The value of coaching comes from achieving a significant goal or improvement. You need to know at least generally what you want from coaching - it is fine if your goal is to find the right goal. Ask yourself if what you want to accomplish is significant enough to make the time and financial investment worthwhile and to motivate you to take the actions required from coaching.

You and your coach will design an action plan that will help you stay focused and clear on your goals. A coach will challenge you, and you will likely find the structure, consistency and feedback of coaching naturally makes you more accountable. However, it is not the coach's role to nag or supervise your actions. You must be committed to the success of your plan and take action for the coaching to be successful.

It is natural for people to make big progress and make it quickly during coaching, as long as they have chosen a goal that truly inspires them. If you find that you are having a lot of difficulty taking action on your goals during coaching, your coach may help you design an alternate approach to the goal, challenge you to choose another goal that does inspire you, or advise you to seek additional help if there seems to be a major block to your progress.

Growth and discovery is a benefit of all effective coaching, as is using the coach as a trusted sounding board. 

For some people growth and perspective is the primary coaching objective and not tied to specific goals. The value of a discover zone coach is in the provocative conversations, shared insights and interdevelopmental growth with your coach. Your results will be a felt sense of awareness or evolution more than external achievements.

For others, the main point of coaching is that trusted, professional sounding board for the various challenges of business life, again not necessarily linked to a specific objective. The value of a sounding board coach is clearer strategy and decisions, more intentional responses, reduced professional isolation and perhaps more courage to face the significant challenges of leadership.

In both cases, the main role of your coach is to be that sounding board or growth and discovery guide, as you are not looking for a lot of action-oriented coaching. In some ways these are advanced forms of coaching, and you will want to choose a coach whose style and skills fit the form.

In addition to having a significant objective, do you have the personal resources and environment to use coaching effectively right now? If you are not sure about this, use this coachability index to help you decide.

If you feel this way, you are not alone. Coaching may not be a familiar type of relationship or business tool; you may have no model to go by. You will be jumping into a new pool for the first time.

Scary or awkward: You may feel the same kind of anxiety as on your first day at a new school, meeting a new boss or meeting a therapist or counselor for the first time.  In those situations you suspect something is expected from you, so you think about how you will perform. Or you expect the other person will learn quite a bit about you - perhaps much more than you will learn about them - and this feels awkward. You will wonder how much you have to reveal or whether you can trust this person.

These concerns ususally melt away during the first coaching conversation and are soon forgotten. You will establish a rapport with your coach pretty quickly and confirm for yourself that your coach (1) is 100% on your side, (2) puts you in the driver's seat about topics of discussion and decisions, and (3) is on a par with you - not in a superior position of any sort and is in fact developing and learning right alongside you.

If at any time during the process you believe you don't have a good fit with your coach or that you need to step away from the coaching, your coach will support you completely in finding another coach or being complete with your current coaching.

Insulting: Another coaching concern comes up for those who believe that coaching is for people who need to be fixed or corrected, or who aren't performing. In this case coaching is seen as remedial or therapeutic. You may feel that you don't need coaching, but you know several others who do. As you can imagine, coaches hear this concern pretty often.

The truth is no genuinely professional coach who will attempt to fix or correct you, nor will they see you as wrong or inadequate. A coach holds no judgments about you or your decisions, and is a strong advocate of your strengths and successes. You should find that your coach believes completely in you and your abilities. If you feel diminished rather than enlarged by coaching, you probably need to find another coach. 

Most coaches come from the philosophy that no one needs coaching in order to be ok or successful, but many people can go a lot further toward their potential and their biggest goals by using the same advantage that all great athletes and many fine performers give themselves - a coach.

Your decision:

If you have made a decision about coaching and are happy with it, congratulations. If still have questions or would like assistance in making your decision, send me an email or call and I will help you however I can.

You will probably want to speak with at least a few coaches to choose your best fit. Coaches expect and support you in this process and usually will spend some time with you discussing your goals for no charge or give you a complementary coaching session so you both can see if there is a good match for coaching.

I would enjoy having a coaching strategy session with you. Please contact me to set up a telephone appointment.  I will suggest other coaches specializing in the area you want to be coached on, so you can compare your options. You may also want to use some of the online coaching referral sources.  You can link to some of those here: Choosing a coach

See what some of my clients have done with coaching.