Category: My own stories

My Coaching Journey #2

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My second video blog about my coaching journey

Transcript of video below:

Good morning and welcome to my second video blog. The overall arch of these blogs is going to be about my journey to aligning my passions with my career. But at the moment, the focus is going to be on me becoming an agile or ways of working coach at Telstra, which is, as mentioned my last blog, huge first step towards aligning my passion with my career.

So, there’s a couple of things I want to talk about today. The first being that, since our last, my last blog, I have realized what a privilege it is to be given this opportunity to learn about being a ways of working coach. I didn’t realize at the time how unique it was around the world. And I did know that I was very lucky. But I didn’t realize that I was uniquely lucky. And I’m really pleased that Telstra willing to invest in training 50 of us to become coaches, they selected us for our mindset, and they will teach us the technical items.

It’s been a fabulous journey for the past three or so weeks is our last blog. One of the things is I’ve had to do is unlearn. My role in the past is one of the things I’ve had to unlearn. I’ve had to stop being focused on delivery of actual, you know, projects, I’ve had to stop expecting to be busy for 10 hours a day and not going to my work done. And being under a lot of pressure constantly, it’s a different kind of pressure; that pressure to learn. And it’s retraining my brain to learn so much, there’s been days where I felt a bit lost because I think my brain was full. And I needed to time to process and take the knowledge in before I moved on to learning something new. So that’s all been an adjustment and an unlearning which has been really good for me, I think.

The next thing I’ll talk about was how we are learning. So, to start with, we kicked off with a four day coaching camp, which was very intensive, but really well paced. We came out of the that with a lot of new knowledge and also a learning backlog. So, all the things that we knew, that we didn’t know, that four days is a bit of a roller coaster of ‘’there’s so much I don’t know’’, to, ‘’Oh, I think I’ve got this’’ to ‘’Oh my god, there’s so much I don’t know”, again. So that’s been a really, that was a really interesting four days and very enjoyable.

The way we are being assessed is through a series of badges. So to become coaches, there’s a minimum of five badges we need to earn. And we are on our pathway to do that. So I have my very first badge. And I’m a little bit addicted to badges already. The other badges I need to learn, earn sorry, through facilitating, through coaching and through other aspects of the skills that I need to gain. I love the idea of a way of saying “Yep, we’ve witnessed this person doing this, and we know that they’re okay to go out into the wild’’.

The other way that we’re learning is that we’ve been assigned to mentors, I have three actually, I got very lucky: three for the price of one. And they are fantastic. They have assigned us to agile teams. So, we are witnessing, observing their ceremonies. Over time, we will hopefully be able to take part in facilitating some of those ceremonies, and gain our experience and knowledge that way. Our mentors, they’re really supportive as you’d expect from a mentor. But our mentors, I feel particularly glad that we have who we have. They’ve been really good.

The next part of my journey is to keep learning of course, but also yesterday, we had to nominate the areas, the missions in Telstra that we would most like to work with. No guarantees, of course, but the fact that we got asked about our missions is really cool. So I got to select I had a great time yesterday going through some of the missions in the areas will be moving to and picking my favourites. Very excited to find out which one I get assigned to.

The learning through observing, through training courses, and through my own, you know, research and books, videos, articles, will continue obviously in parallel. And there are other areas are getting involved in as well, such as facilitating training courses, and things like that. So it’s a really exciting time for me, and I will be back in a week also to tell you about what the next steps have been. Thanks

Why “stepping out of your comfort zone”?

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Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
Words by me (Fiona)

I often get asked about why I am so passionate about sharing stories of people stepping out of their comfort zone. So today I thought I would tell you all! 

The answer is twofold, with the simpler part being I love that I can give people an opportunity to share their stories. To be honest that part was unexpected. I didn’t realise that so many people had stories that they had no platform to share.  I am honoured to be able to provide them that outlet. 

The other part is less straightforward. I am hoping that by sharing such a variety of stories about what can happen outside your comfort zone that I encourage others to step out of theirs.  

Comfort zones are lovely – hence the name – and it can be easy to stay there. Sometimes it is important to stay there for many reasons.  

But sometimes a step outside of that zone can create magic. Not always. Sometimes you fail. But you learn. And sometimes you succeed and experience fantastic outcomes. You grow. You change. You become more confident. 

If you google “Benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone” a plethora of articles appear. 4, 5, 7 and 16 reasons why to do so. Some are very concrete – new challenges improve brain health, you get to experience something new and possibly learn a new skill. Others are more subjective such as increased resilience, as your comfort zone expands new opportunities become visible. 

