David Foreman
COO Runway East
Explore The Consequences
“To be honest, 6 months ago I was more than a little sceptical about coaching - if you’re totally new to it perhaps you can relate to my mindset. I simply didn’t understand it or even know what it was – I now get it, love it and know when I’m in need of it.
I can’t articulate what it is better than anyone else so instead I’ll try to explain what I get from it.
I’m an entrepreneur and founder of a tech start-up and as such I need to wear many different hats. My focus needs to shift from software engineering to marketing to company development to pitching to HR to funding to you name it. In an ideal world, each task would finish before the next starts – but this is not an ideal world. It’s no wonder that my thoughts become tangled, decisions get postponed and my anxiety rises.
For me coaching helps me to articulate my vision, the decisions I need to make and explore the consequences of those decisions. It’s incredible how effective it is. If I’ve not had a coaching session for a few weeks I slip predictably back into a condition I now know is the ‘cloud of unknowing’. Coaching helps me to zoom out, take stock, look to the future and ultimately make decisions.
A recent session with James stuck with me for days. We used Lego Series Play as a tool to aid in articulating the past, present, values and vision. Entrepreneurship really is a roller-coaster and I was in one of its dips at the time and it was the final vision exercise that stuck with me and helped turn my mindset. In this case, it was a simple realisation of why I’m doing this that reinforced my conviction that it was worth doing. Just one example of many.”