else in exploring whatever it is that they bring following their agenda towards the conclusion that's right for them. And I believe that type of coaching, where humanity is at the centre, where relationship is foundational, and when we're accessing all the many data centers that we have available to us through education-backed, experienced practitioners who do their work from a sound ethical foundation and with a well-calibrated moral compass is bright. We are, of course, in an age where AI is gaining more ground on a lot of process-based things, and it has without question already outstripped our capacity to process information at extraordinary speeds, and one imagines that is going to continue a pace. And I believe as long as we keep building our practice around the human center of relationship, of developing our own awareness and ensuring that we keep our tools sharp, then we're in a good place. How that translates to the landscape is I believe coaching businesses will continue to be built through those relationships and those networks of trust and referenceability, of having differentiating markers like successful participation in an accredited course, like committing to ongoing professional development through being an accredited practitioner, and through an awareness that probably to build a successful practice, it will be the work of months and years as opposed to days and weeks. That there are many successful practitioners plugged into those things in different ways and also operating entirely independently. And I think it is choose your own adventure. In many ways, I laugh because I've found myself back in an industry where it's a hard way to make an easy living, much like it was when I was a musician. But goodness knows there is a self-refreshing value return outside of the economics with doing meaningful work with people who largely are engaged, enthusiastic, and willing to commit to the necessary resource to make meaningful change towards what they believe to be more of what they want or greater awareness. Again, it's it's going to be dependent on the individual. So my hope for the future of the landscape is that there are more people having those types of conversations and interactions, and that there is increasingly a broader understanding of the range of what's possible with coaching. What I won't say is that having a dialogue with a large language model is not coaching. I think it's a different type of coaching, and I think that it is a very small segment of the universe that is available when working with a skilled, experienced practitioner that has done their work in order that they are not centering themselves in the process, but rather attending to the person they're working with in full presence relationship and balancing structure with emergence.

Lucy 49:47

Thank you. Such a balanced view on the opportunities and the challenges in the current space.

Neil 50:06

Having said well, there's there's a couple that immediately jump to mind, so I'll trust those. the first one is what can someone do if they'd like to know more about the AoEC and the work that we do. And it's to get in touch with the organisation and speak to one of the client relationship managers and have a conversation. Doing that doesn't mean you need to sign up for anything, it's a conversation. And I frequently meet participants that have had that conversation and then done nothing for several years, and that is equally as valid as signing up there and then to do a course. That I do believe, as you referenced, I've done the practitioner diploma and the advanced practitioner diploma, although several years apart, that as an organisation we offer a pathway from an introduction through our coaching skills certificate, and there's no prescription on how quickly you need to move along that pathway. Much of the work is in the practice and being out there and having those conversations. So a strong encouragement to if you've got this far in the conversation, then get in touch and and find out what might be right for you if when you're willing to take the next step. And then I suppose the second thing is to consider working with a coach. There are a great many of us out there, and I certainly practice what I preach in terms of both being in a coaching relationship much of the time. I am working with a coach, but also if you're already a coach working with a supervisor and and being in a relationship where you are getting that support, ultimately all of this in some ways is finding the right place to get support to move towards where you're trying to get to. And I think you will not, at least as far as the AoEC is concerned, receive a sales pitch or a strong nudge towards signing up for something if it's not the right thing for you, and so yeah, an encouragement to have a conversation and explore working with a coach and getting more of a sense of what this practice is about. The only other thing I'll say on that is should you have had or should you have in the future a poor experience with a coach, that is not the be-all and end all of coaching. One of our central beliefs at the AoEC is there are as many approaches to coaching as there are humans that wish to practice as coaches, and so you will find an enormous range, even amongst our faculty body. Were you to be coached by me, were you to be coached by Lucy, were you to be coached by one of the other members of the faculty, although you would experience, I trust, the same ethics and the same core skills sitting behind what we do. We are different humans and we have different ways of supporting and facilitating and inquiring and reflecting. And so those things will be different. So not enjoying a session or two with a coach, it's not necessarily coaching that's the thing you need to change.

Lucy 54:24

Wonderfully said, and if I may just build on that to extend a conversation with myself or with you or with any member of faculty, if if that would be helpful. I think it's something we strive to do when we're teaching and facilitating on the practitioner diploma is bringing our learning to life. So we'll often bring examples of our coaching work into that delivery to really help set the scene. And we stress all the time we're not here to make carbon copy coaches, we don't want another one of me or another one of you, although you know, wonderful. Except we want you to be developing you and be unique in your own right. And a conversation is always welcome. Neil, thank you for trusting me holding the reins today and having the opportunity to interview you and to share with everybody, the coach, the facilitator, that you are.

Neil 55:19

It's been an absolute pleasure. You did a wonderful job as host, and thank you so much for being a great host.