Why I got into coaching

David Love, leadership coach and coach supervisor, who is working with the College to create our ILM Level 7 Certificate for Executive and Senior Level Coaches and Mentors, reflects on his pathway into coaching.

I’ve been coaching now for over 20 years and have lately been reflecting on why the concept and practice continues to energise me. I became involved with coaching when working at the Office for Public Management (OPM) – the country’s first public interest company*. To be honest, when we first added coaching to our bespoke public service leadership development programmes I wondered how the time (90 – 120 minutes with one person) could be filled. What if the person I was working with didn’t say much? At least in a group development session I could be sure someone would say something!

However, I quickly discovered providing a safe, off-line space for busy leaders to explore their challenges didn’t result in long silences – rather people valued the time focused entirely on them and their interests, and it turned out there was plenty to talk about. I became fascinated by the power of coaching to enable clients to, for example, unlock blockages, enable emotions to be managed and generate meaningful insights. I really got the “coaching bug”, gained the ILM Diploma in Executive Coaching & Leadership Mentoring (an earlier version of the Certificate now offered by Iron Mill College) and engaged with a host of related supervisory and developmental networks.

In 2013 I left full-time employment to go solo and focus entirely on leadership coaching and related activities such as supervising and mentoring other coaches, as well as designing and facilitating a range of coach development activities, including for the growing numbers of in-house coaches in organisations like the NHS. My one-to-one coaching work focuses exclusively on public service leaders and managers because I continue to have a strong personal connection to contributing to the improvement of social outcomes through publicly funded organisations.

I’m continually intrigued by how two people in a room (or these days, on-line) can move purposefully between the deeply personal and a host of wider systemic factors in the world of work beyond. The intersection of those two worlds (which are, of course, really just one world) is where a lot of learning and growth takes place.

In recent years I have begun writing about coaching – a process, often in collaboration with other practitioners, which contributes greatly to my own CPPD. I’m always keen to keep my practice fresh and have introduced creative activities from my private life into my work. For many years I have created cartoons and collages (most notably for my children and now my grandchildren) and a few years back began to wonder how these might be of benefit to clients. I began to bring cartooning and other art-based approaches into work with clients and was astounded by the transformative impact of creating radically different lenses through which they can view their challenges and successes. Now much, but not all, of my work involves art-based practice**.

I have a strong belief in the power of creativity to enhance our personal wellbeing and to find our way through seemingly intractable issues. By “creativity” I don’t just mean the first things that spring to mind, like painting or poetry – creativity is present in all human endeavour. The world faces immense challenges, for example, poverty, inequality and the existential threats associated with the climate crisis. We will need to muster all our creativity as part of the ways forward and I’m convinced coaching can make a valuable contribution to that end.

… and on that note, I leave you with one of my cartoons …

By David Love
Find David on LinkedIn

Written March 2026

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* Public interest companies: private companies where the surpluses made are re-invested in the organisation for use in furthering its public interest aims. In OPM’s case this meant the funding of research that supported organisational development and stakeholder engagement work focused on creating improved social outcomes.

** I was one of the first coaches to gain the Association for Coaching-backed Diploma in Art-based Coaching in 2020.