About
My Journey
16 years ago, I was an Operations Manager working in facilities management. Good leaders and managers had a reputation for being strong-minded talkers who dominated the conversation. I wasn’t really like that and I was struggling to have an impact. I knew I had to do something different but didn’t know what. By pure luck, I ended up on a coaching course. It was my massive ‘light bulb’ moment. On that life-changing day, I discovered my preferred management style was more coaching than directing, and from then on I became increasingly interested in people development and coaching.
Back then when I thought of a coach, it was someone in a football context running up and down a touchline bellowing instructions and directing play. I’d been on the end of something similar in the boardroom and it didn’t get the best out of me. I preferred to be allowed to think things through and make shared decisions.
I began to study more about coaching and then in 2008 began my formal training with CTI as a Co-Active Coach. Their training was excellent and I also became very interested in K. Anders Ericsson’s model of “Deliberate Practice”, which made me realise how much we can achieve when we focus our attention and push ourselves to the edge of our comfort zones.
I was also fascinated to discover how coaching is backed up by neuroscience – Ann Betz was writing about how coaching tools profoundly helped learners to develop positive new neural networks. This meant people could be calmer, be more reflective and make better choices. This is how I wanted to be as a leader, manager and coach. In my mind this had to lead to more effective, successful workforces. I was hooked.
Since then I’ve continued to see the power coaching can have when coupled with excellent deliberate practice. When people focus their attention in the right direction, they can make the most incredible changes to how they think and work.
Unsighted Coaching is powerful deliberate practice. It works effectively – as do many other forms of coaching – and supports growth. If you want to know more about my success stories, go to my testimonials and case studies.
Mick O’Flaherty
Learning & Development Coach and Consultant
The Development of Unsighted...
In 2016, I was working at Fulham F.C. with Kit Symons and Sean Reed helping to coach the coaches.
Often it was a challenge to engage players in meaningful, reflective conversations that were player-led. We agreed that for this to happen, it would require learning for both the coaches and the players.
We began to design a deliberate practice and learning needs analysis tool. This meant periodically removing coaches from play so they became ‘unsighted’. When this happened, it was noticeable how quickly the conversational dynamics changed. Players readily grasped the opportunity to lead team talks. The coaches were encouraged to video themselves in these player-led team talks. They quickly picked up their tendency to ask leading, closed, fishing questions that stifled group conversation. With the support of an experienced Unsighted coach, the football coach could reflect on and evaluate their footage to develop a more catalytic coaching style.
This way of coach/player development became known as ‘Unsighted Coaching’. Since then, the method of using recordings or footage to assist learning about self has proved invaluable for leaders, managers and coaches in mainstream business. This approach never fails to provide new information about ‘self’ and others that can get missed in the moment. This means teams can work collaboratively and learn ways of communicating that are more effective and deliver long-term sustainable results.
