My Motivation To Write The Transformational Coach

You may have read a little of my reasoning for writing The Transformational Coach within the book’s introduction. While mentoring coaches and providing them feedback, I often observed that their mindsets were hindering their skillset improvement. We must make mindset shifts before skillset shifts if we want the skillset changes to be sustainable. So, I decided to write up my observations – all 83 of them! 

But there’s more to writing a book than simply writing up what you know. A person may want to write a book but never get around to it. It’s possible that you have a book within you but haven’t got to it yet.  

Perhaps I should step back in time to talk about my writing journey and how I came to be an author. 

My English teacher wasn’t very complimentary about my writing skills. My predicted grades were much lower than what I actually achieved. Because of this, I thought I couldn’t write well. This is an age-old story told by many adults who have been discouraged from pursuing skills they were told they were not good at during their school years.

But when I was in a corporate role, one of my colleagues encouraged me to start writing an internal blog. They believed that I had so many valuable insights to share and thought the blog would be a good place to share it. At the time, blogging was a new technology, and I found the idea of blogging to be a bit daunting. I didn’t think I could do it…but I did, and the long and the short of it was that I found my voice. People actually commented on and liked my writing, and those dopamine hits kept me going. This was such a blessing for me, as I now write almost in my sleep (it’s true, I dream about blog posts and LinkedIn posts!).

Having (re)discovered my confidence in writing–and, in particular, believing that I had something worthwhile to say–there was a little voice in the back of my mind saying, “You should write a book!” But I kept finding books where the author had already written what I wanted to say. I hadn’t yet found something unique that was all mine to write about. I kept looking for my elusive niche. 

Then two things happened. First, I realized that although some of the content that I might have written about had already been written, it wasn’t written in my voice and didn’t convey my perspective. This meant that there was still room for me to express my unique take on these topics. And second, I started to understand how a book could be a marketing tool for my business, and that writing a book was not an end in itself. 

So, what did I want to achieve in my business that I had a unique voice about? I wanted to do more mentor coaching for coaches. Mentor Coaching: A Practical Guide was born, to position myself and my business as a leader in this field. And that naturally led to writing The Transformational Coach–everything that I observed when I was mentor coaching. Now, I am writing the next book, which is about the whole coaching experience and how to enhance coaching readiness for the thinker. 

I can’t stop myself from writing! It’s a bit of an addiction, I suppose. However, I also find that writing helps me better understand my own thoughts and articulate what I know. Masters of their craft often can’t explain what they have become unconsciously competent in; writing helps me make my unconscious competence more conscious.     

I wonder what unconscious competencies you might want to make conscious for yourself? And how writing might be a business development tool for you? 

About the Author

Clare Norman, founder of Clare Norman Coaching Associates, is a Master Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation, mentor coach, and coach supervisor.

Book References:

1. Norman, Clare. The Transformational Coach: Free Your Thinking and Break Through to Coaching Mastery. Right Book Press, 2022.
2. Norman, Clare. Mentor coaching: A Practical Guide. McGraw-Hill Education, 2020.