S1 Episode 46: Exploring the Essence of Coaching with Nick Bolton - podcast episode cover

S1 Episode 46: Exploring the Essence of Coaching with Nick Bolton

Nov 10, 202135 minSeason 1Ep. 46
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Episode description

'Coaching is the first fully egalitarian approach to human change we have ever seen' says Nick Bolton. Nick founded Animas Coaching and the International Centre for Coaching Supervision.

Plenty of nuggets in today's conversation with Claire - putting in, meaning making and humility. Nick quotes Yallom who says that 'every contact leaves a trace'. What trace has this left in you?

 

Takeaways

  • Coaching is about helping people face their current truth and take personal agency in moving forward.
  • The term 'life coaching' can be limiting and misleading, as coaching is a much broader and deeper practice.
  • Coaching is an epistemological position that challenges the idea of expertise and emphasizes the exploration of meaning.
  • Humility and trust are essential qualities for coaches, as they allow for a collaborative and egalitarian approach to coaching.
  • Supervision is crucial for coaches, especially when working with deep and personal issues, and it should be a norm in the coaching profession.
  • Belonging is a complex concept, and coaches often navigate the tension between belonging and not belonging.
  • Every contact leaves a trace, and meaningful conversations can have a lasting impact on individuals.

Contact Nick through Linked In

 

Keywords

coaching, truth, personal agency, life coaching, epistemological position, humility, trust, supervision, belonging, meaning

 

Transcript

This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Hello, welcome to The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick, and today I'm in conversation with Nick Bolton. So Nick's been a coach for many years. He set up Animas Coaching and also the International Centre for Coaching Supervision. And Nick and I have had a couple of really interesting conversations. So I thought you might like to hear us have another one. So Nick, welcome. Thank you, Claire. I'm really excited to see where this takes us.

Indeed. So give us a bit of your, a kind of two minute version of your coaching journey as we begin. Yeah. Well, I started as a coach in the, in what might be called the cowboy era of coaching. So probably very, very early 2000s. And like a lot of coaches back then, I made up, as I went along. And I was working with police forces with, or police services as they know are, social service departments, all sorts, looking at how do people implement policy?

And in particular, looking at how they learn from each other. So I was doing a lot of action learning, but then I started to move into more one -to -one coaching because things would kind of happen in that group space that I could then pick up individually. And that's how I got into what I might now call life coaching, although I still don't like that phrase. And I finally decided to qualify properly as a coach in 2007. And then set up my school in 2008.

And what was interesting for me, Claire, is that I was still very much a classic performance coach in 2008. So I was, you know, grow model, smart goal setting. And so my coaching school was called the smart school, you know, based on the idea of the smart goal setting. And then around about late 2012, 13, I started to realize that It's not that I don't believe in it anymore, but I feel like that's only one part of the spectrum of what coaching can do.

And so I talked to my community, I said, what do we really think coaching is about? What are we really trying to achieve? And it struck me that what coaching is really about is helping people face the truth. Now, what is their current truth? Not the truth, but what is their current experience truth, their phenomenological truth, let's say. And then... having faced that truth, what do they want to do with it? What's their responsibility? What's their personal agency?

And so I came up with this name animas, which combined animas, which is Latin for the seat of courage with anima, which is life. And so the idea was to live life courageously where courage is facing what is, and then owning your part of how you move through that. And that's really, and then during the pandemic, I decided to set up the supervision school because I had, you know, I was living on a boat for two and a half years and I was like, I have nothing else to do.

So I thought, let me create an international supervision school. And that was really, really nice. And that's beautiful. I mean, we have people joining us from all over the world. Somebody just joined us from Finland yesterday. And it's just such a lovely experience to find people joining us. And that really brings us up to date. That's where I am at the moment. Just coming back to my coaching school, off the boat, ready to take the helm again in a new way. That's fantastic.

It's really interesting that you're talking about courage and life, because last week's podcast with Val Hastings, we were talking about courage. and the idea of Harry Potter's platform nine and three quarters and the courage to push at the wall in Harry Potter. So really interesting. So you've been on quite a journey. Yeah, I have. And I did an email to my community yesterday, which for me took courage.

I often find that things that take some people courage don't require courage from me, if you know what I mean, because it's just who I am and that's fine. But yesterday I did an email to my community explaining why I was coming back and the changes I was making. And that took courage because there's something about sharing your journey and the risk of it seeming narcissistic and egotistical that bothers me. And that was like, I've got to send this email.

