When a woman's foot doesn't fit into "women's" shoes, you'll begin to doubt the usefulness of labels.

People who know me well know I'm a big fan of minimalist, barefoot shoes. Shoes with a toebox that fits the shape of your toes, allowing splay, and a flexible sole that allows movement of all the tiny balancing muscles and bones in our feet. Shoes that empower our body to do what we're already able to do, and develop what we're capable of. At my core, this defines how I live my life, and how I empower others.

Nobody looks at a shoe box and assumes it fits every foot inside the labeled size. Communication deserves the same skepticism toward its own labels. That belief carries directly into how I coach, even though coaching communication and coaching feet sound like unrelated things.

Why people arrive wanting a label

In my work, we get a lot of people who arrive with labels. From themselves, or from others. ADHD. CTO. Introvert. I'm proud of the service I built that doesn't put people in a box. And yet, people crave boxes. They want the program for people with ADHD. They want the communication course for execs.

I understand why. Labels feel like a shortcut. They help people locate themselves, communicate their needs, find community. But when the foot doesn't fit the shoe, labels become insufficient.

Why the box still shows up in intake calls

Every intake call, I hear some version of the same request: is there a track for people like me. The honest answer is that the track is you, specifically, not a category you happen to belong to. Two people with the exact same label can need completely different things worked on, and one program built for both of them will always underserve at least one.

That's uncomfortable for anyone selling programs at scale, because granular is slower and harder to package. It's also the only version of coaching that actually respects how different two people with the same label can be.

What actually happens in 1:1 coaching

In 1:1 coaching, everyone is different. We look at your habits as they actually are, not as the label predicts them to be. Maybe you're a strong communicator across the board except for your tone of voice. Maybe you need support with both your messaging and your enunciation. A label can't tell you which of those is true for you specifically. Only looking at your actual habits can.

This is slower than handing someone a pre-built curriculum labeled for their category. It's also the only version that actually fits, the same way a shoe built around the actual shape of your foot will always outperform a shoe built around the average shape of a category of feet.

Let's get granular about your habits. What do you need? What don't you need? Those two questions do more work than any label ever could, because the answer is different for every single person who walks in with the same label attached to their name.

I help professionals who want to be clear and impactful, whatever label they walked in with, or without. A label can start the conversation. It shouldn't finish it.