You are seeking coaching because you want to improve something. To achieve improvement, something has to change. But not all change is improvement.
How do you know that the change you are making is an improvement?
It’s important for you to know that the work we are doing together is making a difference, helping you towards achieving your goals. The only way to know is to measure.
When we choose the right things to measure, and the right analytical tools to use with the data that we collect, we can monitor progress effectively and make the best decisions to guide our plans for future action.
Our starting point is always a clear goal, or outcome: something that you want to do differently in day to day life, at work, at school, or in sports. Before your first session with me I will ask you what you want to achieve, by when. Working towards achieving this outcome goal will involve making changes to a number of different processes or structures. It’s important to have measures for those changes, not just your goal. You may feel that you are stuck on a plateau with your outcome measure. This may particularly be the case when you are making changes to the sensory and/or motor functioning of your nervous system. It can take time for improvement to the outcome measure to emerge, so in the meantime, systematically tracking data for the changes in your processes will help to maintain motivation, to make sense of your improvement story, and to plan day to day and week to week adjustments.
For example, you may be having trouble sleeping, and we agree on an outcome goal ‘to wake at a regular time feeling well rested, at least 6 days out of 7, by November’. I will support you to make changes designed to achieve this, and to measure how each change is contributing to improvement in sleep.
Measures might relate to:
- Breathing through your nose while sleeping (with or without tape to assist)
- Stopping looking at ‘blue light’ screens an agreed duration before bed, and keeping ‘blue light’ devices out of the bedroom
- Frequency of waking during the night with joint or muscle pain
- Postures and movement patterns that you practise during the evening, before bed, or even in bed, that adjust your brain waves towards ‘sleep’ mode
- Making practical preparations for the next morning that will reduce overnight anxiety
- Changes to the routine of others in your household that might affect your sleep
Depending on your goals, and the types of changes involved, I will be constantly re-assessing, analysing, and reviewing activities that we are working on in your coached sessions. I will sometimes ask you to send me data from your exercises between sessions (for example number of paces when breath holding under particular conditions, or strokes per length when swimming at a given tempo), or I’ll access shared data (task averages for a regular exercise on Interactive Metronome, or listening duration on Safe and Sound Protocol), so that I can analyse it and recommend changes in your activities before I see you again, or use the data to help plan your next session with me. Alternatively, your coached sessions may include skills for analysis of data for improvement, so you can analyse your own data and make decisions on adjustments accordingly.
I apply the principles of improvement science to support client achievements in all areas of coaching that I offer. Whatever your goal for improving your health, wellbeing, or performance in sports or day to day life, I will use data analysis to help you to maintain motivation and to understand what changes are contributing to real improvements.
If you would prefer to track your own progress, confident that you are collecting the right data, and analysing it effectively to help you to make the best decisions about next steps, I can help you with that. I offer bespoke individual and group training in improvement science skills, with a particular focus on understanding data. This can be face to face or remote (via Zoom). Contact me for more information about tailored programmes. I have an online course in development, available from 2026.
