Coaching FAQs

What exactly is coaching?

Coaching is the process of facilitating positive change by expanding how a person thinks and stretching them to operate in new ways. A coach supports you to set motivating goals and access the mindsets and behaviors you need to reach them. As the International Coaching Federation explains,

“The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.”

What types of coaching do you offer?

I partner with clients who operate in an organizational context and seek to enhance their performance – or the performance of their teams and organizations – in some way. I provide the following types of coaching:

Executive coaching: For senior-level leaders who want to maximize their influence and impact. Issues leaders explore often include: identifying strengths and growth areas, recognizing how others perceive them, owning the impact of their actions, work/life balance, crafting and building alignment around a vision, articulating and driving toward goals, and making strategic decisions.

Leadership coaching: For professionals keen to grow and develop their ability to be effective leaders. This type of coaching is suitable for people from all levels and experience – from senior managers to individual contributors, and from seasoned to novice professionals.

Management coaching: For managers who need to cultivate or strengthen mindsets and behaviors to manage people effectively. My management coaching focuses heavily on the interpersonal and relational aspects of people management and has impact for new and experienced managers alike.

Team coaching: For teams and groups who need structure and support to examine their dynamics and relationships and discover ways to maximize their talent and potential to achieve their shared goals.

Performance coaching: For individuals who need support to understand and address a performance issue(s) within their current role that has been identified by their organization as needing improvement.

If you read this list and feel like several different types of coaching are right for you or your team members – that makes perfect sense. In practice, there is a lot of overlap between these forms of coaching. The questions and issues you explore in a leadership coaching session might be some of the same ones you explore in an executive or team coaching session. This list is meant to give you a sense of the general aims and audiences I serve as a coach.

Is coaching confidential?

Yes! Confidentiality is an essential aspect of the client-coach relationship. What my clients share with me is totally private – it stays just between us.

In some cases, depending on the nature of the engagement, I may be in contact with a client’s manager or HR partner to share a periodic progress update or facilitate a three-way conversation between the client and their manager to discuss progress. In these cases, full confidentiality is still maintained. What I share is limited to my observations about the progress the client is making on their coaching goals, and strategies the manager or HR partner can use to support the client. I always talk to my clients about my observations before I speak to their manager or HR partner.

How does the coach-client relationship work?

I approach the client-coach relationship as a partnership. In this partnership, the client is in charge of the content and direction of our sessions and I’m responsible for the overall process.

Being in charge of the content and direction means the client sets the agenda for each session. This includes deciding what we’ll focus on, what outcomes we’ll work toward, and what actions they will take before we meet again. It requires being fully present and engaged and offering real-time feedback to ensure that the issues we’re exploring and the way we’re doing it feel relevant and useful for them.

Being responsible for the process means I take actions to create a safe and supportive environment, manage time, keep the client future-focused, action-oriented and accountable, and use tools and techniques to encourage deep introspection and reflection, and ultimately transformation.

Tell me about your coaching process.

I typically meet with clients for one hour every other week. This cadence creates time for reflection and application of learnings between sessions while also maintaining momentum.

In preparation for the first session, you complete a coaching questionnaire, which elicits information about your needs, priorities, values, and context, and a coaching agreement that lays out the terms of our work together.

In session one, we discuss the issues and goals you want to work on and begin building our partnership by establishing guidelines for how we’ll work together. I use powerful questions and reflection tools to help you articulate your areas of interest and priorities, explore your motivations, and describe the transformation you want to achieve through coaching.

In each session that follows, I help you progress toward your goals. We will have exploratory conversations and do exercises that stretch you to examine the underlying beliefs and operating systems that influence how you think and act. These conversations will also help you identify and interrupt existing habits and mindsets that aren’t serving you, and substitute them with ways of thinking and acting that better serve your needs and aims. Our conversations will also help you obtain directional clarity.

In the final session, we reflect on, recognize, and celebrate everything you’ve achieved in coaching and we discuss how to maintain and build upon your gains moving forward.

How long is a coaching engagement?

The length of an engagement can vary greatly and depends on a wide range of factors: your goal(s), the degree to which you embrace a growth mindset, your capacity for introspection, how much you apply learnings between sessions, your circumstances, and other unique factors.

Some of my clients come in for a very brief engagement (ex. 2-3 sessions to get directional clarity). Others have broader needs and want to work on several goals over a longer period. Clients who work on multiple goals typically partner with me for six months to a year.

What are your coaching qualifications?

I am a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and hold a certificate in Brain-based Coaching from the NeuroLeadership Institute. Earning my PCC-level credential required completing 125 hours of formal coach training, accumulating 500 hours of coaching experience, receiving mentorship from an ICF-certified mentor, submitting recorded coaching sessions for review by the ICF to assess the quality of my coaching and my ability to demonstrate the core competencies and ethical standards set for the industry, and passing a comprehensive exam. My choice to pursue this credential reflects my deep commitment to quality of service and care for my clients.

I began coaching in 2016 and since then I’ve worked with nearly 100 clients and accumulated over 700 hours of experience. As a life-long learner, I’m committed to continuously developing my coaching skills. I do this by participating in a community of practice with other professional coaches, reading and writing about coaching, seeking coach mentorship and supervision, and actively seeking feedback from my clients.

 

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Do you need support to develop yourself or others? Set up a free consultation and let’s discuss what you need and how I can help.