I’m currently reading On Becoming A Person by Carl Rogers,  the founder of person centred therapy.  And it got me thinking about how we approach the art of being a business coach.

Rogers was fascinated by what made a person function well in this world.

For him, it came down to the notion of self-actualisation in a world rich with contradictions, challenges, opportunities and complex relationships.  It came down to trusting your own experience, constantly learning from it and discovering what really works for you to be happy.

Yet look around and you see many people relying on old knowledge, secondhand truths and ineffective habits. It’s a sad fact that people often feel far more comfortable sticking with the known and hoping it’s good enough.

So what’s all this got to do with business coaching?  Quite simply, the business world is like life writ small.  It shifts and changes, demands new knowledge, challenges us to grow and asks us to discover what works.

Yet just as in life, many business owners (and indeed business coaches) stick with what they know and look fearfully at the changing environment or the growing set of new skills that are needed to thrive.

To survive and thrive you need to look at it differently.

Let’s start by acknowledging that we are all of us learning beings.  It’s one of the things we do best.  From the day we’re born we absorb new knowledge and new skills readily, hungrily, excitedly.

When does that stop?

Oh! When we’re told there’s a right answer at school and get tested on it!  When learning becomes conformity. When learning becomes a chore.

And sadly many people forget to turn their brain back from auto-pilot to manual after formal education has fnished.

You know, the great thing is that the brain thing is still there, still churning and still learning. The question is, what is it learning? Is it learning to be helpless? Is it learning that you can’t succeed in a tough economy?  Or is it learning new skills which show that you can?  Is it learning that you can always be in charge of your destiny?

As a business coach, what are you learning?  Right now, ask yourself, what are you learning?  What are you reading?  What are you experimenting with?  What are you playing with? What was your last key learning?

Did it serve you? Did it serve your clients?

And what’s your attitude to learning?  Are you fed up with the changng landscape and ever-increasing platforms to market your business and your clients’? Or are you excited? Are you learning to see patterns?  Are you having fun?

As humans we have stunning potential.  Yet all too often we have stunted potential.

Make a decision today to turn your brain back on to manual and learn to love learning.  You’ll become a better business coach for sure.  And I bet, just as Carl Rogers suggests, you’ll discover life itself has a whole new joyful flavour.