Coach Express

By Bronwyn Bowery-Ireland

In three weeks time I will be relocating my family from Melbourne, Australia to Shanghai, China. This change has been in planning for about a year and as each week passes I feel myself getting more and more excited. International Coach Academy is going to be offering coach training in Mandarin as of 2008.

As a coach and a leader I have been most interested in observing the responses people have given me when I mention that I am relocating to China. Let me share a few with you now.

The first response is an assumption that I have to go for work purposes and that there may not be a great deal of choice involved, rather a necessary part of my role at ICA. This could not be further from the truth. When I stepped off the plane in mainland China in 2005, I felt a wave of energy that I had not experienced before. I became immediately excited and I could feel the energy of the place moving throughout my body. I loved the culture, I loved the passion for learning that everyone I meet has, and I loved the vibrancy of the place. I felt connected in some way to China. It had entered my mind, body and soul weaving its magical, mythical spell over me. Whenever I am in mainland China I feel a sense of sadness when I have to leave it.

So my decision to live in China was totally a choice, totally for my own sense of adventure and totally for my own sense of fulfilment. The decision for my family to live in China was also a choice. I took my partner and my two sons for a holiday to mainland China last year and they fell in love with the place too. Being able to work and develop coaching in China is another choice. I feel so strongly that coaching can support China as it moves through great times of change.

The next response I got was connected to the task of physically relocating to China. Everyone referred to it has a really hard time, an enormous change, so many things to get done and how unsettling for my family. Another assumption that change is hard and that physically relocating somewhere else would be daunting. Again I have experienced neither of these. As moving to China was a goal of mine, my families and ICA’s then it has been nothing but an exciting journey which we are only just beginning. Certainly there are many tasks that need to be achieved but these are just tasks. The most important thing for me was that there was commitment first to this change and once this is achieved and felt then the rest is really just a long list of tasks. (mind you I am extremely grateful for having a brilliant personal assistant, Gwen).

I have had many other responses from people and what I have most observed is that most responses are based on assumptions that people have. And as a coach these assumptions are also based on the persons own perception of change. It made me wonder why some of us hold beliefs around; life not offering us any choices, why everything related to change is painful and hard and why we feel it is okay to project our beliefs and assumptions on to others.

Of course I also don’t need to mention that these are all the reasons why you should employ a coach. Anyway my journey is just beginning. I will keep you informed as I move along it. No doubt there will be times of fear and uncertainty but I am confident that these two feelings will bring about greater growth and adventures for myself, my family and ICA.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.