Stepping out of my comfort zone has led to some of my most memorable experiences – from moving overseas, bungee jumping, gliding, public speaking, attending a summit, to playing a singing bowl. It has also led to some of my most uncomfortable moments – feeling nauseous as the glider was put into a sharp turn, asking the CEO to be interviewed for my blog (he said maybe later this year). But overwhelmingly the experiences have been positive. Though sometimes that is only on reflection! 

So after a lot of words – my second reason is that I want as many people as possible to experience the benefits that come with taking that step into the uncomfortable. 

MY COACHING JOURNEY – A VIDEO BLOG

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The idea behind this vlog is to share my journey as I move from where I am in my career now towards something that brings me as much joy as this blog does.

This first vlog is already 2 weeks old, I had some trouble with finding editing software I could intuitively understand. Excuse the watermark! I will redo this video without it if people are interested in me doing more. It requires an investment of several hundred dollars, or to keep hunting for free software I understand!

I would love feedback on it (I was told not to look straight at the camera but it looks wrong to me for example!) and an indication of interest in more like this!

Please see below for an audio transcript:

Hi, my name is Fiona and I am the creator and author of the blog stepping out of your comfort zone where I interview people and share my own stories about stepping out of your comfort zone. Today what I wanted to talk to you about is why I created the blog, where I am in my career path at the moment and where I’d like to be. And the idea is that this vlog will be an ongoing story of how I move closer to where I’d actually like to be in my career. So I started the blog a in January this year, so about five months ago, as a result of reading some books by Dorie Clark. I recommend them if you haven’t read them. And also talking to a couple of people, my friend Mark Baker, and some people at work. What I was passionate about was sharing stories about stepping out of the comfort zone to encourage other people to do the same. I personally have found that when I step out of my comfort zone, that is when awesome things happen. And I hear lots of people nervous about doing that, they’re scared of failing. They don’t take risks. Lots of people do, don’t get me wrong, but there are people who don’t. And I feel like they’re missing out. So the idea of the blog was to say, Hey, good things happen out of the comfort zone. Why don’t you give it a try? Do something small, you know, walk a different way home, whatever it is, that step out of the comfort zone, and just see what happens. I wanted to originally do public speaking, but I’m a long way for being prepared to do that. So a blog was a logical place to start and then I worried I wouldn’t have enough stories. So the idea came up of interviewing other people.

I really love that idea but wasn’t sure other people would. Turns out when I asked lots of people were happy to share their stories and to my honour people actually thanked me in some cases for giving them a platform for sharing their stories. So it’s been really fantastic. When I was asked at a summit a couple of weeks ago, what I was passionate about, it wasn’t my day job. I love my day job, don’t get me wrong, but what I’m really passionate about is stepping out of my comfort zone and encouraging other people to do the same. So I talked to people about my blog, and then I talk to people about the fact that my blog was here, and my career was here. And I got some tips about how to bring those two closer together.

I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like. But my goal is definitely to bring the two of them closer together. And one thing that has happened to do that is, I have as of Monday, four days ago, started as a ways of working coach at Telstra, where work where I’ll be learning about coaching, facilitating training, also about agile, lean, DevOps and human centred design. Now, I think that’s an excellent first step towards my ultimate goal, which I’m not sure that’s what that looks like yet. But plan is I’ve next 12 months to learn all I can about all of those seven topics, particularly coaching, facilitating and training, and then also use that time to explore what I’d like to do next. What next step brings me closer to the passion that I find doing this blog. And what I plan to do is share that journey through this video log. So I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that over time I get closer to working out what next looks like.

Some of the suggestions have been a book, including some of the stories, which could lead potentially to speaking. That’s a very ambitious target for me right now. The other option is becoming a coach to encourage people to step out of their comfort zone. And that’s something that also has some real appeal. Whether enough people are interested in that just to make it a career, again, I don’t know. But the first step is to learn about coaching, facilitating and training and discovering if I do love them as much I think I’m going to, and working out what next and in the meantime, hopefully, building up some more readership on my blog, and maybe getting some new watchers/listeners via my video blog. Thank you very much for listening, and I will talk again next week. Thank you.

Sydney Skinny!

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Photo by Helmuts Rudzitis on Unsplash
Words by me (Fiona Whitehead) based on my own experience

A few weeks ago I took a big step out of my comfort zone!  

I did a group charity skinny dip. 

