It had been a late night out with good friends, where, what and who didn’t seem important. I was waking up in a taxi far away and dawn was breaking. Strangely, I felt like I’d had a lovely night’s sleep. 

As I looked out the windscreen I could see a covering of light rain, it felt like a warm blanket and the light of sun was growing and glowing from an unspecific direction. I remember having the impression that the mist and cloud were lifting and that we were on the way to a brighter day. 

The driver spoke as if we had been talking and I had drifted off, picking up in the middle of a conversation that I didn’t remember starting, “…so what levels do you coach?” he asked. He had a warm personality, and seemed to be enquiring from a place of genuine interest and care. He had the air of an old friend and I felt open, relaxed and happy to talk. Somehow the conversation fitted with what I had been thinking about recently in relation to business positioning and focus. “Some in the C-suite, lots of Directors, and I work with groups and teams that cross all levels. It varies.” I replied, before drifting off into thought once more.  

This time, I was thinking about how to explain the difference between different types of coaching. Everyone uses words to describe their coaching, so one of the challenges is explaining in words the difference between some on-line commoditised entry-level situational coaching, or maybe a well-being tick box, and something deeper that challenges and supports people to work on the level of their shadow and being to create transformational change in their lives, leadership, and organisations. 

Then it hit me…. What levels do you coach? The real question isn’t about hierarchy, it’s about the depth of the experience. Are we working on the level of the heart and soul of the person or organisation in front of us? Or are we working at a higher situational level, rearranging furniture for a short term event? Both can be useful, the nuance is to be conscious and clear about how we are working and the secret costs and benefits of our approach.

As coaches with some experience, we know that we can’t take people deeper than we have been ourselves. We need to do our own work to be truly present and resourced for our clients so that we are supporting them rather than doing our own work through them. When I first trained as a coach, I thought this “going deeper” was something I could go and do, like buying a pair of trainers. Several years later, I realise that this is the work that never ends. The self as a doorway to learning is a lifelong gift, like a book that is always waiting for us to revisit with fresh yet ancient pages just for us.  

The late great John O’Donohue said that our dreams are our subconscious’s way of handing little notes and directions to our conscious mind and the least we can do is to pay a little attention sometimes. Occasionally, they might even be a taxi driver taking us to a brighter day.