Frequently Asked Questions

How does coaching work?
You hire a coach to support you with improving a specific leadership area or to enhance your over-all leadership skills. Together, you and your coach design the time you meet, for how long, and how often. Your meetings can take place in person or on the phone. In both types of session, the focus is on YOUR goals and objectives. The coach actively listens to understand what you think and feel are important. Sometimes, the coach summarizes or paraphrases what you have said to ensure clarity and understanding. Other times your coach will ask open-ended questions that will help you to analyze an issue from different perspectives or to uncover additional insights.

There is typically topic continuity between sessions. However, coaching is flexible enough to accommodate urgent, unpredictable issues that you have arise.

This is your time to focus on you. Nothing else is more important.

What are your responsibilities?
When you begin the coaching process, you’re making a commitment to your professional and personal success. To ensure that you meet your goals, you will need to honor your scheduling commitments for the time and place of each session. Furthermore, your success depends on how honest you are with yourself and your coach. The more you candidly analyze specific issues, the greater your progress. Lastly, the more time and effort you apply to completing between-session observations and other activities, the faster you reach your coaching objectives.

No matter how committed the coach is to your achievements, your ultimate success depends upon your own personal dedication.

What are your coach’s responsibilities?
Coaches must conduct themselves with the highest personal integrity, honesty and sincerity. They should demonstrate by words and actions their genuine concern for your welfare and future. At all times, your coach should display respect for your values, beliefs, frame-of-reference, learning style and personal being.

The coach sets clear agreements and promises – and then keeps them. Together, you set goals, design actions, and measure your progress. The coach has no personal investment in specific outcomes other than meeting your goals. It is what you want that is most important.

Your coach provides ongoing support for and encourages fresh perspectives on challenges and opportunities, a sounding board for innovative analysis of decisions and actions, and a safe environment for exploring creative ways of performing your job or working with others.

When exploring new or sensitive areas, your coach asks permission to discuss that area. You have the right – and responsibility – to tell the coach that you don’t want to discuss a particular issue. You coach must respect your wishes.

If the relationship between you and the coach is not working, either one of you has the right – and responsibility – to say so. The coach will then assist you in making a connection with another coach if you so desire.

How are coaching sessions conducted?
Coaching sessions are conducted in company offices, off-site locations, and by phone. In fact, in today’s teleconferencing age, oceans are no barrier for coaching. Sessions can range from 30 minutes to 1 ½ hours. They can be once a week or even once a month. All these decisions are made by you and your coach.

Initially, some people feel uncomfortable talking with a coach over the phone. However, most people discover that they like the confidentiality of not meeting a coach in their office or having to leave work to meet off-site. Phone coaching also allows leaders more flexibility in both selecting meeting times and who they work with (they can choose a coach from a larger universe – not being restricted to a limited driving radius).

How are coaching and consulting different?
You hire a consultant when you want an “expert” to answer questions and solve problems. They gather information so that they can design the appropriate recommendations, advice and solutions. As the “expert,” consultants tell you what’s working and not working, what needs to be done, and how it should be implemented.

The coach’s expertise is the coaching process. The coach joins you as a collaborator in your quest for greater personal power, success, and happiness. You ultimately contain the answers you’re looking for – not the coach. You might say that a coach provides you with a second pair of eyes and ears in your search for greater clarity and insight into yourself, your job, and other people. Working from your agenda and toward your goals, the coach assists you in exploring options, looking at multiple alternatives, and trying out new paths of action.
When it comes to your work and life, you are the expert, not the coach.

How are coaching and psychotherapy different?
Psychotherapy operates from a disease model. There is the assumption that the client is dysfunctional and needs “fixing.” As part of treatment therapists usually give the client a psychological diagnosis based on the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders.” Their work focuses on labeling symptoms and the development of a treatment plan.. You usually operate in an unequal relationship with therapists as the “expert” or authority, and you the one in need of fixing. When you talk to a psychotherapist, you focus on the past – analyzing and healing what went wrong.

In coaching, you focus on the present and how to create a flourishing, fulfilling and joy-filled future. Coaches see their clients as having good mental health and possessing the resources and creativity to reach their professional and personal goals. Coaching focuses on what you determine is important, your vision for the future, and your definitions of success. Through discussions and questions, the coach provides encouragement, insights and tools based upon your strengths, interest, and aspirations. Creating mutually designed goals and action plans, you enhance your leadership performance and the quality of your life.

From your coach, you receive support and encouragement that helps you to access the skills, resources, and creativity that are already naturally yours.

How do I measure the success of the coaching process?
First, there are the external measurements. These include: achieving your coaching goals that you established at the beginning of the relationship; strengthing your leadership skills, enhancing work relationships with your manager, direct reports, peers, suppliers, and customers; creating stronger team synergy in your organization; improving personal and business performance; communicating and marketing ideas more effectively; increasing productivity; and discovering more creative and successful solutions to challenging issues.

Second, there are internal measures. These include: gaining deeper awareness of yourself and others; feeling positive about work and it’s challenges; discovering greater creative and flexible thinking about issues; developing deeper concentration and focus on tasks; experiencing less anger and frustration when things don’t go as planned, which means increased patience; having greater self-confidence in successfully handling all issues that arise; and developing deeper understanding and insight into the motivation and needs of others.

Yes, coaching can be a lot of work. But when the process is successful, coaching is also fun and exhilarating.