What is coaching for? What can it do?

Coaching is a collaborative process of defining goals, co-creating the strategies to move toward the goals, identifying and addressing obstacles along the way, and doing all of that while cultivating tools that will work forevermore, long after our collaboration wraps.

In my experience, coaching can do far more than people expect. I’ll use myself as an example: When I hired my first mentor coach, I set two goals for the coming six months. One: To identify the coach education program that fit me and enroll. Two: To begin to truly think of myself as a coach. With my coach’s support, I accomplished both of those and started working with my first clients within six weeks. We spent the remaining four and a half months refining my coaching skills and ramping up my business.

I have worked with people who:

• Came to coaching looking for support for a professional change and ended up doing that plus dramatically shifting their self-care habits and reconceptualizing their days to allow for more time with their family.
• Came to coaching to learn how to communicate more effectively with a spouse and left with a deeper and richer understanding of their values and how to enact them in their daily lives, leading to a sense of confidence, authenticity, and fulfillment.
• Came to coaching for help finding their groove in their new work-from-home arrangement and wrapped with that plus strategies for managing stress and anxiety.
• Came to coaching with a nagging sense of being overwhelmed and out of control of their life only to discover a deep sense of peace and play with the dynamic tension of honoring what is while moving toward what could be.

That’s a small and representative sample. Coaching can change your life; it’s only in the collaboration and the context of your wants, needs, and perspective that we discover just how much and in what ways.

Why would I go to a coach rather than a therapist?

The relationship between coaching and therapy is like a Venn diagram. There are a lot of issues and experiences that fit into that overlapping space where the circles meet including stress, anxiety, all of your emotions, old baggage, issues of identity, and more. Depending on the type of therapy (for example, cognitive behavioral therapy), both coaching and therapy can be very collaborative and action-oriented.

That said, I generally recommend that people explore therapy when:

• Their experiences of depression or anxiety are significantly impeding their ability to function in their daily lives.
• They have experienced a recent or particularly raw trauma.
• They prefer the provider to be the Absolute Expert in the room; in coaching, the coach is the expert of the process and the bringer of the tools and our mission is to support the client in acting more fully as the foremost expert of their own life and decisions.

If you’re feeling uncomfortable, anxious, stuck and/or eager to tap more fully into your own wisdom through the wisdom of the ages, coaching is likely to be a fantastic fit for you.

Why would I go to a coach rather than a consultant?

Much as with therapy, consultants are the Absolute Expert in the room. I tend to refer people to consultants when they’re seeking:

• Turnkey answers
• Spreadsheet-guided business development strategies
• The practitioner to do the execution for them

Or when they’re interested in professional progress without personal growth. No judgment or beef; I’m just not going to be the best fit.

I am a great fit, though, for those who are interested in exploring just how big Bigger can be, just how bad Badder can be – just how fulfilling this life can be.

Surely there is a process: What exactly is it that I get with my fee?

That depends, in part, on what approach we decide to take during our initial consult. For some folks, a brief and intensive engagement is exactly what’s called for. More often, however, folks committed to their biggest self and baddest life benefit from a more supercharged coaching experience that includes:

The Kick-Off

Before we first share the coaching space together, I’ll send you my kick-off activity, questions that I’ve shaped over years of coaching experience that will do two things at once:

1. Help me more quickly scale the learning curve of what it means to be the best coach to you as an individual that I can be.

2. Stir your thinking about who you are and how your investment in coaching can benefit you.

The First Session

During our first coaching session, we’ll continue what you started in The Kick-Off by reviewing your responses and coming to agreements about our collaboration. Then, we’re going to jump up and down on the foundation we’ve created, coaching style –like you might walk out onto a freshly laid deck to feel just how strong and stable it is. Which is to say, we’ll start exploring the challenges and opportunities of your progress and get into some action because without action, coaching is just philosophy and while philosophy makes for great conversation, it doesn’t often make for meaningful life change.

60-Minute Coaching Sessions

These collaborative conversations – 45-60 minutes at a go – will be spaced out such that there’s enough tension to keep us connected and you in the fullness of your coaching committment, and with enough space that you can breathe, contemplate, and follow through. In the journey of your life and growth, our sessions are the time to plot the course, double (and triple) check the map, and fill up on gas and snacks. Which is to say, I can’t change your life – only you can do that – but I can and I will show you the broader picture and the hidden opportunities; I will join you in brainstorming the way around obstacles; and I’m awesome at showing you yourself – your wisdom, your insights, your patterns, and your potential – in the crispest, most inviting reflection you’ve ever seen.

Identifying the Innerlings

You are rich in inner voices. I know because we all are when we really listen in. There are parts of us that have great wisdom and parts of us that are remnants of our past and parts of us that are downright ornery and mean. By naming these various parts of ourselves – parts I call Innerlings – sometimes literally and sometimes obliquely, such as though a values-identification activity, we get the distance needed to be able to put the aces in their places. That is, we are better equipped to let our wisdom make our decisions and deemphasize the parts of ourselves that tell us we’re frauds or unlovable or destined to fail. In this way, you become more and more skillfull at working with all the diversity within you instead of continuing to struggle against your inner richness..

Access to my Whole Toolbox

I’ve been collecting tools for some time now – tools that are integral to personal development, tools that are key to starting and building businesses, tools that can shape our lives like a rasp refining a slightly oversized door. Many of those tools will be working away in the background of our collaboration, shaping the way I coach you. Others are available as moments of education, things that are more meaningful when taught directly and with clarity so that you can use them ongoingly, like teaching someone how to use a saw that they can then apply however is most meaningful in the moment; the same saw can, after all, aid in the creation of picture frames, side tables, or even whole homes.

Regular Reviews

In most sessions (in some way or another), we’ll pause for review. What do your initial goals look like from this perspective? Is our collaboration serving you as fully as we could? What could we shift, strengthen, or implement as we step into this next three months of collaboration?

The Senior Portrait Treatment

When it’s time to march across our imaginary graduation stage and move that tassel across your mortarboard, we’ll go through a process of reviewing your progress, turning those accomplishments that you zoomed past into the kind of self-acknowledgment that will boost your future efforts and transformations. We’ll even co-create a resource for you to turn back to on those days when your wisdom feels faint and your gremlins are loud. We’ll create a sort of yearbook of our collaboration, something to take with you as you continue your journey toward your biggest self and baddest life.

A Lifetime Membership in Your Fan Club

Which is to say, once I sign up for a spot in your fan club, I’m forever a member. Should you want to touch base for a quick refresher, to share recent accomplishments and frustrations, or for another session or 12, I’m always going to be happy to hear from you and ready to be a resource to you.

Let me tell you, each one of these steps can feel like strapping on a jet pack. Put them all together and you’ll uncover a supercharged you.