A Coaching Journey - explained further!

Coaching is a journey we take together to empower you more than you may have felt before. We will spend time together discussing YOU and understanding what you want to achieve! The journey should heighten your own self awareness, help you to discover more about yourselves and give you more choices and tools to work with. 

We will work together to achieve what you want to achieve... hiring a coach to assist you on that journey is the first important step.

The key element for me is that a Coach should care about their clients... being an empathetic listener is so important.

Before I start any coaching relationship, I meet initially with you primarily to understand what they want to achieve from us working together, and make sure we get on... then we'll move onto the next steps with the journey....

I wanted to give you a further insight into my Coaching philosophy today...

Once I have met a client for an initial chemistry session, and we are both happy that we would like to start a formal Coaching relationship, we work together to discuss objectives for your programme. These can be strategic, operational, managerial, career orientated, and I will also include some objectives around the actual programme itself, and making sure you feedback as to how you are finding it - after all, it's YOUR programme! I will draw these up into a Coaching Contract which we will sign off at the start of our first formal session.

The objectives for the programme are really important to you as a Client as it provides the backdrop as to what you are working to achieve over the coming weeks and months.

So what happens next in the Coaching Journey....

Once you have confirmed you are happy to proceed with a programme, and that you are happy with the objectives, we get to work...

At the first meeting, I will go through any number of exercises and discussions, for example:

- understanding of your career timeline: what has gone well to date, what has gone less well, any patterns, understanding where you are at currently

- a Myers Briggs feedback session (i often do this if the client has not done the MBTI questionnaire before, and I will cover this separately in more detail in another update)

What I am trying to establish during this session is the CONTEXT to your career and life to date, as this will provide context and perspective going forward as well!

I love this first session - there are often Eureka moments as you go through your career timeline where you realise what may have made a role that had been enjoyable for the first two years suddenly become less enjoyable, and having more awareness of these triggers can be really helpful! It's also fun if doing Myers Briggs to hear the observations as to you believe other people's personality types might be after going through the feedback session!

The first session will usually last 90 minutes to 2 hours, and by the end of it, you should feel like you have talked about yourself for most of the session without it feeling awkward or uncomfortable, and be looking forward to future sessions.

The next stage in a Coaching Journey is when we work together to understand some or all of the following:- your Strengths and Development Areas, skills and interests, core qualities and establishing your Unique Selling Point- the Values that really matter to you- 360 Feedback from other people (if appropriate to the programme)- future planning exercises - "where do you see yourself in 5 years time, and how do you get to that point" - network mapping to understand the relationships you have with other people you work with, and how those relationships can be enhanced- time management, prioritisation and strategies for task completion- the wheel of life which can be useful in determining how you feel about your life balance, and helps you to identify where things could be improved 

There are a number of exercises we can do during the course of these sessions to assist with assimilating the information above. The areas covered will depend on what we have discussed in the initial meeting, and what matters most for you. What we cover in this next stage is designed around you to help build your confidence and understanding of yourself.

Another stage of a Coaching Journey... what values matter to you. There are many different tools I can use during a programme. This is one of the most simple and effective, and can really help if you are thinking of changing role/ career as it can help clarify what matters to you!

You will be given a set of cards with a title and definition on them and you have to decide how important they are to you! Our aim together is to get you to 6-10 key values which you should then look at and think how fulfilled is that value in what you are doing currently.

Sounds simple... but it’s also fun and informative as we talk through the values more during the meeting to understand their meaning to you!