I Got Shot at Work. Now I Coach.

In 2011, I was shot while on a business trip to Las Vegas.

This is the first time I've talked about this publicly. In my career, I've shared it with only a handful of people. Experiences like that don't stay contained to one part of your life. They change you, sometimes in ways you notice right away and sometimes in ways you only understand years later.

At the time, I was a corporate leader. I recovered, returned to work, and kept building my career. Eight years later, I started training to become an executive coach.

Recently, I came across a LinkedIn post describing people who make a big change later in their career, not by starting over but, as the author put it, by "starting from scars." That phrase is what pushed me to write this.

We all carry scars of some kind. The question is what we do with them.

There Is Always More to the Person Than the Role

Leadership is often discussed in terms of competencies, behaviours, strategy, results and performance. All of those things matter. But leadership is also deeply personal.

Every leader walks into the room carrying a history. Some of it is visible: the roles they have held, the organizations they have worked for, the successes they have had and the experience they have accumulated. Much of it isn't.

It can be a difficult boss from years ago. A failure they still think about. A relationship that damaged their confidence. A loss. A health crisis. A family situation. A mistake they wish they could revisit.

Those experiences don't disappear when someone receives a promotion or walks into an executive meeting. They can influence how we respond to pressure, how readily we trust, how we deal with conflict, how much control we need, what we avoid and how we interpret the behaviour of the people around us, often without us realizing it.

Scars Aren't Automatically Strengths

I'm cautious about the idea that adversity automatically makes us stronger. Sometimes difficult things happen and they are simply difficult.

Being hurt, losing something important or going through a major setback does not automatically create wisdom, resilience or better leadership. Years of experience don't automatically do that either. The opportunity comes in what we do with the experience.

Do we ever stop to ask how it changed us? What assumptions did we form? What behaviours helped us through one situation but may no longer be serving us? What are we still reacting to even though the original situation is long gone? That kind of reflection can be uncomfortable, and it can also be incredibly useful.

The Past Can Be Present in Our Leadership

It is easy to focus only on the problem directly in front of us: a difficult employee, a strained relationship with a peer, a senior leader we struggle to influence, a decision we keep putting off, a team that seems unwilling to take ownership.

Those are real problems. But sometimes the most useful question is not simply, What should I do? It is, What is happening in me when this situation occurs?

Why does this particular person get such a strong reaction from me? Why am I avoiding this conversation? Why do I feel I need to control this? Why am I finding it difficult to trust someone? Why does this situation feel so familiar?

That is where experience becomes more than something on a résumé. It becomes something worth examining.

Why This Matters in Coaching

A leader's history doesn't disappear the moment they walk into a coaching conversation any more than it disappears when they walk into a boardroom.

You rarely know everything someone else is carrying, which is exactly why assuming you understand another person's story is often the least useful thing you can do. Good coaching is built on curiosity instead: creating space for someone to notice something they hadn't seen before, and letting them decide for themselves what to do with it.

Sometimes the issue is strategic. Sometimes it is behavioural. And sometimes what looks like a leadership issue on the surface is connected to something deeper about how that person has learned to navigate the world.

What We Carry Into the Room

None of us leads untouched by our history. The successes come with us. So do the failures. The people who believed in us. The people who didn't. The decisions we are proud of and the ones we would make differently now. All of it can shape how we lead, and the question is whether we are aware of it.

A useful place to start is to notice the situations that consistently create a strong reaction in you. The conversations you avoid. The people you struggle to trust. The moments when you feel the need to take control. Then ask yourself what that reaction may be connected to, and whether it is still serving you today.

What experiences are you still carrying into the room? Which ones have made you better? Which ones may still be influencing how you respond, decide, trust, avoid, or lead?

That, to me, is where the real value of reflection begins, and it's exactly the kind of noticing that coaching conversations are built to create space for.

If you're carrying more into your leadership than you've had a chance to fully examine, that's a conversation worth having.

Tom Newton, CEC, PCC Executive & Leadership Coach, Rhythm Leadership