Why Craftspeople Need Coaching, Not Just Business Advice
I've recently been working with clients from the crafts sector who are very passionate about their crafts. Crafts in the UK have for a long time been dwindling as mass production and overseas producers have been undercutting and endangering traditional crafts in the United Kingdom.
Crafts in the UK
If you've ever read Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects by Glenn Adamson, a curator and craft scholar, formerly director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, you'll understand how important it is to know about the objects we surround ourselves with — the maker, the materials, the thought and time to make it. The handmade object with all of its history, the tools used to make it, the maker's marks and the unique qualities that make it special.
There are a lot of craftspeople in the UK. Organisations like Heritage Crafts, the Crafts Council, and Design & Crafts Council Ireland work tirelessly to support makers, designers and traditional manual crafts.
When I start working with clients in the crafts sector we explore what success looks like for them. It's important to allow time to explore this in coaching sessions. Quite often people think they know where they are heading but have never really thought about what it is going to provide for them.
Do they want a large craft business employing people and selling to international markets, or do they want to remain a sole trader and keep things small? Not everyone's ambition is the same — priorities in life shift and change. What's important to someone starting out is different from someone who has had a previous career in a different world from the crafts world entirely. How much money do they need to live the life they want? Do they have a mortgage or dependants? What is the end game? What's the most important part of the business? What gives them the most satisfaction? The list goes on.
Advice or Time to Think
When I was younger I was awarded grants and loans to start a business making handmade tiles I was awarded a free business start-up courses and a business mentor. Although it was all very useful and generous, back then no one ever asked me what I actually wanted from owning my own craft business. I was given advice, not asked questions about what I did and what I really wanted. The assumption was that you start a business and grow it, not how I might like to shape it into something that suited my lifestyle, skills and ambition.
Of course business mentors and courses have their place, but advice is easy to give — is it what creatives actually need? There are hundreds of resources, books, podcasts, YouTube videos and more that explain how to write a business plan, do a cashflow projection, create a marketing strategy… the list goes on and on.
What you can't get quite so easily is time to think, explore, and have someone ask you the right questions at the right time — questions that make you stop and really examine things on a deeper level, bounce around ideas, solve problems, talk about fears and the inner critic.
Time to think and explore in coaching is a much better forum for growth and is central to the individual who, underneath the surface, is probably the best person to shape their own future. Often working in isolation, creatives get caught up in their own thoughts — whereas people working in larger organisations have colleagues, peers or line managers, unless they are lucky enough to have a coach provided by their employer.
The skill of the coach is to let the client lead the conversation and not lead the client. Often in a coaching session the client turns up with a whole month's worth of thoughts, ambitions and problems. My role in our conversations is to help the client focus on what is the most pressing thing to work on during that session — getting clarity, exploring ideas, and thinking of ways to move forward with realistic steps. The process is incredibly helpful especially for clients with ADHD. Clients often have the answers already; they just need time to think and reflect. It's really common at the start of a session for a client to say to me, "I was thinking after our last session about…". Reflection is a big part of the coaching process. Not everything happens in the session — real thinking can happen outside the session, hours or days later. That insight would probably not have happened without having had that time to think in a coaching session.
I think coaching is one of the most powerful tools to help people who need or want to move forward with something. I myself left a well-paid job when I was very unhappy, to start a business with the help of a coach. I made the leap and have had the most incredible experiences working all over the world for over 16 years. Although my coaching speciality is helping creatives with business and a lot of those are in the crafts sector, we go much deeper than standard business advice — coaching is about getting under the skin of what it means to be a human, to have an idea and create a life worth living. If you're in the craft sector and want to discuss how coaching can help you, book a discovery call today.