HOW COACHING WORKS

I call my practice, Coaching the Journey, because I view myself as accompanying you on a part of your journey, your life.  

It is a privilege to be invited into the home of a stranger.  How much greater a privilege it is to be invited into your life.  It is my responsibility to acknowledge this throughout the time we work together. 

Our work takes place within a “sacred space” where every word spoken is heard and protected.  From the beginning, it is my primary responsibility to establish and sustain your trust in me.  Without trust we cannot accomplish anything.

  In our first meeting you will tell me why you are thinking about coaching.  From time to time I will summarize what I hear, to assure both of us we are hearing the same things.  I will ask questions to clarify my understanding.  I will keep the conversation focused on the present, where you are now, not how you got to this now.   I will know within the first hour, whether I can help you. 

If you decide to work with me, I will ask you to make a commitment for three months.  There is no written agreement or contract, but I need your acknowledgment that it takes time to create a credible horizon toward which we are going to work.

Coaching begins with helping you to clarify your thinking.  What do you want?  How are you going about getting it?  What is the relationship between what you say you want and what you are doing?  This is the core of coaching.  Means and ends, are they related?  You can expect probing questions from me, attentive listening and feedback, but no judgment.  That you can do all by yourself, I am sure.  I am working in support of your intention, to assist you in getting going again and developing this momentum. 

I may have different roles during our time together.  I can be a mirror, an investigator, a teacher, a guide, and occasionally a trail boss pushing you.  But first last and always, I will be your partner.  I am empathic and very well trained, a disciplined listener.  I know the difference between what I hear you say and what I think it might mean.  This work is about you, not me. 

When I hear you expressing your intentions with clarity, setting goals, agreeing to milestones to measure your progress, I know we are having success.  You are getting back in touch with your  thinking, gaining confidence, working in the Now.  You are resuming your journey. 

Coaching obviously is not for everyone.  In fact, it is only for people who are dissatisfied, confused, concerned, stuck AND want to change.  If you think I am going to fix your wagon, do not call.  I can help you in many ways, but you will fix yourself.  You do have the answers and you will do the work.  More important, you will want to do it.  That is what effective life coaching is about. 

As you know, each of us has our “story”, a narrative that explains to ourselves what our life is, who we are.  It is made up of facts, fictions, assumptions, judgments and, yes, delusions and fantasies.  It is something we carry around, a ready made explanation that we offer to people who come into our lives, or use to explain our actions.  More often than not these stories restrict our possibilities. Since your story is a narrative of your past, coaching theory suggests the story be ignored.  There are coaches who structure their work to assure that the past simply never arises in their work.  I am not one of these.

 As you can readily see from my biography I have a great deal of experience, possibly too much education, and I have done a lot of reading.  And frankly, by its very nature there is a lot more to who I am and what I have done than can be expressed in a brief bio.  I am also by nature intuitive.  I will get into your head. I cannot help myself nor am I apologizing for this.  It is how I coach. BUT, I will never substitute my thinking for yours, I will never confuse my desires with your goals, never.  Nonetheless, I will not hesitate to ask you anything that I think is relevant to assisting you in unearthing an understanding of where you are NOW and where you wish to be.

Remember, you, the client is in charge.  You decide the direction it goes in.  You decide what we are working on.  You have all the power.  But you are asking me to accompany you on a part of your journey, a request that I take very seriously.  I do not know how long we will travel together, I do not know what we will discover until it happens.  Formal coaching theory suggests that if I note something that you do not mention, I should not speak of it.  I will.  I am naturally a respectful person, conscious of boundaries, but I am not shy.

Theory is important but coaching, like all other kinds of counseling, is essentially an art.  Experience and intuition are very important. 

The most important thing to understand about coaching is this: coaching does not  fix anything.   The promise of coaching is to help you recover your presence in the Now.  You do the fixing.  It does work. 

Call me and let’s see if it might work for you.  The first session will only cost sixty minutes of your journey.