When I was a cub reporter 20 years ago, starting out on my local newspaper, my news editor, a hoary old newshound who had been made redundant from the Daily Mail’s Manchester news desk during the infamous Night of the Long White Envelopes, told me a very important thing.

He said: “Never, ever assume anything. You’ll always be wrong.”

He also told me how to leverage my expenses, get all my work done before the pubs opened and hold a snooker cue properly. But those are other stories for other days. As far as the assuming things thing goes, as always, Dick was bang on the money.

I make it a rule never to assume anything, just as I make it a rule to never believe anything anyone ever says, but it’s a rule that’s just begging to be broken. The latest breakage occurred, predictably enough, during my second coaching session.

As I explained last month, what I’ve heard about the mystical art of coaching is that it consists of deep, meaningful ‘coaching conversations’ that suddenly fling open the window of opportunity and let the light of self-discovery flood in.

Consequently, I had assumed that I would be expected to indulge in some serious bouts of navel-gazing. I began the second session in a state of some anxiety at the prospect of having to have an adult conversation about myself.

How wrong could I be? If anything, the session was even more practical than the first one. First I had to think of my ultimate goal – what was it that I wanted to achieve? Since ‘never do today what you can put off until 10 minutes before deadline’ runs through my being like ‘Bridlington’ through a stick of seaside rock, I decided that making more effective use of my working day, so that I can enjoy my weekends at home with my partner and daughter more and suffer less self-inflicted stress, would be a worthwhile objective.

I then had to think about what it would mean to me personally, as well as to the organisation, to achieve that objective and write that in my rather swanky leather coaching
folder. I wrote: “I want to be significantly more productive in each working day so that I can inject a significant amount of happiness into my family”. Sean Weafer told me to repeat that statement regularly, so that it becomes embedded in my brain and I start to unconsciously look for ways to make it happen.

The effect was immediate. Every time I say it, I smile and feel positive. Will I feel positive and motivated enough to actually make it happen? Only time will tell, but identifying the obstacles that are stopping me achieving it now and describing how my world will look when I have achieved it are all steps along the road.

The third session focused on producing Smart goals, brainstorming all the things I could possibly do at work that would enable me to achieve my ultimate aim, identifying the most important and designating them as the first five steps to be completed. With Weafer’s help, I listed the goals and decided on a date by which I will have completed them – November 1.

Then the goals were broken down even further, into a series of actions to be completed by the next session. Weafer’s approach of going from the global, ultimate goal to the small, specific actions that can be taken without major upheaval to your life seems to be the embodiment of practical common sense.

Once I’d got over the disappointment (relief) of not having to detail my relationship with my mother, I was amazed at how little really deep thinking has been involved so far. Yes, I’ve identified goals and actions and visualised my stress-free utopia but the emphasis in these first sessions has been very much on writing things down and acting upon them. The only silences have been while I’ve been busy scribbling in my file.

I’m glad my assumption was wrong and that my experience of coaching so far has been more schoolroom than psychiatrist’s couch. It works for me because I am working with someone who gives me the chance to focus on, and articulate, what I knew deep down inside anyway and who makes me act on it because I know they’ll be expecting my homework in on time.

My next session will be on the telephone. It will be interesting to see whether the medium makes any difference to the effectiveness of the coaching. I’ll keep you posted!

You can find out more about Sean Weafer at www.seanweafer.com

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