Coaching is a form of support for helping you advance a meaningful issue. Common ones are achieving a certain goal or growth, getting unstuck on a troubling issue, exploring the dimensions of an important question, or supporting you while you try something challenging.
Practices, modest repeatable behaviors targeted at your goal, are tools that I encourage wherever applicable. They get you in action, yield learning to help you fine tune, and often create a virtuous cycle of accomplishment, increased confidence and increased inclination to act that accelerates your progress nicely .
As client you name the purpose of our work and you are responsible for selecting and taking those actions we agree upon for engaging the work within and beyond our meeting. Additionally you must be committed to that purpose, open-minded to exploring it and ways to engage it, and open-minded in negotiating our working relationship.
As coach my job is to provide a process for helping you clarify your purpose in seeking coaching and a process for advancing it towards the outcome you want. You provide the content, I provide the process for taking action, the atmosphere for helping you be effective in your exploration, and where helpful the feedback and occasional suggestions from my experience that may be relevant to your exploration.
Our coaching conversation is confidential to us within the bounds of the law. If there is a third party involved in any way then explicit understandings must be documented to establish expectations and communication boundaries.
My usual process
Introductory meeting. Confidential and free, in this meeting we explore whether our needs, skills and chemistry match. If they do then thereafter we agree a contract that outlines our working relationship, fees and logistics. If not you are one step closer to finding the right support for you.
Assessment. Here we clarify the purpose of the work by exploring it in conversation and gathering any additional input that may be needed to help you find a goal worthy of your commitment.
Reflective action. This is a cyclical process by which you assess where you are, create a plan of action that includes action between this and our next session, do the work, then reflect and learn from it. Practices comprise a central dynamic here.
Periodic progress review and determination of whether to continue or end your coaching support. The coaching cycles I find most fitting are an 8-week, weekly meeting schedule, a six-month schedule that begins weekly then spreads and provides options for as-needed support, and a year long schedule.
My coaching principles
I hold you always in deep respect.
Wherever reasonable I encourage action in combination with reflection as the most powerful way to validate your goal and advance towards it.
I see development as a lifelong journey.
I honor your choice in each decision along the way, not just because it is your right but more so because it issues from your deepest wisdom.
Coaching Certifications. Click here and scroll to the Credentials section to review my formal coaching background.
For helping groups learn how to coach please see 'Workshops'.