This blog is written by Nic Cain, our Marketing Executive – we’ve encouraged him to bring a different perspective to our blog, by saying something about how he uses coaching as a young actor…

The notion of taking risks has been quite prevalent for me over the last few weeks, and since this is the first Developing Success blog I have written (which feels like a risk in some small way), I thought it would be a good topic to explore in my first blog.

So what does the word risk actually mean… “a situation involving exposure to danger”, “to enter a situation where there is a possibility of being hurt or of a loss or defeat”.

Now, rest assured, the situations I have found myself in that have involved risk are not ones where I have been subject to danger or hurt, but certainly loss and defeat. Alongside my role at Developing Success, I am an actor, and it’s fair to say that there is a fair bit of loss and defeat in that game, but only recently have I uncovered the element of risk. Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself saying, “Do I go for it and put myself out there on that scale?”, and “Do I commit to this when something else might get confirmed?”. I’ve also been experiencing a weight of underlying anxiety as I’ve mulled over these thoughts in my head.

Now how does any of this link to coaching I hear you ask? Well it ties in, because I started to tune in to how I was really feeling when I had a casual coaching conversation with a friend. I expressed my situation and how it was making me feel; my friend intuitively asked me to name the feeling and to come up with some words that captured the cause of the feelings. The emotions that came up were linked to being scared and anxious, and the word that captured the cause was risk. Being able to name it in this way allowed me to gain clarity around the situation and it allowed me to bring some empathy into the space, as my friend helped me to normalise my reaction to risk. Once I realised that I was stuck in this ‘fight or flight’ mode, we were able to talk about what I could do to bring myself out of that anxious and impulsive space and into a more rational and decisive space.

So what have I taken away from the last few weeks? Risks are not comfortable, but talking about them helps to remove the drama out of the situation surrounding the risk. And most importantly, there is so much good in casual coaching conversations. I find myself asking coaching questions in casual settings more and more as I learn about this work and the impact is just so wonderful to see. How could you bring an element of coaching into a more informal conversation today?