Know which hat you’re wearing?

By Tim Williams

Many of us come to coaching wearing a number of different hats based on our previous lived, and professional, experience.  We can sometimes be tempted to see health coaching as yet another and ‘different hat’. 

As a former GP, I would often be trying to ‘juggle a number of hats’. I found that this could be challenging, distracting for me and confusing for everyone. 

I know this is not just me – it comes up in supervision a lot, especially as we train more colleagues in health coaching skills, where their main professional role is something other than being a ‘health coach’.  Health Coaches can also have additional expertise in nutrition, life-style medicine and exercise amongst much more.

Whilst we continue to see these skills and expertise as mutually exclusive (different hats), I wonder whether there is a danger that they compete for our attention and limited time, robbing us and our clients of the ideal blend of both or all.

As a GP, there was rarely a time in a consultation where I was purely coaching – mainly due to time pressures and competing priorities, but my mindset was unwavering –

“This person in front of me has the most important contribution to make and, with the necessary information, has the best solutions to their own problems.” 

This looked different in a 10–15-minute NHS GP consultation, compared to a 90-minute Time to Think coaching session with a private client, but the mindset was the same.

As a coach, I can’t suddenly forget everything I know about medicine and there maybe times when sharing factual medical information to support someone’s thinking is exactly the right thing to do – when it is contracted for, asked for and consented to.  Again, as has been discussed in previous top tips, this this is shared as ‘information’ rather than ‘advice’.  In the same way, as a GP, I can’t now ignore everything I know about the importance of people thinking for themselves.  I will, of course, stay with in my scope of practice and competence of both.

My own experience is that people choose to work with you and not your roles.  They choose to be in a space that you provide by bringing all of your experience together in a way that supports them to do their very best thinking regarding their health and wellbeing.

So perhaps rather than juggling different roles and wearing different hats, we could blend our roles and wear one very unique and authentic hat.