What Is Coaching?

Coaching is a partnership with clients in a
thought provoking and creative process that
inspires them to maximize their personal and
professional potential. A coaching partnership
supports the achievement of extraordinary results,
based on goals set by the client. Through the
process of coaching, individuals focus on the skills
and actions needed to successfully produce their personally relevant results and for the client to live a happy and “Whole Life”.

The individual chooses the focus of conversation, while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions as well as concepts and principles which can assist in generating possibilities and identifying actions. Through the coaching process the clarity that is needed to support the most effective action is achieved. Coaching accelerates the individual’s progress by providing greater focus and awareness of possibilities leading to more effective choices. Coaching concentrates on where individuals are now and what they are willing to do to find their place and reach the next stage of their lives.

What Are The Benefits of Coaching?

Individuals who engage in a coaching relationship can expect to experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced thinking and decision making skills, enhanced interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence in carrying out their chosen personal and professional roles. Clients will experience the benefits of living the whole life that they envision.

What Does Coaching Look Like?

The Coaching Process: Coaching typically begins with a personal interview (either face-to-face or by teleconference call) to assess the individual's current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the relationship, identify priorities for action, and establish specific desired outcomes. Subsequent coaching sessions may be conducted in person or over the telephone, with each session lasting a previously established length of time. Between scheduled coaching sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of one's personally prioritized goals. The coach may provide additional recourses in form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments, or models, to support the individual's thinking and actions. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on the individual's personal needs and preferences.

PLACE: Pause – Listen – Assess – Create – Evaluate Our coaching model incorporates principles drawn from the behavioral sciences, spiritual traditions and coaching concepts. The function of our model is to create a space for clarity, structure, compassion, and celebration within the coaching relationship. Our model enables the individual to develop proactive (as opposed to reactive) ways of managing personal opportunities and challenges, and envisioning success as contrasted with focusing on problems so that they may live a happy and whole life.

Coaching vs. Therapy: Coaching is a profession that supports personal and professional growth in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is forward moving and future focused. Therapy, on the other hand, often focuses on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with diagnosable pathologies. Therapy outcomes often include improved emotional/feeling states. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is in creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one's personal or professional life. The emphasis in a coaching relationship is on action, accountability and follows through.