I can't just reappear in the community randomly, unannounced, but equally, I don't want to make a big deal of it. And that was like a rule for me. It seems so funny, doesn't it? Sending an email is courageous, but it felt like, what's going to come from this? So yeah, I've been on a journey and it's been amazing in many ways. Yeah. So tell me about why you don't like the word life coaching, because I don't either.

I think the problem for me, Claire, is that I wrote a blog post on this called the Humpty Dumpty, the problem of Humpty Dumpty and Humpty Dumpty and the meaning of language, because the word coaching itself is such a bad word for what we do. So then you attach life to that. And of course you can see why people think, life coaches, they're going to tell you how to live life. Of course they're going to think that is built into the language life coach.

You know, if you go to a tennis coach, you don't expect the tennis coach to facilitate you only you expect them to kind of help you with your serve and to whatever else they do. So of course people are going to think about life coaching and yet we hope that they don't or I don't know.

It's just a shame because I think coaching in its purest form is just the most amazing medium for helping people navigate what is an incredibly complex time to be a human being in which meaning is being stripped away. We no longer attribute meaning to our occupation in such a clear way as we used to, in which relationships are breaking down, notions of who we are and what's possible of breaking down and being made available to us. And so coaching as a dialogue is just unbelievably powerful.

But when you put life coach to that, it just feels like a completely different thing. Yeah, I always think it sounds like a handbag. Tell me about that, what do you mean? Well, it sounds like a kind of accessory, you know, you're here, don't you, about celebrities having a life coach? And actually we're having a companion who's going to facilitate our thinking as we make our own meaning. Yeah. We need to think about what is a different word other than coaching, don't we?

We probably do and yet at the same time, you kind of feel like it's one of those words that just got stuck. Bit like counseling, bit like supervision. None of these words do what they say they do. I mean, that was my blog post was all about supervisors don't supervise, counselors don't cancel and coaches don't coach. And yet we're kind of left with that language. It's how do we make the best of a bad job in a sense? Yeah. Yeah. So at its heart, what is coaching? For me, coaching is a...

This sounds very pompous. So excuse me when I say this, but it's an epistemological position. That's what it is for me. Can you explain that please? Yeah, for sure. So for me, coaching is a position around knowing. It's a philosophical assumption of what knowing means or doesn't mean. And in particular, the idea that you are not the expert. And indeed, nor is the client. I sort of disagree with the client is the expert on themselves. No, but they're the best explorer of themselves.

Yeah. Yeah. And so what I mean by the epistemological position is the fundamental point of coaching for me is the idea that you come to the space with complete unknowing and you allow each other to shape what comes from that. And so that's, that's for me fundamentally what coaching is now. Does it have purposes and aims wrapped around that? Absolutely. Of course it does, but it, but fundamentally it's a position.

I mean, my, the point I like to make really is that it's the first truly egalitarian approach to human change we've ever seen. Because it's respecting both people as thinkers and facilitators of their thoughts. But it's not privileging either one of them. Now, I know you can take a different position on that. You might say, well, actually, you know, I think the client or the thinker is the dominant one. And that's completely fine.

But I have a slightly different view in as much as I think it's two human beings coming together, who rattle their brains together and rattle their bodies together in a way that creates new meaning. And that's kind of my take on it, Claire. Yeah. And it's the rattle. It's the rattle where the learning happens, isn't it? Yeah. I like that. The first fully egalitarian approach to human change we've ever seen. Yeah. And it's about partnering. Absolutely. Totally.

It's funny. When I, when I started training and coaching in the late nineties, my coaching school used to go, the client has the answer. Yes. Well, They don't because that's why they came to see a coach and the answer might be in them and the answer is out there and it's not in me. Yeah. And our responsibility in the exploring thing is to support them to notice what they need to notice. Isn't it? Absolutely.

And my, my take on this, and this is why I diverge a little, I would say probably from something like the ICF is that I do think you can be a vehicle. for ideas that do come from you, but that doesn't mean you have the answer. It's really interesting. One of my favorite writers is Ervin Yellon, who's an existentialist, a psychotherapist. And I love his writing. And often I'm reading it thinking, wow, he's essentially sounding like a coach.

And then all of a sudden he would do something that makes you realize, no, no, no, he's a psychotherapist. He will diagnose, he will interpret on behalf of the client. And that's not wrong. but it's the distinction between coaching and say his former psychotherapy where there's a certain degree, a corpus of meaning that he draws from. And that's fine. That's his school of thought.