My body is generous. And my self-consciousness about this is often very high. After 30 + years of trying to diet my body into what society finds acceptable I discovered HAES. And I realised that maybe I should accept that I am not one of the 5% for whom diets are successful. That maybe it was time to stop trying to make my body a certain shape and size and instead focus on my health and fitness. That takes a lot of effort. Accepting my body as it is was one of the first steps, and it is taking me years. Stopping weighing myself was a lot easier, mostly. There are times when I have to provide my weight (such as for gliding) and despite my best self talk that can set me back into wanting to give dieting ‘one last try’. 

During this process I watched Taryn Brumfitt’s documentary “embrace”. And also skinny dipped with a dear friend for my very first time. And found myself intrigued by the idea of the Sydney Skinny. It is a skinny dip in Sydney that raises money for The Charlie Teo Foundation. You sign up for a ‘wave’ of people, in my case the women only wave, and at the allocated time you walk down to the beach, strip off and swim!  

Before the swim I was quite nervous. I had flown up to Sydney on my own, and was not even sure I could swim 300m in the ocean! Strangely the nakedness was not a part of my fear. 

It was a wet and cold Sydney Sunday in March when the event happened. In the waiting area above the beach everyone was crowded under a marquee, the only dryish place available. I ended up sharing my table with a group of fabulous women who were in my wave. Once they discovered I was on my own they ‘adopted’ me into their group. And so ended my fear of being alone! 

As the earlier waves started coming back up from the beach (wrapped in wet sarongs) they were talking about the shortening of the course due to the bad weather (it was not until later that I learned that was due to increased shark activity!). Fear number 2 was reducing now too. 

When our wave was called we headed out into the rain to start the 15 minute walk to the water. It was raining so hard I was wet through to my underwear by the time we reached the beach! 

We stripped off and placed our clothes on a convenient rock wall, about 20 metres from the water’s edge, turned and walked down to the starting point.  

There was so much laughter and joy.  

Such freedom.  

With many giggles and splashes we started our swim. More like 150m than 300 later I was done! It went so fast. I did slow down towards the end and just savoured the moment.  

A wet (due to the rain!) sarong was given to each of us as we exited and after some amusing photoshoots we made our way back to the top of the hill.  

It was as I was getting changed back into some dry clothes that I realised that I had not thought about my body size or shape at all during the event.  

Not been self-conscious.  

Not felt ‘different’. 

I think, though it is hard to be sure, that my body confidence has improved since then. There is something about being part of so much joy that makes the way your body looks feel less important. What you do with it takes precedence. Today I think I will do a little strutting with mine. Clothed of course. 

From summit to singing bowl

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Photo by Eneko Uruñuela on Unsplash
Words by Fiona Whitehead

What an amazing week I have had, with parts a long way out of my comfort zone, but mostly surrounded by amazing women!

I will focus on the parts that were out of my comfort zone – after all that is the theme of the blog – but please be aware that the majority of the week was like a snuggly, warm hug.

A little out of my comfort zone was attending the SheEO Australia Summit in Sydney on Monday.  A room full of women all with a common set of goals (#radicalgenerosity along with creating companies and products that improve the world we live in) is never going to be uncomfortable, but for me spending 10 hours with people I don’t know is not something I usually seek out. In this case I am so glad I did!

A little further from my comfort zone was putting up my hand during the #ask session to request more people to share their stories with me for this blog.  I can’t wait to share the results with you all, but asking was hard! I felt embarrassed and awkward, but got a great response so it was worth it!

On Tuesday I drove nearly 1000km from Sydney to visit a friend on the NSW north coast. Not really uncomfortable, just different. I find driving long distances on my own weirdly zen.

Fast forward to Friday and I was at a yoga retreat, something I did the same time last year, and did not think that I would find myself out of my comfort zone at all… next time I should read the schedule more carefully!

Some background for you – I struggle a lot with rhythm and tone. Someone once tried to teach me the drums when I was young and kept telling me to hit the drum with the beat of the song playing… I thought I was! A 6-year-old gave up on me playing guitar hero with her after trying me on all instruments and me failing entirely to stay on beat. Someone once asked if I was singing along to the same song they could hear playing in the car – my version sounded so different. Anyway, you get the context.

On Friday afternoon I joined my very first positive music circle (think drum circle but with more instruments)! When asked my goal for the session I just wanted to be more accepting of my lack of rhythm. I think trepidation is the best way to describe my initial feeling!

