What is an executive and personal leadership coach?
A coach is a trained professional who can help you meet specific organizational, leadership, and life challenges while bringing forth your personal leadership potential. It is a one-on-one relationship that provides a supportive and non-judgmental space to help you evolve into a new possibility of you while adapting to change, show up in your full authority, and create more of what you want for yourself. A coach helps you strategize and acquire the tools you need to achieve your goals. By identifying and re-framing your thoughts and perspectives a coaching relationship helps you realize more possibilities for taking new and effective actions that will lead to the results you want.
Who uses executive and personal leadership coaches?
People from all walks of organizational life and personal life work with professional coaches. In today’s landscape of uncertainty and extraordinary change, coaches help people create positive change and attain their goals at work, in their relationships, in life struggles such as health, and for creating a more purposeful and resilient life. Examples of who would benefit include executives, leaders, team leaders, individual contributors as well as anyone determined to create new possibilities in their lives.
How will coaching help you shift to a new possibility?
With so much change happening in our lives and the world our effectiveness today requires a learner’s mindset that we practice continuously. We shift ourselves into a new possibility by unlearning old habits and perspectives that no longer serve and expanding into new learning that does!
The results you get in coaching will vary depending on what brings you to a coach. If you get a coach to help you out professionally, the coaching relationship can support you, for example, become more effective and focused in your current role, expand your leadership presence, be more strategic, or become more skillful in managing conflict or building relationships. If your reasons are personal, a coach may help you, for example, improve your relationships, overcome ongoing self-limiting behaviors, pursue health goals, or align your lifestyle to your vision of a purposeful life. No matter your reason for what brings you to a coach, coaching supports you to identify what matters most now, find your answers and authority within, and take the actions needed to get different results.
What happens in a coaching session?
Each session is tailored to the client and will vary based on individual needs. In the beginning, we will discuss what you are committed to accomplishing through our work together and we will begin to create a direction to achieve your goals. Each session starts with you identifying a focus to work with. We will work together to see what the current reality looks like for you, acknowledge obstacles, explore alternate perspectives, design experiments for you to practice new actions, and along the way, celebrate successes. At the conclusion of each session, we will revisit your goals and evaluate the next steps that are needed to achieve these results. I will support you to create experiments or try out practices in between sessions that support your progress. Sessions usually last 60 minutes and can be conducted in-person but are more frequently over the telephone or by Skype or Zoom.
Do I really need a personal coach . . . can't I just do it by myself?
Coaching can take you above and beyond your own personal limitations, especially when your aspiration is high. Generally, people try to achieve their greatest potential, but don’t realize what stands in their way. A personal coach can offer an unbiased and objective perspective, and can help you “see” your patterns and habits. Most people experience that they are more efficient when working with a professional coach and that this provides the opportunity for them to better realize their potential and to 'connect their own dots.' Coaching can make your aspirations attainable and you will get amazing support and encouragement along the way.
How is coaching different from therapy?
While the coaching I provide can be therapeutic and emotionally enriching, it is not therapy. Coaching is distinct from traditional therapy because it is not designed to address psychological issues. While exploring emotions that come up often gives meaning to our reactions and perspectives, the primary focus of coaching is to help you identify your goals, achieve them, develop constructive habits and skills, take new actions, and evoke transformation. There is little emphasis placed on the past with coaching, but instead the focus is on creating what you want now and in the future.
How long do people generally work with a coach?
To experience the effectiveness of a coaching program, I suggest clients make an initial three-month commitment. At the end of the three months, we will evaluate progress and discuss options for continued coaching. Clients who agree to three- month packages, receive discounted package coaching rates.
Is personal coaching confidential?
YES. What we discuss will be held in strict confidence and not shared with others. Our discussions, however, are not privileged for legal purposes. The privilege of confidentiality that exists for the clergy, therapists and attorneys is not granted to coaching professionals. That said, coaching is a confidential process, and your personal information will always be protected.