But I do think as a coach, we can be a vehicle for meaning making with the client, but that our meaning is no better or worse than theirs. It's just a coming together of two human minds. And that's where the egalitarian bit really matters, isn't it? Because if you think I'm more powerful than you, and I offer something, then you're going to receive it as my wisdom telling you what to do. Whereas when it's egalitarian, it just goes on the table along with everything else, doesn't it? Exactly.

And people pick up or don't pick up as they choose. And the interesting thing is there are certain perverse assumptions built into the idea that we should never share our thoughts. there's a sort of perversity to that in as much as it's saying if I share my thoughts they're going to collapse under the weight of my wisdom. You know, no that might happen if they come to this in a position where they naturally give up power to somebody else.

But I think it's within our ability as a coach and for them as a partner in their thinking to go okay I'm ready to hear what you're saying and it doesn't mean I'm going to be agreeing with you coach. And so it's almost like we don't trust the client to handle anything we might offer in case they go like, Nick said this, therefore it must be like that. I don't experience human beings like that. I experienced human beings is very resilient and being able to push back.

And maybe that's about the space you create for them to do that. Yeah. And it's about the stance, isn't it? Cause it's about whether my intention is to offer or to tell. Right. And it's whether that's received as offering or telling. So if my intention is to tell and it's received as telling, then it is telling. Whereas if my intention is to offer and it's received as offering, it goes in the mix. Yeah, absolutely.

I also think there's another sort of layer to that as well, Claire, which is that the very way somebody receives what I might say will also give me more information and give us more information to work with. So I never forget, and this wasn't a coaching session, I was doing a talk and I did this talk called Time and Timelessness in Coaching, which explored the human relationship with past, present and future and how you can play with this and all sorts.

And somebody said, I'm so glad you said this, Nick, because, and then she talked about her relationship with time. And I said, I'm really curious why it matters that I said that to you. And so in a way you can even use how they receive that as further material to dive into, because that might pull out their attachment approaches or it might pull out their, their tendency to give into authority or power and that becomes more richness for exploration.

I've always said, and I haven't invented this phrase, but for me, everything is data. Everything's information. Everything that we can then go like, that's curious. What was happening there? Like they were late to the session. One of the things that people often ask me in coaching is if the client's late to the session, how do I make them turn up on time? And I'm like, that's not the issue. The issue is like, what does their lateness mean to them, to you?

Is it that the coaching is not effective? Is lateness a part of how they do life? You know, what does it mean rather than how do I control it? And so all of that stuff is just juice for me. Yeah. What does it mean rather than how do I control it? That's the sign of the journey to really being an outstanding coach, isn't it? I hope so. Because it isn't about control, is it? And it's not about making the conversation tick boxes or fit in a certain way.

It's about what's the conversation that needs to happen in this space between us in service that it serves you and your world. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And for me, meaning is such a big part of all of this. What meaning are we making? One of the things I've realised, Claire, is that fundamentally, And I'm sorry to throw out another ridiculously long philosophical word, but fundamentally coaching is all about phenomenology. What's our personal experience of something?

You know, it's not about what's true in and of itself and objectively, but what's our personal experience of the thing that we're constituting as truth. And I realized this recently, I was like, because I'm fascinated by the idea of free will and the current debate around free will. And there's a particularly strong sort of movement against free will in terms of neuroscience. And that's fine. Maybe free will doesn't exist, but I certainly experience it as free will.

And it's the experience of the thing that matters more than the truth of the thing. And that's what I'm really, really fascinated by is the meaning we make around our experience of life and of relationships and of purpose and whatever else it is that's exercising us. I love that David Rock quote from, is it Rock with Schwarz that said, we can't make meaning from the outside. You can only make meaning from the inside.

So I think that for me, the tension in coaching is sometimes there's a hunger in coaches I noticed to make the meaning. But we have to trust the process, don't we? And trust the dialogue that the person that we're talking to and listening to and being with will make their own meaning from stuff. Because that's where the transformational bit happens, isn't it? And I might think the meaning's there before they get there. Yeah. And that's about timing, isn't it?

I'm just playing with that in my mind because it comes back to my thing about as a coach, I feel like I have something else around meaning making with the person in front of me that's not only about their meaning making, but it's almost like I feel like we make, and in a way you'll agree with this Claire, but there's a particular way I'm thinking about this. We make meaning together and we're not making meaning together in that I... facilitate and catalyze meaning making in them.

