Mr Burns Coaching

Growing Up

I'm originally from London, which was a fascinating and intense place to be raised during the 80s, 90s and 00s. My parents gave me a great start, sending me to an independent school with impressive facilities and a rich heritage in academic and sporting success. They let me get on with what I could, and encouraged me however they knew. It was always surprising and exhausting for my family that I seemed to be so energised by learning, except when I was required to work at it myself.

Away from school, I spent most of my time with close family and lots of relatives around all of England and Scotland. As a family with lots of creative and outdoor interests, we enjoyed listening to and playing music, riding bikes and horses, swimming and sailing, climbing trees and making woodland hideouts, walking dogs and skiing in the Highlands during Winter.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence I was always seen as a 'bright boy', helpful and attentive, cheery and cheeky, but a regular daydreamer who was very sensitive and often bullied. I made friends quite easily, could talk to anyone but didn't feel like I fit in to any particular group. I could be the initiator and leader of a game or plan, but would be overlooked for the majority of popular activities, being described as 'shy' or 'lacking bravery'.

I dropped out of school, never completed my studies (although I tried three times) and never went to University. At the time, learning, studying, writing essays, revising for exams and creating coursework projects all seemed overwhelming and impossibly complex. I generally became intensely emotional when trying to start any task and either angry or upset, then gave up.

Career Steps

Around the same time as leaving school a few things happened: I started driving and became even more fascinated with cars and other vehicles; I also began having a social life with friends, spending lots of time in London cafés, bars and nightclubs; then I started working, in restaurants, bars, nightclubs and even driving buses, recovery trucks and chauffeuring! In each place, I would be excited to learn the processes and best practices, ask questions about the customer experience, then offer solutions I came up with to improve things.

In all roles I thrived on meeting and talking with customers and helping them enjoy their experience. Whether making cocktails, serving meals, transporting their car home, or making them dance for hours on the dancefloor, my goal was always to enrich people's lives.

In 2002 I got my first office job, working in Customer Service for a footwear company. Within a couple of years I'd taken on national and regional accounts, and then was encouraged to join the company's Systems team, as I kept asking that team how I could help improve the systems and processes that we were using to serve our customers. I spent the next six years developing my business, systems and training facilitation skills across two companies, before burning out and changing paths completely.

To work out where I should aim for next, I was drawn for the first time to look properly at a brand; to see the company, their vision and their values, to seek a role where I felt my natural skills would fit. I joined Apple as a Genius in one of their London flagship Stores, and spent nearly eight years helping customers and colleagues every day. I developed my skills in active listening, inclusive language, accessibility learning, mentoring and training new team members, conflict resolution in complex customer scenarios; in such a high-traffic, customer-centric environment we were met with a huge variety of opportunities to help and work with people and come up with creative solutions for their needs.

I left Apple in 2019 to join a Software Engineering company, and became an IT Support Engineer. Over five years this role offered huge development opportunities for me, becoming more confident in my insightful, introspective and resourceful nature; using these characteristics and my high-level critical thinking to deliver exceptional experiences for all colleagues in the company. Through Brexit, COVID-19, company acquisitions and many other challenges I found myself being relied on for increasing amounts of service excellence, but this also led to burnout.

ADHD realisations

During my life this far there have been many signs of my neurodivergence. In my youth this wasn't noticed due to societal norms, because I presented as a 'bright boy, if only he would pay attention", and I could get involved and do things, even if it was hugely difficult for me to start doing them of my own accord.

Through many friendships, relationships, work colleague interactions I learned more and more that I make connections easily, work very well in a team, I can sense and respond easily to emotions but I can't read minds and can't deal with ambiguity or unexpected and unexplained context-switching.

My nature is to be optimistic, solutions-focused, process-driven, kind, engaged and reliable. In many ways I'm a people-pleaser, but in various scenarios I've hyper-focused so much and worried myself to such overwhelming levels that I shut down and couldn't cope, leading to burnout. This was the catalyst for me to pursue an ADHD diagnosis, after various comments from friends and colleagues over the years.

I received my diagnosis in early 2022; combined inattentive/impulsive types of ADHD, with Autistic traits and mild dyslexia. This was a life-changing, exciting moment and a huge relief. At last, I could attribute so many of my characteristics to neurodivergent thinking, and could begin the journey of learning about myself through new eyes.

There was a combination of relief that I wasn't actually lazy, stupid, rude, unhelpful or unreliable, allowing me to reframe those negative thoughts using my character strengths: I'm actually diligent, thoughtful, determined, resourceful and passionate. Then the grief, imagining all the ways I could have done more and succeeded if I'd had better support with my learning and development at a much younger age. Then anger, that I'd spent so much of my life up to this point feeling that I wasn't good enough at anything, that I'd always have to push myself too hard to get anything done to required standards, and still felt unsuccessful.

Fortunately, my chronic optimism and forward-looking nature always grounds me. I'm grateful to my Psychiatrist, my G.P., my family and friends, my partner, colleagues and coaches for enabling me to drive my own success and for being there to counsel me when I feel lost. At each step of this recent journey I've pushed forward and sought further learning opportunities, asked new questions, then shared my experiences and knowledge with anyone who's interested.