Frankly, my journey as a coach has been one of deep personal exploration for me, as well as for my clients, so that my first eight years as Director of Learning for Life (Consulting) has been as much about my own journey as it has been about the lives and work of my clients. It has been a time of examining my values and making adjustments to increasingly live and work in line with my values. It has been a time of examining old beliefs, letting go of some in favour of new beliefs which support me as someone who is authentic, resourceful and whole. Many times it has brought me to new thresholds which are waiting to be crossed if I am to be true to myself and to make my contribution in the world.
This year, a few well-targeted questions from the wonderful coach Hilary Cochrane made me put aside plans I had made and to reconfigure the year ahead, signing up with Kathy Mallary in the US to examine my marketing at the same time as signing up with Carolyn Free Pearce as my coaching supervisor and continuing my work with my coach of five years, Lynne Fairchild. What a great team!
Even with this superb team, the work that awaits me is well and truly my own and I have quickly started to bump up against and explore some of my own limitations as I examine the mother of all marketing questions: what is my niche? It’s one thing, for example, to say working with senior leaders and I say it with ease. At the same time, which leaders? And what is it about those leaders that marks me out as a coach (and which, come to speak of it, attracts people who are not leaders to seek me out)?
In recent days I have reached out to others to invite them to share their own experiences of identifying their own niche, sharing my question (‘to niche, or not to niche?’) with a number of groups to which I belong. I have been grateful for the depth and variety of answers which help me to test my own thinking.
At the same time, questions from each member of my team are bringing me right back home. What if, asked Kathy last week, your true genius is in the area of wholeness and integration? I recognise this immediately, recognising how much I have sought in my own life to reconcile the irreconcilable and how often I work with clients to go beyond inner conflict to help them understand and respond to underlying needs. Today, Carolyn has thrown in the question of authenticity and integrity and this, too, resonates with me, recognising as I do my own path to authentic self-expression as well as my conviction that my clients will give their best performance as well as achieve their deepest satisfaction when they are able to be themselves. As a coach I enjoy working in deep partnership with my clients and over long periods in ways which many coaches are not.
Somehow, none of this is new and all of this is new. As I wonder what it means to have these themes of wholeness, integration and authenticity as a point of departure for my niche (rather than leadership and emotional intelligence) I recognise both that I am coming home and that I am treading a new and uncertain path. It is a path which requires faith – the trust and conviction that if I share my strengths my true clients will find me.
To write this posting is to step over the threshold and go public, even whilst recognising that I am only just beginning to answer the question: what is my niche? In my own way and in my own professional sphere, this is my ‘coming out’.
Dorothy,
I know we're meeting next week but thought I'd add an observation or two prompted by your deep reflections on 'niche'. I guess the reason I'm dropping you a line is because my take on niche and yours [perhaps prompted / directed by the nature of the questions you refer to] seem to be coming from rather different directions.
Authenticity, integrations and wholeness do I am sure reflect your specialisation, talent, preferences or expertise – but I wonder whether your increased clarity and insight about that really help you enough? Does it effectively define the niche you are in as a coach, mentor, consultant, advisor well enough or distinctively enough to be useful to you? At best you are defining your client base / target market as those who are seeking authenticity, wholeness or integration but does that help? Rather a lot of people from all over the place would seek that out.
If you can clarify the following then I think you can determine your niche more concretely ad more specifically:
What sort of people are they?
Doing what sorts of things?
Aspiring to what?
Struggling with what?
In what roles?
Faced by what challenges?
In what type of organisations?
In what type of sector?
Where in the world?
At what level?
At what stage in their careers?
In which business sector?
Served already by whom?
Seeking what that they can't find in the market?
With what propensity to spend?
Clarity about these will define your 'niche'
Once you niche is defines you then need to differentiate yourself from others already active in that niche:
what are your USPs?
why should you be bought / retained rather than your competitors?
how does the experience of working with you differ? [perhaps where authenticity, integration and wholeness finally come in??]
in what way do your clients achieve their goals better, faster, more deeply / profoundly, more cost effectively than your competitors?
Answer these and then I think you have a sound business proposition having defined your niche and what distinguishes you from others in that niche.
If that answer also happens to ring true with the things that you aspire to, that deeply satisfy you, and provide the rewards that you seek then you have the virtuous circle of opportunity, work and reward we all seek [but too often rarely find]
Niches are distinct places in and external world [in ecosystem] not places in an internal world as wholeness, integration and authenticity seem to be.
Regards,
Anton
I am grateful to Anton for taking time to share his thoughts and I recognise that what I have shared in my posting are the earliest of glimmers as I seek to move from a broad platform of Executive Coaching at Senior Leadership levels to a tightly defined niche in which the light shines brightly.
And yes, I resonate strongly to Anton's comment:
"If that answer also happens to ring true with the things that you aspire to, that deeply satisfy you, and provide the rewards that you seek then you have the virtuous circle of opportunity, work and reward we all seek [but too often rarely find]"
Thank you, Anton.