It's like I'm making meaning, they're making meaning and somehow that meaning meets in the middle and ends up being something which they then decide to digest and make their own. I don't know if that makes any sense. Yes, completely. And it's up to them to do that. And there's a moment, isn't there, in that process where we've got to let go and let it do its thing or not. That's right. And where we have no control over what happens with it. Yeah, that's the critical bit, isn't it?

The thing I feel like I learned as a coach over all these years, and my team might disagree with this, I don't know, but the thing I feel like I've learned is humility. But I think humility comes in different packages, in different contexts. But when it comes to coaching, I feel like humility was the thing I learned most. Because you learn to let go of what you think you know, and you learn to let go of... sense you think you've made that's so smart.

Yeah. But it didn't stop me making sense of things. It just made me stop me being attached to that. I've just been at the International Coaching Federation Global Conference online, which was interesting. And Rachel Botsman talked about trust. So she's done a TED talk about trust. And she connects trust and humility. as being really important in the way that they're connected with each other. Because there needs to be humility and vulnerability in order to engender trust, doesn't there?

Yeah, absolutely. There's something incredibly powerful about humility, because it's almost like it's powerful and disempowering in equal measure. It disempowers you as the knower or the whatever it is that humility relates to. But it also comes from a place of great power because you're okay not needing to have answers and you're okay not being right and you're okay being you and that's sufficient in itself.

Yeah, yeah and it's not about not being worthy is it it's about it's about something else. Humility, what is it about? For me, I love the word compassion, but I often feel it's been to some extent misunderstood because in its root form, it means to suffer with, compassion to suffer with. And you think, well, suffer what? And for my mind, it's suffer being human. It suffer the conditions that none of us can escape.

I have compassion, not because I feel sorry for somebody or I'm sympathetic, but because I too have had to face difficult relationships, choices that feel really icky and I can't decide on. a sense of lack of purpose or whatever else it might be that all human beings pretty much face. So then I think about humility and I think humility is about recognizing the inherent frailty of human beings in the face of their condition and their ability to have agency in dealing with that.

And so the humility is almost like, hey, I'm no better at this than you, but I have different experiences I can bring to this and you have different experiences and that's the humility I feel. Being human together. Mm -hmm. And that goes back to partnership and an egalitarian relationship, doesn't it? Right, it does. And that risk in coaching. Go on. I was just thinking years ago, I was teaching existential coaching and I remember talking about what Nietzsche said.

And then I thought to myself, why on earth am I talking about Nietzsche? You know, he was just another bloke who figured stuff out. There was nothing, he wasn't God given. just another bloke figuring stuff out.

And I remember saying in this thing, I remember like stopping myself saying, Hey guys, one thing we need to be thinking about is you are the ultimate arbiter of all of this stuff, not Nietzsche, not Sartre, none of these people, you, because like them, you were born a baby and you had to start figuring stuff out. But that's no different for any of us.

Like I have this feeling of we're all babies, maybe not babies, I'll be a little bit too lacking in power, but we're all children trying to figure out life still. And so, you know, if you kind of realize that's all we are, then it becomes more of a playful egalitarianism. And that's kind of, that's all wraps up compassion, humility is all kind of all part of that big picture for me. And that's the refreshing thing about not having to be sorted. Yes. And that we're all a bit broken.

So true, Claire. It's interesting, isn't it? We talk about, you know, the client is, what are the three words people always say? The client is resourceful, whole and creative, I think. And there's some truth in that, of course, but they're also not those things. And likewise, so are we. Exactly. I think they're robust enough to deal with their own stuff. That's a hot spot on for me. Exactly right.

And that's funny, because I've always had this thing about when people worry about trauma and worrying about, well, what if you say something or you ask something that, you know, create some emotional response or whatever. And I think, but that was already there and they're living life. They got to your office or they got on the zoom call. Like they are pretty robust to be in coaching. Yeah. And they're not fully robust because none of us are. That's a fantasy, isn't it?

Yeah. That we're a bit broken and they're robust enough to deal with their own stuff. And also we're robust enough to deal with our own stuff and they're a bit broken. Exactly. I love that Claire. That's the human condition. It's why we come off coaching calls, questioning ourselves. I do, I mean, I don't know if you do Claire, but I come off my calls thinking, God, what a useless coach you are.

Maybe not as dramatic as that, but there's a part of me that's laughing at myself, chuckling at myself for the things I didn't say or did say, or how I felt internally that I could sense were there, but I didn't allow it to come out for whatever reason. That's the whole thing about being robust and yet vulnerable. And let's say inverted commas broken because it's in all of us. Totally, totally. So what's the most important thing I need to learn from you, Nick? About life or about me?

