FAQ

Personal coaching is a partnership between you and your coach. The coaching centers on your self-determined goals. This is accomplished by working on self-discovery, accountability and self-efficacy. You build competencies that enable you to respond skillfully and creatively to what life hands you and to what is most important to you. When this occurs, we start to flourish and collaborate with life!

The simple answer is: when there is an opening in your life.

Openings come in many forms and they are frequent in our lives — an immediate concern, a crossroads, an opportunity or simply when what you’ve been doing is no longer working as well.

Questions or thoughts that might be percolating:

Wants:

• I would like more of....

• How do I balance all the spinning plates?

• How do I move into the person I want to be?

• I want to let go of the comparison trap

Needs:

• I need to get better at…

• I need A to get to B

• I need a roadmap…

Tricky Ones:

• Is this all there is?

• Why do I always end up here?

• I am overwhelmed…

• Is it too late?...

• My head and my heart don’t agree…

• I feel stuck…

• Is it just me?…

Coaching is a way to go from good to great. Generally, there’s always an area that we would like to feel a little bit better about — our health, our relationships, our work, ourselves. When things are going well, it can be a great time to refine and grow. To shine light on a new area. Coaching is an opportunity to invest in yourself for the long haul. Understanding how to build capacity and incorporate recovery is key to navigating what life throws at us. It’s about stepping into the driver’s seat.

Both therapists and coaches work to enable their clients to make positive changes and become more productive and effective in their lives. Therapists diagnose and treat from a healthcare perspective. Often therapy is geared toward healing a past pain. Not all therapy clients are ill; many healthy people seek the services of both therapists and life coaches.

Coaching takes you where you're at right now and aims to empower you to be a more autonomous expert in your own wellbeing.

It might help to imagine yourself getting ready to run a marathon. You could either hire a running coach or a doctor. Which should you choose? Who will be most helpful?

If you are injured, physically unwell, or at risk for harm if you even attempt the marathon, a running coach probably isn’t the first choice. You need to be at baseline level of good health before you can run at all. So if you’re not, you might need the care of a doctor before attempting this big a challenge.

However, if you’re healthy and just need someone to help you with training techniques and strategies, the running coach is the best bet.

In this example, the therapist is the doctor. By exploring your mental and emotional health, he or she helps restore you to a healthy state so you can take on your major challenges. The coach is the running coach. He or she has an expert knowledge of your marathon and can help you run your best race.

Great coaches have several skills you will notice early. They are excellent listeners who create an environment of trust & partnership. They foster self-acceptance and self respect. Great coaches engage, energize, and challenge you to expand your reach at the right moment. They are curious, ask courageous questions and are non-judgmental. Forward thinking and action oriented, great coaches collaborate with you and are committed to your success!

Strengths are a unique combination of your skills, talents, knowledge and experience.

When we identify our strengths and focus on them, we are more productive, perform better, are more engaged, and have greater joy in work and life.

The strengths approach is the result of a revolutionary, five-decade study of excellence. The culmination of this research gives you a new way to strive for excellence and discover your opportunities for greatest contributions.

This work increases self-awareness and clarity, both of which can direct focus. Focus enhances direction, planning, action and outcomes.

Effective leadership coaching enables better leadership which leads to better strategy, communication, execution and employee alignment and engagement.

Leadership coaching is a highly effective way for leaders to improve self-awareness, identify blind spots of personal performance, fine-tune a growth mindset, and implement behavioral changes. These factors improve individual and team dynamics leading to better performance results.

Research shows that coaching can improve performance in at least 4 ways:

1. Greater self and contextual awareness: Coaching is about you and where you work. You’ll gain insight into yourself as a leader within your organization.

2. Greater understanding of others: A coach helps you zoom out to get a bigger picture and zoom in to understand why others might think and act the way they do. You’ll learn about actions you can take to help team members use their strengths, manage conflict, increase collaboration and ensure forward movement.

3. Enhanced ability to communicate: A coach works with you to find ways to improve how you communicate up, down, sideways and of equal importance, how you communicate with yourself.

4. Enhanced ability to coach others: With the valuable experience of coaching for your own development, you’ll be much more prepared to identify and effectively engage in coaching opportunities with your direct reports and team. This capacity differentiates a good leader and a great one.

Effective coaching increases engagement of employees and engaged employees tend to stick around. When companies invest in employee development, their people feel seen, heard and acknowledged.

A study by Gallup on the effects of engaged employees on an organization shows that on such organizations, there was:

• 10% higher customer metrics

• 21% more sales

• 41% lower absenteeism

• 20% more sales

According to the Gallup report, organizations that engaged their employees through coaching reported less than 59% turnover.

The short answer is that everyone can benefit from a coach. Each employee can contribute as a leader whether by creating raving fans, leading a team or devising a new improved system. Your experienced leaders, new leaders and high potential employees all have different development needs, and each group needs to be supported in order to ensure your company's vitality.

Senior leaders and high potentials may benefit from coaching that helps them build on their existing strengths, develop strategies for leading in new or complex situations and increase their influence. Leadership coaching can help individuals shorten ramp-up time in a new role, handle an increase in responsibilities or go from good to great. When performance has been derailed for any number of reasons, coaching can promote realignment, reinvigorating a person and their career.