Coaching and You

Is Coaching Something I Should Consider?

What is Coaching?

What are the Benefits of Coaching?

What are the theoretical foundations of coaching?

Is Coaching Something I Should Consider?

IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING APPLY TO YOU, YOU COULD BENEFIT FROM A COACH:

• Are you fed up with rushing around to accomplish things that don't mean that much to you and never having enough time or energy for what's important to you?
• Have you lost the sense of who you are and what really matters to you? Have you achieved financial and career success, have as many possessions and comforts as the next person, but find you are unhappy. Do you feel that something is missing in your life?
• Do you find yourself in a new professional role that requires skills/abilities you need to develop further?
• Are you wanting to further develop your communication skills?
• Are you facing or desiring a major life change (career transition/re-direction, promotion, retirement, divorce, starting a family, children leaving home, ageing parents)?
• Do you feel that you are not fulfilling your potential? (do you have challenges in the workplace, lack a career plan, need to hone professional skills)?
• Is your lifestyle or fitness level undermining your health and fulfillment?
• Are you having difficulty accomplishing a personal/career goal?
• Are you wanting to develop more effective leadership skills, abilities and behaviours?
• Are you in poor financial health and burdened with unwanted debt? You'd like financial freedom, but you can't define "enough"?
• Are you struggling or unhappy/dissatisfied in your work?
• Are you having challenges with particular people in your life?
• Are you needing to make a big or difficult decision/choice?
• Are you completing therapy and needing support in choosing goals and moving forward?
• Do you feel like you are ready to make some significant changes in your life but feel stuck or overwhelmed when it comes to taking action?
• Are you wanting more clarity on your personal values, purpose and what is really important to you?
• Are you desiring a greater sense of life purpose, balance and satisfaction?

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What is Coaching?

Coaching is a specific conversational process that is fundamentally about facilitating change from the current state to a more desired state. Typically, coaching focuses on performance, learning and/or fulfillment with clients. Its focus is assisting people to contribute more of their unique self to the world and thus create a greater sense of meaning in their lives. The coaching process is highly client-centered, fosters self-directed learning and is grounded in self-assessment and personal values recognition. Professional coaching is a powerful process for people who want to make changes to get more out of their personal or professional lives, and enhance their health and well-being. It is a conversation-based partnership that helps you discover and prioritize what's important to you, encourages to access your inherent strengths and creativity, choose goals and design and follow a plan of action to get what you want. As a skilled and unbiased professional, the coach will hold you to your commitments to yourself and keep you on track to reach your goals. Through the process of coaching, you will:

• gain clarity on your strengths and what is important to you
• improve your performance
• enhance your quality of life

Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach's job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has. (International Coach Federation, 2004) Coaching is about you making changes in your life and achieving the results you desire. Coaching helps you to clarify what it is you really want, identify your choices and make changes to move you forward to your goals. Coaching concentrates on where you are today, where you want to be tomorrow and doing what you need to do to get there.

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What are the benefits of coaching?

Coaching is about you making changes and accomplishing results. When it comes to wanting to feel better about our life, people are quite willing to spend $2500 plus on a week or so of vacation. And while they are away, it's great. The problem is when you come back, everything is still the same. Well, for roughly the same amount of money, you can work with a coach and work to make your life different. You will change, and how you look at yourself, the world and your life will change. They say that the definition of crazy is continuing to do things the same way while expecting different results. Coaching supports you to make changes, do things differently and get different results, so you get more out of your life.

Clients find that one of the immediate benefits is that once you commit to the coaching process, you will feel very serious about getting into action to reach your desired goals. Clients report the value of being held accountable for creating the kind of life you say you want. Clients who engage in coaching report feeling clear, in control, supported, motivated, productive, grounded, optimistic, relaxed, balanced and more positive. How you benefit will depend largely on what you choose to work on and how far you are willing to stretch yourself.

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What are the theoretical foundations of coaching?

Coaching is an emerging profession with a history of citations in the literature dating back to the 1960's. Its origins are grounded in organizational behaviour and the potentiation of human performance in the workplace. In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the application of coaching in a wide variety of fields for achieving behaviour change, optimal performance, health and fulfilment.

The literature contains a rapidly expanding empirical evidence base documenting the effectiveness of coaching. Like most of the human service professions, the theoretical foundations of coaching draw from a wide range of fields including human development, psychology, health promotion, education and philosophy.

Fundamental to coaching is the view that humans are caught in a paradox between being themselves and being in relationship with others. We are individuals, with a strong need to express our unique selves fully in our life and work. At the same time, we face the demands and expectations from relationships with others, membership in multiple systems, and being an inextricable part of the human community. Our creativity in resolving this paradox between self-expression and embeddedness has a powerful impact on our success and fulfillment (Adler School of Professional Coaching, 2004).

"Coaching is a profession that distinguishes itself by helping people to discover how to bring their choices and actions more in line with their values and unique "best self", and connect more creatively with the deep human desire to contribute to the betterment of humanity." (International Coach Federation, 2004).

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