About coaching. About coaching. That's a really fascinating question, Claire. What's the most important thing you need to, you know, I find it so hard to answer because of the frame, the idea of you learning it from me. But I'll tell you what I think is most important to me.

That's probably a nice way for me to be able to frame it, is I truly believe that coaching has yet to find its place in the world because I think it's still seen either implicitly or explicitly as a, workplace learning tool that's predominantly still used for executives and leaders. And I went to a conference only a couple of weeks ago at Ashbridge in which you would never believe any human being in the world got coaching unless they were a leader.

I mean, that's not that they were critically saying that, but it was just that it exuded that feel. And my feeling is that coaching can just have this almost amazing place in the world to help human beings navigate. what it is to be alive today. I mean, I really believe that. And the question is, how do we get there? But that's the thing I would love to, that's what exercises me. That's what I'm interested in. And that's what I'd love to kind of figure out in some way or be part of figuring out.

But it's not something for you to learn from me, but it's definitely what, it's where my passion lies at the moment. There's something about learning that together, isn't there? Well, yeah. And what you've done throwing that in. has made me really start thinking about some of the things that I've heard over the last few days at this conference. Right. Because I don't think it has, I think you're right. I don't think it's found its place in the world.

And I guess the different question is how does coaching find its place in the world? Or how does that fully egalitarian approach to engagement and dialogue find its place? Great questions. Big questions. And it's what I'm fascinated by. It's what my first book is gonna be about, I think. It will be about transformative coaching, but in the context of... how it can be a tool for navigating life in some way. Sounds exciting. How far through writing it are you Nick?

Just started, literally just started. Yeah. Good, good. That sounds really exciting. So what's your hope for the International Centre for Coaching Supervision? Well, it's interesting for me, I would love to create a cultural supervision for coaches or be part of that. let's say, because that implies I'm going to do it single -handed. I would love to create a culture of supervision where it becomes very normal for people who do the kind of work that really requires supervision to get supervision.

In other words, I don't think all coaching needs supervision. Like not necessarily. If you are performance coaching, you're working with very classic performance issues and you stick to those performance issues, you probably don't need supervision. You probably need some mentoring and so on. I might be wrong, but. my gut feeling. But if you're doing any work that goes in depth into who somebody is, their identity, their sense of self, their emotions, you better be in supervision.

So I would love ICCS to be part of that. Now, what does that require? Well, it requires more supervisors, and it requires more supervisors who can take that deep look. And by the way, I think most supervisors can. I'm really impressed by the coaching supervisors who I come across who are already supervisors. and those who join us. There's a real depth to how they think and practice. And I love that.

But I'd love to almost, army's the wrong word nowadays, but let's, I'd love to create an army of supervisors who can do amazing work around the world and make it a norm for coaches. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm really curious by what you said that not every kind of coach needs a supervisor. Cause that also raises a question for me about if you've decided to take supervision, how often.

Yeah. and who with, so for example, my current coaching supervisor is also a psychotherapist because I chose to travel with her through a number of years because I think that somebody with that perspective on supervision is what I need in relation to the work that I deliver in terms of supervision and coaching. And then in another season, I always know who my next supervisor is. Even when I know that I may not go to them for five years or even 10 years, I still know who I think they might be.

Yeah. Because that matters, I think. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I really love that, Claire. And I love the fact that you're currently in supervision with somebody who brings that other kind of perspective. And I think I'm not saying that's necessary, but I do think it does add something when somebody's got that other string to their bow, whether that's psychotherapy or something else.

I think for me, when we're delivering a lot of work, it really matters that I go to somebody who's not in my tribe for the work that I do. Because I think if I went to somebody who was in my tribe, however you define tribes, and the people who come to me come to somebody who's in their tribe, I think we're starting to lose some really amazing learning. That's a really good point. So there's a level at which for me difference is the kind of number one criteria.

Well, it's the Gestalt idea of novelty, isn't it? Change happens when novelty is introduced into a system and it's that novelty that actually creates learning. If everything is what you already know, what changes? Yeah, yeah. We have quite a lot of coaches that you've trained at Animas come to us for mental coaching or supervision. I love that because it's a different tribe. Yeah. And that I think adds huge value. And in the same way, people we've trained go to others. Yes. For the same reason.

