What do you do?

Occasionally I get asked, “What do you do for a living?” And what that really means is: what field are you in, what’s your job?

Not long ago, I would have answered, “I’m in IT.” It’s a huge field, but mostly that sentence was enough. If someone wanted to know more, I’d go a bit deeper, since the field can cover many different areas.

Nowadays, having switched career paths, my answer is different when being asked what I do: “I’m a coach.” And that doesn’t necessarily make it easier. People often say, “Hm... what kind of coach? A sports coach? What do you coach?”

There are all these nice words we like to use in coaching, but to someone who doesn’t know the field, they can sound strange or still not give any real clue. It’s a bit like: Okay, but I still don’t know what you actually do.

So instead of explaining coaching, I’d like to share…