MY COACHING STORY: Corinna Powlesland
I am a professional actor and singer and have spent the last 35 years working in theatre and television. I have had a very full career, and have been fortunate to work on some incredible productions, always working with large groups of people. In fact, one of the things I most love about working in the theatre is the sense of instant community and ‘family’ that happens. You need to develop the ability to form quick, truthful relationships in order to be able to do a good job. I see performing as a revelation of the internal life of a person, oneself or another character. It is a meaningful process and requires one to be fascinated by people to do it responsibly and well.
As a young actor, and like most actors I had to find gainful employment to sustain me between acting jobs. So, I spent years waiting in restaurants and working in bars. One day, a conversation with a friend led me to a London based communications company. Most of their work at that time was with corporates helping them develop their communications skills and personal impact in the ways they presented themselves. I started working with this company as an assistant, the person who made the sessions run smoothly and who was the direct liaison between the trainer and the participants. I was soon asked to be a trainer myself, which was something of a leap of faith on the part of the company as my experience of running learning sessions with groups was largely second hand or learned on the job. I had to learn how to work with people in a different way, and I loved it! Since that time, I have developed a successful portfolio career, performing and working with groups and individuals. Over the last twenty-one years, this work has taken me all over the world and I have been lucky to work with thousands of people from different sectors, coaching them in how to expand their repertoire in how they communicate and influence others, and increase their personal impact. I have, over time, developed my own approach to this work, utilising a holistic process and I design bespoke programmes for organisations including the wonderful Speak to be Heard programme that I run in partnership with Oasis.
Over the time that I have developed this work, I have become increasingly interested in how you help someone find their voice and their agency, and less and less interested in simply ‘telling’ people what to do. The ‘tell’ style of teaching never worked for me, so it makes sense that I’m an advocate for a coaching approach. I am naturally facilitative in my style and I never use the word trainer to describe myself. An holistic approach recognises that we are whole people and learn in a multitude of different ways, and the best we can do for others is to respect their intelligence and offer them alternative choices, which are theirs for the taking should they wish to do so.
Over the last six years I have formed a close partnership with Oasis. I have deepened my understanding of what it means to take a whole person approach and I had been keen to take a professional qualification as a coach.
In 2019, I was performing in a national theatre tour of the hit musical Grease and was lucky to be able to fit the Oasis Coaching diploma around my touring schedule. All went very well, and then… there was a pandemic and all my work vanished over night. Thankfully, I was able to concentrate fully on my learning with Oasis, who immediately transferred to a virtual offering and I finished my diploma in this way in January 2021.
Many aspects of the learning were incredible, unexpected and life changing – I am now qualified as a coach and have private clients.
Like a lot of people who are attracted to this kind of work, I have a strong desire to be able help others. Seeing the personal and professional journey that people go on is so inspiring, and I have come to realise that as a coach one can create an environment where relatively quickly people are able to take steps in their lives and work that really satisfy them and represent forward motion for them. I find working with others, one to one, can be deeply rewarding, genuinely meaningful and profound.
For me, developing trust is the keystone to any successful coaching relationship. I think it’s extraordinary that this is possible in the virtual realm, but it is! Much of my coaching has been virtual so far, and I suspect will continue to be so. I am blown away by what is possible and humbled by our ability as human beings to adapt to the changing conditions of all our lives.
If I were to describe my personal coaching style I would say with some confidence that my clients experience me as warm and supportive. I pay attention to the whole person, crucially, including their physicality. When trust is built, I can be challenging and robust in my approach. I am gaining more confidence to bring more of my own natural authority. I use my intuition and sensing, I let these guide my interventions with clients and will offer my impressions tactfully and tentatively in service of the client and what we have agreed is the scope of our work together. I have learned to trust my instinct as well as my intellect and I encourage my clients to become more acquainted with this part of themselves, as another resource to draw on. My background in performance means I am prepared to be creative and to help my clients become more creative themselves in the way they approach their changing lives.
What I have learned over the past two years is that to be fully available for another person in a coaching relationship takes real energy. If you are doing it well, I believe coaching requires both intellectual and emotional investment. I care deeply about the work I do and, by extension come to care deeply about those I am working with and want to support them fully in the journey towards their own goals. To enter into any coaching relationship requires you to be wholly present for the other person. It’s transporting and rewarding and if you don’t pay attention to yourself and what you need, it can deplete you, so it’s proven to be vital to develop my resilience skills.
If I think about those who are starting out in their own coaching journey, I would recommend a few things.
When I was starting out along the pathway to becoming a qualified coach I worked with a coach myself. This was a really good move, as seeing someone else work, in such a subtle and skilful way helped me to understand the theory I was learning. It also helped me experience how powerful, dynamic and life- enhancing coaching can be.
There are a lot of books on coaching and there are also a variety of online resources to draw on. I think it’s important to get and remain curious about current thinking and to broaden your own thinking and experience of the art of coaching. It is a fascinating art form!
It was very important to me that I chose a reputable and rigorous course, one that fully equipped me for working with real people. There are a lot of short-term courses that offer an introduction and these might be useful but they don’t genuinely help you get ready for your first client. I think it’s important to be able to be face to face for the majority of any coaching training so that you are able to experience the energy exchange that takes place in the process and to learn through your colleagues, who are experiencing their own very unique process.
If you are starting out, take some time to think about what skills experience you bring from your wider life to date that you could draw on in coaching. I think nothing is genuinely irrelevant and its reassuring to think that we all have experience of working with people and, to a certain extent of trying to help others, all of this can help equip you in your coaching.
Currently, I am really raising my awareness of the choices I consciously make in my coaching process. I am giving attention to how I can best create the right balance between support and challenge; facilitation and direction. I know that if I lack authority and self-belief that people won’t necessarily be inclined to trust me, so I try to create structure, safety and energy without taking over. I used to be someone who put a lot of personal energy into being liked. Nowadays, I am much more interested in being respected! That means I can be free to challenge and offer feedback in service of the client.
I have found the whole process of becoming a coach, illuminating and exciting, and it’s impact and consequences for my own personal growth extraordinary. I have had to work with my own questions around my own power and authority, my own sense of personal worth and I recognise that if I’m asking another to be ‘fully’ themselves, I have no choice but to be so myself, which can be uncomfortable. When I think back to the start of my coaching diploma programme I didn’t really understand what a coach was and the thing I have loved about training with Oasis is that questions like these are welcomed and seen as part of how you become a truly effective coach.
Corinna Powlesland
You can listen to Corinna in conversation with Glyn Fussell in the Oasis Podcast Having Presence and here’s more about our Coaching with Head, Heart and Soul programme. and our Speak to be Heard programme which Corinna co-facilitates.