Weekly Reflections: The Fight
This week’s reflection: A childhood fight taught me that real strength - and the essence of coaching- is not in dominating the moment, but in creating a pause where the right question can shift everything.
The Fight: What I Learned From a Fight About Coaching
There are many things that inform how I coach.
Training.
Experience.
Leaders I have worked with.
Leaders I have been.
But some of the earliest lessons came long before I knew what coaching was.
One of them came from a fight.
In truth, fighting had been part of my life for years.
I had fought most days since I first went to school.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I was often the target for people who needed to prove they were tougher.
Over time you learn to survive that.
You learn to read the energy in a corridor.
You learn who is safe and who isn’t.
You learn how quickly a situation can turn.
You learn to react before you have time to think.
But eventually I became tired of fighting.
Tired of the adrenaline.
Tired of the pointlessness.
Tired of situations where even when you “won”, something still felt lost.
Somewhere along the way I began to wonder if there was another way.
Not weaker.
Smarter.
That is where the questions began.
The fight I remember most was not in a playground corridor.
It was on a field.
A dozen lads had followed me.
Then they jumped me.
Twelve voices.
Shouting.
Provoking.
Encircling.
In moments like that there is no time to think in neat sentences.
Adrenaline narrows everything.
You act.
You defend.
You survive.
I fought.
And then - somewhere in the chaos - something shifted.
Not around me.
Inside me.
I realised I could keep swinging.
Or I could create space.
That was the first time I remember consciously asking a question in the middle of conflict.
What are we doing here?
They stopped.
Not all at once.
But enough.
There was a pause.
I stood there and stared at them.
They stared back.
No one moved.
After a few seconds - which felt like minutes - I turned and walked away.
I was lucky.
There was something in the air that night.
Something that meant I could not be pushed down.
But it was the question that changed the direction.
It made them pause and think.
And it meant I was safe.
Shaken; a little stirred.
And different.
Years later, I understand that moment as one of my first lessons in coaching.
Coaching is not about control
In a fight, the instinct is to dominate.
To end the situation.
To prove something.
Leaders often arrive in coaching in their own version of that fight.
Pressure from above.
Expectations from below.
Politics from the side.
Noise everywhere.
Their instinct is to swing harder.
Move faster.
Push through.
My role is rarely to teach them a better punch.
It is to help them find the pause.
The pause creates possibility
When a leader truly pauses, several things become available:
Perspective.
Choice.
Strategy.
Humanity.
You begin to see what is actually happening - not just what it feels like is happening.
You can ask:
What am I reacting to?
What matters most here?
Who do I need to be right now?
What outcome am I really trying to create?
From there, better decisions follow.
Not softer decisions.
Often braver ones.
Courage is not always loud
We are often taught that courage looks like aggression.
Dominance.
Standing your ground at all costs.
But deeper courage is internal.
The courage to step back when your whole body wants to surge forward.
The courage to think when everything around you is emotional.
The courage to walk away when ego wants victory.
In leadership this shows up as:
Not reacting to provocation.
Holding long-term purpose over short-term point scoring.
Choosing integrity over popularity.
Staying steady when others escalate.
This is not weakness.
It is discipline.
Coaching is structured calm in the middle of noise
At its best, coaching recreates that moment of stepping back - safely.
Leadership can feel like a fight.
Deadlines.
Performance pressure.
Conflicting agendas.
Identity questions.
Fear of failure.
A powerful coaching conversation slows time down.
It widens the field of vision.
It helps a leader move from:
Reaction → Reflection → Response → Results.
That is where real performance change happens.
Not in theory.
In practice.
What stayed with me
I did not learn how to win more fights that day.
I learned how to stop needing them.
I learned that strength is not only force.
It is awareness.
I learned that the right question at the right moment can shift the direction of a situation — sometimes an entire life.
Much of my work now is helping leaders find that same moment.
Before damage is done.
Before relationships fracture.
Before strategy collapses under pressure
Helping good people lead great things often starts here.
Not with grand vision.
With one honest question.
What are we doing here?
Executive Coach and writer on leadership, stewardship and the responsibilities that come with influence.
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