What to Expect From Coaching
As either a personal/life or an executive/management coaching client, you will find an environment in which to re-discover your own unique talents and capabilities and to develop them further, to examine your life and purpose and sources of meaning, and to take positive steps to move career and life in the direction that is right for you.
What's Our Working Relationship Like?
- Imagine a relationship which is entirely focused on you, on your life, on your concerns and career.
- Imagine a relationship in which you are safe to explore any thought, any feeling, any zany possibility -- without risk of being judged.
- Imagine a relationship with someone who really listens, because they want to understand.
That is what a good coaching relationship is like. We will work together collaboratively as equal colleagues, but with a focus on your life, your aspirations and your personal and professional development. You can expect an environment in which to develop your understanding of yourself and your talents, to enhance your own capabilities and resources, to explore your own creativity and insight and the options available to you in life and career.
What Does a Good Coach Actually Do?
The most important factor in coaching is you, the client, and it is ultimately you who will take responsibility (and the credit!) for your own success. But what does a good coach actually do?
- I listen empathically and non-judgementally, serving as a sounding board for your own encounter with yourself.
- I ask questions which may help you to clarify your own values, beliefs, goals, dreams, and personal meaning.
- I express myself openly with you, providing sensitive but honest and direct feedback.
- I collaborate with you, working alongside you as an equal, and accepting you as the best expert on your own life and business.
- I offer an external perspective informed by experience -- not because that experience gives me the right answers for your life, but because it has helped me to learn some of the right questions to ask.
Above all, a good coach demonstrates commitment to you and your life and career; I take your concerns seriously and work with you to help bring about whatever changes you are working towards.
What Does a Good Coach Not Do?
There are also plenty of things a good coach does not do.
- I do not exploit the coaching relationship to act out my own psychological hang-ups, demonstrate my own cleverness, or pretend to be your parent.
- I do not belittle you or criticize you for your shortcomings.
- I do not lecture you or tell you what you should do.
Above all, a good coach does not treat you as anything other than what I believe every client to be: a fully capable human being, possessed of your own good judgement and talents and ready to make the most of life.
What Background Can I Expect From You?
You can expect from me a background informed by both business and academia, plus experience working as a qualified counsellor/psychotherapist. As described on the page About Your Coach, I spent several years as a senior manager after completing a BA and a PhD and publishing my first book. I've worked as a research scientist in complex systems, and I am Managing Director of my own business consultancy firm. I've also studied counselling, and I integrate cognitive behavioural as well as existential methods from counselling into a fundamentally person-centred approach to coaching.
However, it remains the case that the most important factor in coaching is you -- and therefore there is something much more important than my business background or my academic work or my cognitive behavioural tools for overcoming negative self-talk. Namely, it is my commitment to listening to you and taking you seriously as the best expert on your own life.
Will You Give Me Advice?
I believe it is generally more helpful to assist clients in forming, clarifying, challenging, developing and refining their own advice than to promote and expand upon my personal views. No one knows better what it is like to be you than you. Having said that, I will engage actively and energetically with you, drawing upon whatever of my experience, thoughts or feelings may be appropriate; when I experience a strong reaction, I will share it with you. I certainly will not refuse direct requests for me to apply my own skills to your problems or goals, but when I do so it will always be in a collaborative fashion.
Will Our Discussions Be Confidential?
In general, our discussions will be kept entirely confidential. There only two exceptions to this. First, I may discuss non-personal details of my work with you when making use of professional consultative or supervisory support; however, any consultant would be bound by the same pledge of confidentiality I make to you, and they would not be informed of any information which would identify you personally (such as your name or contact details). Second, if I become aware through my work with you of a serious crime having been committed or of an intent on your part to cause serious harm to yourself or others, I may need to divulge this information to a third party; in virtually all circumstances, however, I would discuss this with you before taking any action.
Is it Like Coaching With Rhonda Britten on TV?
There are three answers to this question: no, no, and no!
Viewers in the United States and United Kingdom may be familiar with TV personalities such as Rhonda Britten, offering 'private' coaching services for the purpose of entertaining audiences of millions. These programmes make for entertaining television, but in practice my own approach to coaching -- uncompromised by any incentives to catch and hold viewer attention -- differs profoundly. As outlined in My Coaching Philosophy, I begin with three core conditions: deep respect for you, the client; complete acceptance of you; and a determination to listen and understand empathically. Clever put-downs and parental scolding, indispensable though they may be for television entertainment, do not feature in my work.
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