I started gently by picking an instrument I felt I could do little damage with – a frog with a ridged back and a stick to run along the ridges. And I found myself having fun! Even when we had to replace the instrument sound with a vocal version. I wandered around the room happily with my little frog. Even doing a fairly enthusiastic ‘woo’ after each 5 beats. Then we sat down again and I found myself with a drum. And I decided just to go for it. We were repeatedly told that there were no wrong notes, which gave me a lot of comfort. I won’t say I was the core of the music we created, but I was definitely contributing! And more importantly having a fabulous time!

Then the really interesting instruments came out. I played a wha wha tube, a happy drum, and eventually a singing bowl. At this stage (the end of the session) everyone was just playing and adding to the music however they wished. The facilitator then began slowly stopping instruments one by one. Until there was just me with my singing bowl and some bells. Then it was just me. I was making music. On my own. Not hiding in a group.

I cried tears of joy as I finished off our session.

I may have to find myself a music circle.

Sliding into a new career

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Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash
Words by Fiona Whitehead

I have had a few career changes, but changing from the career you spent 4 years getting a degree in is a big step. Especially if you only qualified 3 years earlier! 

I loved Radiation Therapy. I really felt I was making a difference, and building a rapport with patients came naturally to me. Maybe too naturally. My ability to empathise was causing me to get quite upset about some patients’ situations or outcomes. The teenager who had just been accepted into the school of dance, who did not yet know that the treatment for her very curable brain tumour would mean she never danced at that elite level again. The young mum who held her teddy bear as we treated her for 3 weeks in the hope that she would respond and go back to her normal self. She didn’t. The nun who shared her story with a nervous patient suffering the same type of cancer. The children. Oh my, the children. Brave or scared, happy or upset. The children broke my heart. 

You may have realised from that little outpouring that I was not able to maintain the emotional distance that would give that career path longevity! 

But what next?  Psychology?  Or would I just get too involved with a different type of patient? IT maybe? But did I really want to go back and get another degree?  

Then fate stepped in. I moved to the UK and signed up with an agency that provided radiation therapists to London hospitals (I can’t recall the name of the agency – but my payslips had owls on them!). In my first meeting they were most apologetic – they had a job but it was not in a hospital. It was user acceptance testing radiation therapy software in a company outside of London. But it paid an extra 2 pounds per hour to cover the travel! I will be honest – I didn’t know software testing was even a thing people did. But I signed up. 16 pounds per hour was not to be sneezed at!

Turns out I loved software testing. The attention to detail, the fact that a dead computer did not cause me to cry, the people I worked with were great, and I worked in an office, without wearing a uniform! 

I stayed as a temp at this company for about 2 years. There was a brief stint in a London hospital between software releases, but working on the treatment machine that treated all the children just reinforced my need to change careers. I moved from UAT testing to system testing as my experience grew. And that is when the two developers I worked with started nagging. ‘Go contracting’ they’d say. ‘I have no qualifications’ I would argue. Back and forth for weeks. They upped the ante by leaving ‘IT contractor’ magazine open on my desk with testing jobs circled and the hourly rate highlighted. Often. And eventually I decided there was no harm in applying. The worst was they would not hire me and I would remain where I was.

So, I applied for 3 jobs. And had three job offers (thank you Y2K!). At double my temp hourly rate. 

In mid-1999 I began what ended up being a 15-year career as a contract tester/ test manager. 

Thank you, Toby and Greg! 

3, 2, 1 Bungee!

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Yep, this was me! Way back in 1996.

Words by Fiona Whitehead

Have you ever been so scared you thought you would be physically ill?

That was me as I prepared to bungee jump off a bridge over the Zambesi River in Zimbabwe.

I was at the start of a 5-week safari through 5 countries in Eastern Africa. When I booked, I had noticed that the Bungee Jump was one of the optional extras and decided immediately I was doing it.  There is perhaps a bit of adrenaline junkie in me.

The location was Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, wonderfully picturesque!  You jump off a bridge, slightly downriver from the falls, over a fast flowing river.

When I jumped there was a fair bit of preparation.  There was a video to watch, including people jumping around the world, heads being dunked in rivers, huge smiles all round.  There was the queueing up.  There was the hearing that your second jump is free if you do it nekkid! We also watched someone do a reverse jump where the rope was attached to a harness on his chest and he jumped backwards. I have never witnessed terror like I saw on his face as he ‘fell’ backwards.

Then it was my turn.

