Paul Williamson

In 2015, as part of my studies to become a qualified coach, I was asked to answer two questions – ‘Who am I?’ and ‘How am I going to coach?’ Answering these two deceptively simple questions changed my life, provided a coaching model I still use to this day, and eventually led me to write and illustrate the book ‘Pheasant Dreams’. In many ways the book is an expression of who I am. It’s a celebration of culture, the arts, and childhood, as well as being a meditation on life in general, and the importance of compassion, creativity, difference and love.

As a child, my first love was art. Some of my earliest memories are of me trying to draw as well as my Mom. My Mom went to Art School and was (and still is) incredibly ‘arty’. My Dad was a quantity surveyor and used to bring back old account books which I’d draw in (on the reverse side of the pages filled with numbers). My Mom would draw on one side and I’d try to copy what she’d drawn on the adjacent page. We’d also get lots of old fold-out architectural plans, which we’d draw on the back of – which was great for making massive pictures! When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, without hesitation, I would say ‘I want to be an artist.’

In my teens I was obsessed with films and wanted to be a film director. I listened to classical film music all the time. The music of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, John Barry and Bernard Herrmann had an almost magical effect on me. It ignited my imagination, conjured up images and stories and evoked all sorts of emotions. I have a huge collection of film music albums and collecting and listening to this type of music is still a big part of my life.

When I went to secondary school, I made another big discovery - drama. I was really shy and lacked confidence, but when I had a role to play on stage, I found I really blossomed. I loved changing my voice and appearance. It was so liberating to be big and bold, to project my voice and pretend to be someone else. Here I learned how to walk in someone else’s shoes. To play a character well, I discovered you had to dig deep and understand what made another person tick, and in the process, I often found out more about myself too. During this time, I went on lots of school theatre trips and as I sat in the dark auditorium, I was entranced by what I saw. I fell in love with theatre and began writing scripts and telling stories myself. I won some playwriting competitions in my early twenties and was a writer for some theatre-in-education projects too. Little did I know that, in adulthood, I would end up working in theatre for over twenty years in various jobs from Box Office to Human Resources.

Now I work in Learning and Development focusing on talent development for a global live entertainment group. I get to use so many of my passions in my work. I use art when I create imagery and logos for the learning programmes I run. I create and edit my own learning videos. I get to stand up and perform (as myself) to large groups of people using many of the skills I learned through acting. I often use music in my work, and the deep listening skills I’ve developed since childhood, appreciating the multiple layers of sound produced by an orchestra, serve me well as a coach.

You’ll see and feel all these influences in the book ‘Pheasant Dreams’ and I hope it will inspire readers to keep searching for themselves, appreciate those moments of perfect imperfection… and follow their pheasant!