It's fascinating you say that, Claire, because the one thing I've noticed about the coaching world is how often it gets very loyal to its home school. So I trained at Barefoot or I trained at Animas or I trained at the coaching academy or I trained at Ashford or I trained at wherever you and unless the new offering is almost brand free.

which is what the International Centre for Coaching Supervision is, and I deliberately made it so, people tend not to hop into an alternative school that also offers coach training. In other words, if I offered coach supervision training from Animas, it would be way less taken up than if offered through a brand -free organisation, because people get very loyal to their home school, which is really fascinating, because to me, it should be embrace all the possibilities.

Yeah, and when I did my coach supervision training, a long time ago. There were two particular offerings on the table and one of them was an offering which lots of ICF coaches went to. So I deliberately went to the other ones because for that reason, it wasn't easy because getting into a tribe that's already a tribe is tricky because you're the kind of outlier aren't you? But it was just really good learning because actually there were lots of things they said that I didn't agree with.

And I had to think, well, what is it about this that makes me not agree and how do I make my own meaning? Right. I don't know if you would feel the same as this, Claire, but for me, that becomes some of the most transformative moments when you're in a tribe that's not naturally yours. Because let me share a little story.

I did a two year masters at Metanoia in psychological coaching and really Metanoia is fundamentally psychotherapy institute, but it's also infused with a lot of Gestalt approaches. And I tend to come from a different approach, relatively cognitive and existential. And I remember those two years, I just did not fit in. Like I was, you used the word outlier and I always felt like that as well. And I remember at the end of one session, we would sit around for half an hour and just reflect.

I think it was just the sort of a process group. And I remember saying, well, I've learned one thing this weekend, which is that I don't belong. And the facilitator, Simon, was like, tell us more about that, Nick. And I said, well, I realized, and I was yada, yada, yada, you know, giving myself all the excuses to feel disoriented and disliked and whatever else. And I look back at those two years as some of the most transformative learning I ever did, because you really made me face me.

Like, it's one thing to be there going, I don't belong here. It's another to go like, I don't know, what's really going on here for me? And sometimes that takes a while to percolate, I feel. Like, you might get through those two, I got through those two years. feeling like, what a relief.

But then a year later, I was like, wow, what an amazing two year experience that was, you know, so I think sometimes the discomfort of not belonging actually creates the best, the best kind of learning and growth. Belonging. Yeah, well, that I mean, we could have another whole podcast on belonging, couldn't we? I'm thinking about that Maya Angelou quote that in fact, caused us to move regions. Because she said, I belong everywhere. I belong nowhere. no place at all.

The price is high, the reward is great. Yeah, I belong no place. I belong every place, no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great. It's amazing. Having just come off two and a half years living on a boat and cruising around the UK with all my belongings and my wife's belongings in a six foot wide boat. I resonate with that in a particular way. But you said it kind of triggered you to move. So what was that for you? It was recognising that we didn't belong where we were.

And that yet we belonged everywhere. And a friend said to me, belonging is really important to you, isn't it? It was about seven or eight years ago. He said, belonging is really important to you. If you ever decided to move, where would you go? And we realized it was a risk and that we belong everywhere and we belong nowhere. So moving would be okay actually. And it has been amazing. Yeah, that's very beautiful, isn't it?

It's funny, Irving Yellow, I'm a bit obsessed by Irving, I suppose, but he came up with the phrase, every contact leaves a trace. I'm always aware when I'm talking with somebody, in this case with you, Claire, of a moment where somebody says something that leaves a trace, and that's left a trace, just that little story, because my wife and I are always struggling with, you know, where do we belong?

She's Chinese, I'm from Cornwall, I've lived in London since I was 17, she came to England three, four years ago. And in a way, we're both always struggling with where do we belong? And that's just that little story you've told there is going to, I can tell it's going to stay in my mind and start to play.

And that's my hope for this podcast actually, Nick, which is that every contact does leave a trace and that as we talk, people are getting to know you, they're getting to know me, they're getting to know others that just has one tiny drip that enables people to make some meaning. Exactly. That's all it takes, isn't it? Yeah. Wow. Well, what a pleasure to talk to you today, Nick. I'm sure we'll have another podcast with you because there's always so much to talk about.

If people want to get in touch with you, how do they make contact? I would say the best way is to go to my LinkedIn profile, which I think is just Nick S for Sierra Bolton, LinkedIn slash whatever. Yeah. But you can also see Animas at Animas Coaching. And that's like animals without the L. Animascoaching .com. Brilliant. Thank you, Nick. What a pleasure to talk to you this morning. Bye bye, everybody. Bye bye, Nick. Thank you.

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