From Merry-Go-Round to Meaningful: Building a Coaching Practice in the Middle East - Part 1 of 3

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that really has nothing to do with how hard you work. It is more about the exhaustion of working hard at or in the wrong thing. Being capable, competent, determined to do well and professionally successful doesn’t mean that somewhere beneath all of that, there is a quiet, but a sense that none of the effort is adding up to something that really truly matters at a heart - and mind level, which brings about a great reward – not in monetary terms - but in meaning.

That was where I found myself before moving to Qatar in the Middle East.

I had spent years in the corporate world in Australia and then the UK - essentially moving money through business development and marketing roles, managing projects, and supporting organisations and teams to function more efficiently. I met wonderful people everywhere I went, and it paid well. And it also left me feeling deeply hollow.

I used to describe it as being on a merry-go-round. The ride was fast, the scenery kept changing, but I was never actually going anywhere. When I moved from Australia to the UK - drawn by the hope of something different, something more meaningful - I eventually found myself on the same ride. Just a different fairground.

What I did not yet have the language for back then was values and purpose. I know now that my deepest values - connection, making a genuine difference for people, freedom, growth - were often unmet. I had been following a different value instead. Safety. The steady, high salary, the known path, a respectable role. And safety, it turned out, was quietly costing me everything that mattered to me.

The audacious decision

It was my husband's job application that created the conditions for everything to change.

Al Jazeera, the international news network based in Doha, Qatar, was looking for someone with his skills. When a friend recommend he apply, we have to admit, we didn’t jump at the opportunity as we’d never heard of the country (not like it is known today). But I knew I needed a change and I wanted explore new frontiers outside of my comfort zone.

The conversation that changed everything

My husband got the role. We moved and I arrived in Qatar with no job, no plan, and for the first time in a long time - a genuine sense that something was about to become possible.

I felt seen and heard. And I began to start to understand the shape of my own values and what it would mean to live them. And I realised that coaching was not just something I wanted to receive. It was something I was meant to give. There were no coaching schools in Qatar at the time - I would have to travel to Australia to do my training.

The timing was impractical. The leap was significant, and I made it anyway. And it was during that training in Australia, because of that travel, I decided to create a coach training school in Doha.

I recall that decision on the day I put up my hand to volunteer to be coached in the front of the room. The trainer asked me what I wanted to bring into coaching: I said I want to start up a coach training school in Doha, Qatar. The trainer laughed and said ‘Jeanine, you won’t be able to set up a school.’ And then she moved onto somebody else to coach.

That moment stayed with me. I wasn’t going to let what they said hold me back. I was not deterred. Instead I was determined to make it happen. I still wonder if the trainer knew that I like to be challenged – that it is one powerful way that gets me into action.

My first client and what she taught me

When I returned to Qatar after my training, I was still working as a consultant when the opportunity arrived to work with my first corporate client - far sooner than I had anticipated. I had asked my Director if there might be an opportunity to offer coaching with some of our clients. To my surprise, he said yes, and within months of returning from my training in Australia, the major government organisation my consulting firm worked with asked if I would coach the Director of one of their departments.

A senior, formidable, highly respected Qatari woman arrived for our first session and there was a slight moment of uncertainty about whether I had the cultural understanding, the credibility and the courage to hold this space well. But I ‘leaned into’ the session with her.

What she taught me in that first session - and in every session that followed - was one of the most important lessons I have carried through fifteen years of coaching in the Gulf: Do not be afraid of titles, culture – importantly - be respectful and trust the human being.

Beneath every layer of formality, every cultural expectation and every professional persona - there is a person with values, fears, longings and wisdom. And coaching can allow the space for all that is important to emerge – courageously, vulnerably. It’s a universal approach – having worked with people from all around the globe.

She was warm, deeply intelligent, navigating the extraordinary weight of enormous growth in Qatar and the organisation, huge demands as well as the pressures of Qatarisation - a national policy of shifting roles from expatriate to Qatari employees, creating uncertainty. She was not just leading a department; she was leading in the middle of significant change.

And what she needed was space to think clearly, speak honestly and trust that what she said would be held with care.

The moment it all came together

When the government contract ended and my Director asked whether I wanted to return to consulting, I knew - with great certainty - that I could not. Not because consulting was wrong. But because I had found what was right for me – something that truly aligned with my values and purpose of supporting and empowering others to live their best lives.

The coaching school I had decided to build while in Australia - a decision that had felt audacious and at the same time I didn’t know how I would create it - was waiting to become real. I did not need a permanent office. I needed a room, a vision and the courage to begin.

Empower World opened its doors in Doha in 2012. Not because the conditions were perfect. But because I had finally stopped waiting for them to be.