Frequently Asked Questions

What is coaching?

Coaching is a fairly recent profession. It is a collaborative partnering with a client to set goals that are meaningful and lead to professional and personal growth and accomplishments. In coaching, the client is the expert of her/his life. Professional coaching focuses on an individual's life as it relates to goal setting, outcome creation and personal change management.

What is Career Coaching?

Career coaching is a partnership between a professional coach and a professional worker from any field and sector. Career coaching focuses on: growing and developing your career, improving individual and organizational performance, and achieving better results. It's primary focus is on the client's world of work and career. In contrast, personal coaching can focus on any area of one's life. Common areas for professional growth include: building executive presence, strengthening your personal brand, giving and receiving constructive feedback, handling a performance challenge of a direct report, building strategic networks, managing up, down and across, expanding technical, political and social competencies, managing diversity, learning the unwritten rules for success in your organization, thought leadership and contributing strategically to the organization. In addition to these topics, global professionals must also deal with transcultural  dynamics when working outside of their country of origin.

How Can Coaching Help My Career?

Your coach partners with you to:

• Set clear and meaningful goals and strategies to achieve them
• Focus better to get results faster
• Overcome challenges getting in your way
• Ask you to do more than you would on your own
• Provide the structure, tools and support to get desired results

What are some benefits and results from coaching?

• Get more of what you want and less of what you don’t want
• Get better results
• Get results faster
• Get results more easily
• Have a trusted partner, collaborator and sounding board

What are some typical reasons to work with a coach?

People have various reasons. You may want a coach because:

• You desire to accelerate results
• You want to incorporate personal and cultural values in your work
• You want to improve performance
• You want more work life balance
• You might be different from the mainstream and want to succeed
• You might represent diversity in the workplace and want to succeed
• You want to identify your core strengths and how best to leverage them
• You lack clarity, and there are choices to be made
• You are extremely successful, and success has become problematic
• You feel stuck in your career and you want to get unstuck
• You want more, faster and easier
• You want your career to reflect your personal mission and passion
• You want to change your career

What’s your coaching philosophy?

Here is a favorite quotation I love as the starting place for every coaching relationship. “Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.” (from Bahá’í Writings) Every person is born with unlimited potential, often unrecognized due to circumstances. In coaching we begin with this assumption and use an appreciative approach. The appreciative approach is grounded in what’s right, what’s working, what’s wanted, and what’s needed to get there. We build up your knowledge of yourself and how you want to show up in your career and what you want to do with your inherent gems, talents and capabilities. We focus on the results you want to accomplish and ways to reach them. Coaches partner with the client to support their achieving their goals in a confidential and ethical coaching relationship.

How is coaching distinct from therapy, consulting or sports coaching?

Coaching vs Therapy:

Coaching is forward moving and future focused. Therapy often focuses on the past and what’s back there that’s impacting today. The primary focus of coaching is on goal setting, taking steps and getting the life or career you really want. The emphasis in a coaching relationship is on action, accountability and follow-through.

Coaching vs Consulting:

Consultants are experts in some field who transfer that knowledge to others. Often it is assumed that the consultant diagnoses problems and prescribes and sometimes implements solutions. Professional coaches assume it is the individual or team who are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.

Coaching vs Athletic Development:

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 it is the experience and knowledge of the individual or team that 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.

How long does a coach work with an individual?

The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the client’s needs and requirements. For certain types of focused coaching, 6 months 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 learning style of the client, the frequency of coaching meetings, and financial resources available to support coaching.

What happens when you hire a coach?

Many things, and here are just a few:

• You set better goals than if you worked alone
• You take more effective and immediate action toward your goals
• You tackle what’s holding you back
• You create momentum for easier results
• You allow yourself to go for making your dreams come true

Call for a 30-minute confidential conversation to assess if we are a good match at 919-225-7648.