“Virgin territory” All rights reserved. © This article appeared in Coaching at Work, Vol 6, Issue 5, 2011 and has been reproduced in full by kind permission of the publisher. Not to be distributed electronically or made available to public websites without permission from the publisher. For personal and internal organisational use only. Coaching at Work is a bi-monthly magazine, which is available in printed or digital format. Subscription includes access to all articles published in the last five years; free registration on our global coach listing, worth £50; a monthly e-newsletter, and membership of the Coaching at Work global 3,000 plus Coaching at Work LinkedIn group. There are discounts on subscriptions available to members of the main professional bodies and some coach training providers. For more information, go to www.coaching-at-work.com To subscribe, call 0844 322 1274 or visit website www.coaching-at-work.info Coaching really did begin at home for Carol Wilson. Self-directed learning led her to run Richard Branson’s newly formed Virgin Records, and help her spread the word about coaching. It’s a passion, she tells Liz Hall VIRgIN TERRITORY hen Carol been co-founded by entrepreneur now that the more you check up on Wilson first Richard Branson. people, the less they will bother, entered the “Everyone was under 24 and because what is the point if it’s UK’s job none of us had had a proper job, going to be checked anyway?” market, she including Richard. So we each had Wilson would come up with W found it hard to fit in. It was the 70s to take responsibility for ourselves.” plans, think through the risks then and workplace culture was highly Like Wilson, Branson had been approach Branson for funding. authoritarian. brought up – by his mother – in an “Brilliant idea”, he would say. Wilson wasn’t impressed. She’d environment of praise and to think “Having been told it was been raised in a family she later for himself. “So naturally at work brilliant, we would do things we realised had a coaching culture. he would think back to his mother hadn’t dreamt we could do. Very She’d been praised often and been and adopt a coaching style.” often things would go wrong and brought up to be independent and Unsurprisingly, when Branson Richard was the first port of call. to think for herself. It had been the asked her what she wanted to do, But he wouldn’t tell you what to same at her grammar school.For shepersonal said: “Anything but ause secretary.” only do, he would ask you for the “I was terribly headstrong, but I “Why not run our music solution and you would do it.” had no fear because I had grown company?”, he offered. up in an atmosphere where I was This was in 1974 and neither Anything goes encouraged to think,” says Wilson. Branson nor Wilson had a clue In the UK, the 60s and 70s were Luckily, in those days there were how to do this. Wilson was given a decades of challenging rules. plenty of jobs and she “stumbled” free rein, which, she says, made her “Our generation was unbounded into Virgin Records, which had just more thorough. “I tell managers by anything and we trusted ourselves to make decisions. It was the start of self-directed learning, of Our generation was unbounded by the client having the answers.” Soon, Wilson and her colleagues anything and we trusted ourselves to were “pulling the rugs out from make decisions. It was the beginning the likes of EMI and RCA”, rival music companies. Wilson of self-directed learning discovered Sting and ran her own 24 Coaching at Work September/October | Vol 6 Issue 5 © 2011 | www.coaching-at-work.com COACHING PROFILE label, Dindisc, signing up The Human League, The Buzzcocks and Tom Petty. Although she loved music and had attended the Royal College of Music, what she really liked was working with people. Golden age “It was the golden age of music and everyone wanted originality. You weren’t there to tell them what to do, you were there to support them emotionally, with money and the best team you could offer. I loved watching them blossom and play on Top of the Pops for the first time. Nothing beats it. And it’s the same with coaching clients. The coach has to do very little. “It wasn’t just the praise and good feedback, it was being allowed to make mistakes and therefore learn from them”, says Wilson. “At Virgin, there was no blame. If people are doing things wrong, what is the point in telling them off? Look at what they are doing well and give them time to sort it out.” It’s the beauty of what happens when you let people think for themselves. It’s magic It’s nothing new, but it’s magic When everyone started talking about coaching around 2000, A decade or so later, in 1986, had been used to. She wasn’t a big Wilson realised this was pretty Virgin “moved into the majors”. fan of what was going on outside much what had been going on in It was still a relatively small the company either: “The 80s were her family and at Virgin. company and Wilson wanted to very cruel, mean, hard times. “It’s the beauty of what happens see what else she could achieve so Bullying was respected and people when you let people think for she moved to A&R (Artists & didn’t talk about workplace stress.” themselves. It’s nothing new, but Repertoire, the talent scouting and She became intrigued about it’s magic. Now the ingredients development arm of a music management culture, devouring have been identified and it has business) at Polydor with a books on it when she could. The been bottled as coaching, which £3.7 billion budget. One Minute Manager by Kenneth makes it easier to help people who One day, she was called into her Blanchard remains a favourite. haven’t grown up with it.” boss’s office, and told to spend She left the music industry in She trained as a coach, including more on expenses as she was 1996, using the money from her in NLP with John Grinder, Tim “making everyone else look bad”. golden handshake to set up a Gallwey of The Inner Game and However, there were more limits on property development business. But more recently Nancy Kline of the what she could do than at Virgin. It still she missed the “interlocking of Thinking Environment. Exposure had a counter-culture to what she minds with people”. to the latter prompted her to 26 Coaching at Work September/October | Vol 6 Issue 5 © 2011 | www.coaching-at-work.com COACHING PROFILE review the content of the coach training she offers through an I believe in lifelong learning. Lots of Open Certificate, recognised by the Institute of Leadership and people find a niche and then don’t bother Management and the Association going on anyone else’s courses for Coaching, and customised manager-coach training programmes for corporate clients. Wilson is in demand as a developed Clean Language and She now puts much more public speaker even though she Emergent Knowledge for work emphasis on thinking. used to hate it. She claims she was with trauma and anxiety sufferers. “So many coaches have shiny “cured” by Clean Language, which The approaches use metaphors. tools they want to use, but has become a passion and “The brain uses symbols so it can sometimes you just have to shut underpins all of her coaching examine things that are too your mouth. I now teach people and thinking. damaging to remember.” first to shut up and listen, then if “I used to be terrified and bad at Wilson and others captured lots that isn’t working, to get out their it for all those years but I came of Grove’s work and she is now shiny tools.” away from a second session and I writing a book on this as well as She is somewhat scathing about just knew I was going to do it.” working on a doctorate on Clean people who may have started with Language through Middlesex something original, but who don’t Lifeblood University. bother learning anything new. The passion started when she had Along with helping people “I believe in lifelong learning. Jungian therapy in her 30s – the blossom and spreading coaching Lots of people find a niche and work with symbols helped Wilson skills, writing is another passion of then don’t bother going on anyone resolve lots of issues. She later hers: “It is my lifeblood.” else’s training courses.” worked with a university student She has written Best Practice in In 2005, she met Sir John who suffered from extreme exam Performance Coaching (Kogan Whitmore, setting up a joint nerves. She invited him to imagine Page), due out in paperback soon. venture with him, Performance he was stepping through the door She also has four as yet Coach Training, through which she into the exam room and to unpublished novels under her belt runs coach training programmes. describe what he felt and saw. and is working on a fifth. She discovered they both grew up “He kept saying he didn’t see She took a sabbatical at one in Orsett, Essex, where the baronet’s anything and that he was an point to team up with long- family’s estate had been based.