Welcome!
I’m so glad you’re here.

Life has threads of stability and moments of change that bring us choices. We respond — reacting to events, interacting with others, inspired by chance, providing necessities, fulfilling personal desires.

Our thriving depends on intentionally shaping our experience and influencing what we can — guided by our sense of meaning, purpose, and direction. How well we do this depends on our life experience, personal attributes, our perception of the situation and desired outcome, and sufficient support to cope, adapt, and thrive.

What’s key is effectively working through issues within ourselves and with others. Such personal growth is an ongoing natural process of changes in attitudes, values, and understandings as we work through our experiences of life. If we’re lucky, we have trusted companions to guide and support us along the way.

However, at times when we need something more, it may be useful to partner with a professional.

Who is a coach?

A coach is a professional trained in ways to raise clients’ awareness and foster learning that offers greater choice and support of clients’ thought and action.

Coaches differ from other helpful professionals — such as therapists, counselors, and mentors — in their purposes, beliefs, and interactions with clients.

Coaches focus on the present, on clients’ aims, and work with clients to create possibilities that enhance life.

Coaches believe that clients are capable with resources of energy, wisdom, and ability waiting to be set into motion.

Coaches collaborate with clients to tap and use these resources productively to achieve clients’ aims.

According to the International Coaching Federation, a coach

• understands and consistently applies coaching ethics and standards.

• develops and maintains a mindset that is open, curious, flexible, and client-centered.

• partners with the client and relevant stakeholders to create clear agreements about the coaching relationship, process, plans, and goals for the overall coaching engagement as well as for each coaching session.

• partners with the client to create a safe, supportive environment that allows the client to share freely, maintaining a relationship of mutual respect and trust.

• is fully conscious and present with the client, employing a style that is open, flexible, grounded, and confident.

• focuses on what the client is and is not saying to fully understand what is being communicated in the context of the client systems and to support client self-expression.

• facilitates client insight and learning by using tools and techniques such as powerful questioning, silence, metaphor, or analogy.

• partners with the client to transform learning and insight into action, promoting client autonomy in the coaching process.

In choosing to work with a professional coach, you have a partner to stand by you, with you, and for you.

What is coaching?

Coaching is a process that facilitates the natural process of change — change in the client’s life, change in observable results, change in the client’s experience of self, others, and the world. The coaching process involves structured, focused interaction and the use of appropriate strategies, tools, and techniques to promote desirable and sustainable change for the benefit of the client and potentially others.

Today, coaching has become so popular that you can find a coach to help you with almost anything. The type of coaching is often described by what it’s for, who it’s for, and how it’s done.

Coaching is goal-focused. Coaching varies in purpose, setting, and subject matter and may be related to business, sports performance, or personal life. Each niche draws on relevant disciplines and theories.

Coaching may be for an individual, a couple, group, or organization. Individuals may access coaching as a private client, through a service organization, or as part of employment. Coaching may be via phone, video, or in person. Coaching may be brief or extended.

Although coaching adheres to professional standards, coaching services are different. This diversity stems from integrating disciplines and theories into process models for different types of clients and into conceptual frameworks that link key factors to specific outcomes, enabling choosing effective methods to achieve them.

So, it’s important to consider what would be helpful to you.

What now?

If you believe coaching might be helpful, I invite you to learn more about life coaching.