Testimonial by James Rowson: Shaping my view of the workplace

I have been on both sides of the table with Yorkshire Accord as both a coachee and a coach and can honestly say that both experiences have been hugely impactful, perhaps even transformational, for me in terms of my approach to work.

My experience being coached allowed me to better understand how to analyse my experiences in the workplace and my reactions to them and to think more deeply about motivations; in short, I became much more professionally self-aware. My focus and questioning, for example, went beyond progression and instead move to why, where, when, how and even what is progression. That alone has shaped how I view the workplace and indeed personal success within it.

My experiences (now 3 in total) of coaching started with me thinking I was in way, way in over my head. I am not a senior leader, senior manager or even a manager in my organisation and I am still relatively young in terms of the workplace (put it this way, I have more years left to work until state pension age than I have lived so far; I’ll let you all do the maths!) so when the idea was put to me of doing the Yorkshire Accord training and being a coach I was a little nervous and apprehensive. However, when I came to putting the training into practice on the second day of the Yorkshire Accord training, I was immediately taken with it. I found it personally hugely fulfilling to really, actively listen to someone’s experiences at work, pose questions back to them and see them visibly have lightbulb moments which allowed them to consider their experiences and situations in ways they may not have otherwise. Since then my confidence coaching others has grown massively and so has my confidence in the workplace and my colleagues have noticed it. In my day job, I now supervise colleagues and find myself regularly dipping into my coaching toolkit and more often than not obtaining results.

I am a passionate advocate of coaching and its myriad of benefits to both the coachee and coach and tell practically anyone I talk to for long enough that it is something I do and something they should at the very least do a bit of research into.