As they fastened towels and ropes around my ankles, they tried to distract me with chatter.  It didn’t really work. I remember smiling faces, and have photo evidence of me smiling back, but I can’t really remember anything other than the fast approach of fear. And when I shuffled to the edge of the platform and looked down 190 metres to the water below, I began to feel nausea, a lot of nausea.  I turned to the person helping and whispered: “I think I am going to throw up”.  His response?  “Wait until you get to the bottom or you will bounce back up through it”.  Such a digusting image made my mind go kind of blank, and when he followed that with “3, 2, 1 Bungee” I just jumped!

A perfect swan dive (as evidenced by the video) off the side of the bridge was soon followed by the realisation that I could not feel the rope they had attached.  Did they forget to tie it? Had it come off?  Was I swan diving to my death?  The team beneath the bridge confirm I swore very loudly about then! (Those who know me will know how out of character swearing as!).

The best part of the jump?  That moment when I felt the tension of the rope kick in.  Joy does not come purer than that!

Unlike the rumours to the contrary, there was no sudden jerk at the bottom of my jump.  Just a gradual realisation that the scenery was going to opposite way.  That was followed by me ever so gently bouncing and swinging on the end of an 111m rope, giving the thumbs up for my photo when asked.

I bounced and swung for what felt like a long time! They have to wait until you completely stop before they come to attach the winch to pull you back up to the bridge.  But the view did not get less spectacular. And the rope was not slipping off my ankles (despite that fear crossing my mind too!).

Would I bungee jump again?  You bet I would!  In fact I wonder why I haven’t…

Feel the fear and move to Canada!

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So many firsts in Canada – fresh snow being one of the most joyous!

Words by Fiona Whitehead

The first time I recall ‘feeling the fear and doing it anyway’ was moving from Australia to Canada at the age of 22.

To put this in context – I had always lived at home even when at University. I had only been overseas once – 2 weeks in Bali with my best friend when I was 18.

I was terrified once I committed to going. How was I going to manage so far from everyone and everything I knew?

So why was I going?

As a child I read a lot. Books by LM Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon) were some of my favourites and were set on Prince Edward Island off the east coast of Canada. I desperately wanted to visit.

At university I studied Radiation Therapy and I discovered that there was a world-wide shortage of this skill.

The final piece of the puzzle was being advised near the end of our intern year at Peter Mac (a cancer specialist hospital and the only place to practice Radiation Therapy in Melbourne at the time) that not all 25 interns would be offered jobs the next year.

Given a job was not guaranteed I decided it was time to implement my ”Move to Canada” plan.

We didn’t have email or internet access at that time (yes, I am of that era) so I wrote old fashioned snail-mail letters to all 19 Radiation Therapy departments across Canada, with my resume attached, asking if they had work.

As luck or fate would have it, the head of the Radiation Therapy Department at NEORCC (North Eastern Ontario Regional Cancer Center) had been on a 2-year exchange to Melbourne earlier in her career and liked the quality of the graduates she had seen. A quick call by Jane to some of her contacts still working at Peter Mac and I was offered the job! Not only was there no interview other than a call from Jane espousing the benefits of working at NEORCC, the employment offer included my flight and first month’s accommodation!

After a short period to consider, and chat to fellow Australians who had worked there previously, I accepted!

(I found out later that Sudbury had an image problem, and could not recruit many locals to work there. I was part of the 19 international staff in a team of 25!)

There was a time when I could have backed out gracefully- Peter Mac decided I was ranked highly enough among my peers for them to offer me a job, but I stuck with my plan.

It took about 6 weeks to get a visa, and arrange and hold my best friend’s wedding (how awesome is she to set the date so I could be there??), and be on my way.

During that 6 weeks I was full of fear. My method to avoid giving in to my fear and cancelling my move was to tell as many people as possible that I was leaving in order to make changing my mind harder than going! I was excited as well as scared. A long lived dream was coming true!

As I landed in Toronto a local started talking to me (no chance earlier – I am a plane sleeper) and asked where I was headed. When I said Sudbury his advice was to turn around right then and go back to Melbourne. That didn’t make me even more nervous… much!

I am glad to say I didn’t take his advice. Very glad.

From being picked up at the airport by my new boss – with a couple of bags of groceries ‘to get me started’ – to learning to cross country ski. From kayaking across lakes and seeing bears and moose in the wild to meeting amazing people who are still my lifelong friends. From my first snowfall to discovering what ‘plug in your car’ means. From learning that Domino’s Pizza delivers even in -50C to building my first snowman. Every experience was amazing. I have zero regrets.

So, was my first experience of stepping out of my comfort zone a big one? Probably. Would I do it again? I did 😊. Many times. But that is the subject of other blogs.