Frequently Asked Questions

Coaching is a form of development in which a person called a coach supports a client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by partnering with the client in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaches honor the client as the expert in his or her life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful, and whole. Standing on this foundation, the coach is responsible to:

• Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve

• Encourage client self-discovery

• Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies

• Hold the client responsible and accountable

This process helps clients dramatically improve their outlook on work and life, while improving their leadership skills and unlocking their potential.

To determine whether you could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish in coaching. When an individual 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.

Since coaching is a partnership, ask yourself whether collaboration, other viewpoints, and new perspectives are valued. Also, ask yourself whether you are ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes. If the answer is yes, then coaching may be a beneficial way to grow and develop.

Coaching begins with a personal interview by telephone to assess your current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the relationship, identify priorities for action and establish specific desired outcomes. Subsequent coaching sessions are conducted over the telephone, with each session lasting no more than 60-minutes. Between scheduled coaching sessions, you may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of your personally prioritized goals. I may provide additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments, or models to support your thinking and actions The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on your needs and preferences.

Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand coaching by distinguishing it from other personal or organizational support professions.

Therapy: Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationship. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways. Coaching, on the other hand, supports personal and professional growth based on self-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is future focused. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcomes of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one's work or personal life. The emphases in the coaching relationship are on action, accountability, and follow through.

Consulting: Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions. With coaching, the assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.

Mentoring: A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. Mentoring may include advising, counseling and coaching. The coaching process does not include advising or counseling, and focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.

Training: Training programs are based on objectives 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 that coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum.

Sports Coaching: Though sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different from sports coaching. 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 their experience and knowledge of the individual or team 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.

The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the individual’s needs and preferences. For certain types of focused coaching, three to six months or working may work. For other types of coaching, people may find it beneficial to work with a coach for a longer period. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the ways individuals or team prefer to work, the frequency of coaching meetings and financial resources available to support coaching.

An individual might choose to work with a coach for many reasons, including but not limited to the following:

• Something urgent, compelling or exciting is at stake (a challenge, stretch goal or opportunity)

• A gap exists in knowledge, skills, confidence or resources

• A desire to accelerate results

• A lack of clarity with choices to be made

• Success has started to become problematic

• Work and life are out of balance, creating unwanted consequences

• Core strengths need to be identified, along with how to best leverage them

The coach:

• Provides objective assessment and observations that foster your self-awareness and awareness of others.

• Listens closely to fully understand your circumstances

• Acts as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making.

• Champions opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations

• Fosters shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives

• Challenges blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios

• Maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession's code of ethics.

The individual:

• Creates the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals.

• Uses assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others.

• Envisions personal and/or organizational success.

• Assumes full responsibility for personal decisions and actions.

• Utilizes the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives.

• Takes courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations.

• Engages big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills.

• Takes the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach and engages in effective forward actions.

What we discuss will be held in confidence and not shared with others. However, our discussions 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 to the fullest extent of the law.

I require a 24 hour notice to cancel all sessions. Please be sure to contact me if you will not be able to make your scheduled appointment in order to avoid being charged for the session.