What is coaching?

What are the benefits of coaching?

How can I determine if coaching is right for me?

What is coaching?

Coaching is a technology of personal and professional development based on concepts from Western and Eastern psychology, business management, organizational development, and athletic training.

Coaches partner with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Through the process of coaching, individuals focus on the skills and actions needed to realize results that are personally meaningful and important to them.

The individual or team chooses the focus of conversation, while the coach listens and contributes observations and open ended, poignant questions. This accelerates the individual or team’s progress by providing greater focus and awareness of the available possibilities, which leads to more effective actions and informed choices.

Coaching concentrates on where individuals are now and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be in the future. Coaches recognize that results are a matter of the individual or team’s intentions, choices, and actions, supported by the coach's efforts and skillful application of coaching theory and methods.

Coaching is for passionate people who want more from their personal and business lives. A coach helps them set larger, more rewarding goals, develop a strategy to achieve them and provide support throughout the process. It is transformational, similar to having an athletic coach or personal trainer who works with every aspect of your life.

What are the benefits of coaching?

People who engage in a coaching relationship can expect to experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced decision making skills and interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence in carrying out their chosen work and life roles. They can also expect to see tangible results in the areas of productivity, personal satisfaction with life and work, and the achievement of personally relevant goals.

How can I determine if coaching is right for me?

To determine if you could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish. When someone has a fairly clear idea of the desired outcome, a coaching partnership can be a useful tool for developing a strategy for how to achieve that outcome with greater ease. However, this does not mean that every person entering into a coaching relationship must know exactly what they want to achieve. Coaching can also be a means of sorting through and choosing a desired outcome from a number of possible choices and/or creating outcomes that could not have been conceived of beforehand.

Since coaching is a partnership, ask yourself if you find it valuable to collaborate, to have another viewpoint and to be asked to consider new perspectives. Also, ask yourself if you are ready and willing to devote the time, money and energy necessary to making real changes in your work or life. If the answer to these questions is yes, then coaching can be a beneficial way for you to grow, develop, and realize your full potential.

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How is coaching distinct from other service professions?

Although it shares similarities to the fields listed below, professional coaching is a distinct service. In an effort to understand what a coach is, it can be helpful to distinguish coaching from other professions that provide personal or organizational support.

* Therapy—Although there are exceptions, most forms of therapy deal with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with present life and work circumstances in more emotionally healthy ways.

In contrast, the primary focus of coaching is on where you are and where you want to go rather than where you've been. In addition, coaching does not create a hierarchical relationship between coach and client. The coach is not an expert and the client does not need to be healed, fixed, or given advice. The client is trusted to be resourceful, creative, whole, and fully capable of finding his or her own answers to the questions raised through the coaching relationship. Working together, coach and client create actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one's work or personal life, as well as structures and fieldwork that foster commitment and accountability.

* Consulting—Consultants may be retained by individuals or organizations for the purpose of accessing specialized expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, there is often an assumption that the consultant diagnosis problems,  prescribes solutions and sometimes helps to implement them. In general, the assumption with coaching is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.

* Mentoring—Mentoring, which can be thought of as guiding from one’s own experience or sharing of experience in a specific area of industry or career development, is sometimes confused with coaching. Although some coaches provide mentoring as part of their coaching, such as in mentor coaching new coaches, coaches are not typically mentors to those they coach.

* Training—Training programs are based on the acquisition of certain learning objectives as set out by the trainer or instructor. Though objectives are clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the individual or team being coached with guidance provided by the coach. Training also assumes a linear learning path which coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum plan.

* Athletic Development—The athletic coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behavior of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge. Professional coaches possess these qualities, but it is the experience and knowledge of the individual or team that determines the direction. Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development, does not focus on behaviors that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.   (return to top of page)

What typically happens as a result of coaching?

• You take yourself and what you want more seriously.
• You set personal goals that are clear and meet your needs.
• You create momentum to achieve more, be more balanced and develop more powerful self-management skills.
• You communicate about what you need and want from others in a more responsible way.
• You take more effective and focused actions
• You stop putting up with stuff that gets in your way.

How can a Manager/Executive utilize a coach?

Coaching creates an environment where there is freedom from judgment and expectations that an executive behave according to typical corporate mandates. In this environment it is safe to question, to admit weakness or vulnerability, to not have all the answers (at least right away), to brainstorm and to experiment. Executives often utilize coaches in one or all of the following ways:

• To reach high targets and quotas, since accomplishing this consistently requires a manager who also coaches a team to work together to reach extraordinary goals.
• For business planning, visioning and goal-setting.
• To integrate business and personal life for balance.
• To prioritize actions and projects.
• For training, developing and managing staff.
• To turn around a difficult situation.
• To handle business or personal challenges.
  
  

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How do the coaching sessions work?

Most of the coaching is done over the phone, though in-person coaching sessions are available. The client will call the coach on the appointed day and time. This makes it easy to stay in the coaching relationship since you can call from virtually anywhere (though it is best to be in a place with minimal distractions where you are free to express yourself as needed).

Clients complete a coaching call strategy form prior to each call, describing the current challenges and the progress they've made since the last call. The focus of the call is determined by the client. As a coach, my intention is to bring out your best by seeing your potential, power and wisdom, asking powerful and sometimes difficult questions, expecting a lot, holding your agenda, helping you strategize and celebrating your achievements.

There is often "fieldwork", where you will be given an inquiry to ponder or a challenge to try something in a new or different way. This can form the basis for the next call and/or set a tone or intention for whatever happens after the call . Most of the learning actually takes place between calls, in everyday life, as you are continually given the challenge and opportunity to walk the talk of each session. Often times, the actual assignment is only a part of what's happening . You won't be graded or penalized on your performance. It's not about whether you complete it or not, but rather what you learn in the process.

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How do I get started?

The first step is to click Register Now . Once your account is activated (in 24 hours or less) you will be able to log in and access my online calendar. There you can schedule a Complimentary Sample Session in which you will get a taste of what coaching is, as well as an idea of how it might be beneficial for your life. You will also have a chance to ask any questions you might have.

If you decide to begin the coaching relationship, we will also discuss the frequency, time and day of calls, as well as a payment amount and schedule. A discounted fee is offered for making a commitment to six months or more of coaching. This is a verbal commitment. Both coach and client have the right to end the coaching at any point after one month, provided the other is given 30 days notice prior to the final session.

After deciding to begin the coaching relationship, we will schedule a 1 hour Foundation Session. In the time leading up to that session you will be asked to fill out the Client Profile, Intentions, Discovery and Agreements forms, which can be accessed by logging in on the home page of this website.

These forms and the Foundation session are a chance for us to get to know one another and make agreements on the structure of the relationship, to introduce basic coaching concepts, to clarify what you would like to get out of the coaching relationship, and develop a clear, inspiring vision of how we will proceed.

You will then begin regularly scheduled calls at the agreed upon time and day anywhere between one and four times per month.

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What is in the Client's Only Area?

In this area you can:

• Fill out and update various forms we will use in the coaching relationship, such as Client Profile, Intentions, Discovery, and Feedback forms
• Process your monthly coaching payments
• Schedule & re-schedule your coaching appointments
• Receive updates on upcoming classes and retreats
• Review archived newsletters and other resources
  
• Complete your Weekly Call Strategy Form prior to the coaching session

How do I access your Client's Only Area?

Go to the Home page and click on REGISTER NOW. Enter your personal information as prompted. After 24 hours you will be granted access and can log in. You will know you have successfully logged into this area when the webpage displays Welcome (Your Name)! in the upper left corner.

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