You Don’t Leave Yourself at the Office Door

When you walk into work, you don’t magically become a different person. The job might require a certain tone of voice, a sharper outfit, or a particular way of speaking in meetings - but you are still you.

• The version of you that had a restless night.

• The you that’s replaying a conversation from the weekend.

• The you that’s been carrying a quiet worry, a piece of old advice, or a long-held habit for years.

This is the you that shows up in every room you walk into - whether that’s a boardroom, a team meeting, or your own kitchen.

It’s also why coaching can never be just about the role you do when in the business. You can’t separate the “work self” from the rest of your life - no matter how hard you try.

When people start coaching, they often come in with a clear work-related goal:

• “I want to manage my team better.”

• “I want to make better decisions under pressure.”

• “I want to step into a bigger role.”

But pretty quickly, something interesting happens. They start noticing how the same patterns, habits, and blind spots that appear at work… are also showing up elsewhere.

The way they handle conflict with a colleague looks a lot like the way they handle tension at home. The energy they bring to a client presentation is the same energy they bring to family dinners. The boundaries they do - or don’t - set at work mirror the ones they keep in friendships.

Coaching works because it sees all of you - not just the part that sits behind a desk or leads a team. When you make a shift in one area, it creates ripples in all the others.

That’s why, for many people, the biggest breakthroughs aren’t about solving the work challenge they came in with. They’re about becoming a calmer, clearer, more intentional version of themselves in every space they occupy.

You can’t grow one version of you in isolation. When you strengthen the whole of you - your awareness, your boundaries, your energy - every part of your life benefits.

And that’s the kind of change that lasts.

I wrote me about this in my blog this week. You can read it here