What is Professional Coaching?
“The coach’s job is to help you think more clearly, to push you to go deeper and reach higher, to provide the structure you need to stay focused on the agenda you’ve chosen. ”
The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires their personal and professional potential. Coaches honor the client as the expert in his or her life and work, and believe that every client is creative and resourceful. The coach’s responsibility is to:
- Discover, clarify and align with what the client wants to achieve
- Encourage client self discovery
- Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies
- Hold the client responsible and accountable
What Professional Coaching is Not
Coaching is not counseling, therapy, consulting, mentoring, or a form of discipleship. The coach is not the “expert” and does not give advice. The client is healthy, motivated, creative, and resourceful. We have found it critical for clients to understand the forward moving component of coaching. This forward movement is what distinguishes coaching from counseling. For example, if you have experienced past sexual abuse, and you have not been able to move forward in certain areas of your life due to the hurt and pain of this abuse, then counseling would be a better fit for you. Also, if you are in the midst of grieving a loved one, counseling may be a better fit at this time.
Together, we could work toward...
- Developing skills in such areas as communication, money management, parenting and leadership
- Discovering and developing passions
- Finding a life purpose
- Setting and reaching specific goals
- Building a clearer vision for the future
- Developing a mission statement for one’s life, business or ministry
- Learning to manage change effectively
- Learning to relate to people effectively
- Finding clearer values
- Getting unstuck, out of ruts and moving forward
- Learning to think and see things differently
- Getting free of self-sabotaging behavior and destructive self-talk
- Building self-confidence
- Getting the courage to take risks
- Learning to take responsibility
- Finding the tools, support and accountability to accomplish more
- Having the ability to focus better, be more efficient, and reach goals more quickly
- Developing a closer walk with God
I mostly work with clients over the phone so....
- where you are is up to you
- no travel time is required to get to and from a session
- what you wear is up to you
“You will never maximize your potential in any area without coaching. It is impossible…To be the best next-generation leader you can be, you must enlist the help of others. Self-evaluation is helpful, but evaluation from someone else is essential. You need a leadership coach. A good coach will evaluate your performance against your potential. A coach will know what you are capable of and will push you to your limit…I can go further and faster with someone coaching me than I can on my own.”