What is Coaching

What is Coaching?

As defined by the ICF (International Coaching Federation), professional coaching is a thought-provoking and creative process that will inspire you to maximize your personal and professional potential. Coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes, accountability, and managing personal change.

"In coaching you—the client—are the expert of your own life."

My role as a life coach is to ask powerful questions, act as a sounding board, provide objective assessment and observations, listen fully and actively, challenge your blind spots, and foster shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives. I'm here to help you become more attuned to your inherent values, strengths, and modalities (some of the ways you might take in and process information), so you can build a life that works for you. In coaching, you - the client - are the expert of your own life.

Our sessions follow a specific framework enabling us to collaborate effectively. There is a beginning, middle, and end which I guide you through, to help you move forward through the session and stay focused.

Coaching is action-based, so although great awareness may come about during the call, it is up to you to do the hard work between sessions to incorporate and experiment with what you have learned about yourself and your situation. New awareness helps guide what next steps to take, keeping in mind the values and ultimate goals that are important to you.

How Can Coaching Help You?

A 2022 Global Coaching Client Study conducted on behalf of the International Coach Federation found that individuals who received coaching:

Improved communication skills
Increased self-esteem/self-confidence
Improved work/life balance
Increased productivity
Optimized individual/team work experience
Increased well-being

Is coaching right for you?

What Coaching is Not

"Coaching is not therapy, mentoring, or consulting."

As explained by Dr. Patrick Williams, EdD, MCC in his article, "Border Line" (published in Choice magazine), "While coaching and therapy share some similarities, psychotherapy often focuses on the impact the past has on the present, on healing psychological dysfunction, and on relieving emotional pain. The therapist is considered to be the expert, the one with answers about what is right for the client.

Coaching focuses on the present and future, the client's strengths, life purpose and goals, working with clients to create possibilities to enrich their lives. Based on the belief that all individuals are whole, capable individuals, coaching assumes the client is the expert, able to determine what is best for their

lives and the coach works along with them to maximize their personal and professional potentials, to close the gaps to create extraordinary lives".

To learn more about the difference between coaching and therapy, download ILCT founder Dr. Patrick Williams’ article: "Borderline: Understanding the relationship between therapy and coaching."

Is Coaching Right For You?

The most successful coaching partnerships begin with a client who has an idea of what they want to accomplish and is open to collaboration and new perspectives.

As a coaching client, your role is to come to each call:

Prepared and ready to do the work
Open to big-picture thinking and looking at situations from a different perspective
Willing to internalize the tools, concepts, models, and principles learned in your coaching sessions
Open to trying new things and engage in effective actions that can move you forward
With the understanding that coaching is a life-changing investment that requires committed effort.