WHAT IS COACHING?

LIGHT OF DAY COACHING AND TRAINING

Coaching is about who you are now and who and where you want to be in the future.

Coaching is about drilling down into what that looks and feels like and how you want to live your life moving forward. Coaching is about creating a life full of joy, contentment, and fulfillment and truly owning who you are and who you want to be. The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential”. What would it feel like to maximize your potential?

Questions to ask yourself: How comfortable are you with your life now? What is the cost of keeping the status quo? What would it take for you to dip a big toe into the unknown? What will it cost you if you don’t test the waters?

I coach people to help them move forward and work in partnership with them to create the change that they need to fully embrace and love their life! Coaching, for me, is about sitting in the ‘stew’ of life and being uncomfortable so that a greater and broader understanding and feeling comes through. We all have idiosyncrasies that we don’t like about ourselves and qualities that are less than ideal but that is what makes us human and imperfect. Coaching can help people bridge that gap while creating a space to fully embrace and envelop someone so that change can occur.

As your coach, I listen to what you say, how you say it, and engage in curiosity around what I hear. You are the one with the answers and as your coach, I will empower you to uncover, discover, and clarify what you value and what resonates for you. By helping you explore an issue or topic in a different way, a change in perspective can cultivate into newer strategies and plans to deal with your issue and/or finding the courage to finally let something go.

I readily invite you to question and challenge yourself and what you ‘believe’ to be true. Does it align with your values and visions? Does your life reflect how you want to live? I did some serious soul searching (and coaching of course!)  to be able to realize that my value was in helping and supporting others go through transitions; specifically gravitating toward career changes, organizational cultures, leadership development, and helping students find their ‘why’. What do you think coaching can do for you? Put another way, what are you talking yourself into? What are you talking yourself out of?

Coaching is NOT about your childhood lost pet and how sad that made you feel. Nor is it about me telling you what you should do. Coaching is about YOU – all the way. It is about YOU wanting to transform yourself and YOU making it happen – with me beside you, every step of the way.

Coaching is not about me affirming what you already think/know is true. It is about examining and wanting to evoke transformation and get clarity for yourself but need help getting there. As your coach, I will cultivate a space that allows you to feel safe, supported, and empowered thereby providing ample opportunity for different perspectives to be examined while challenging the self-critic that always seems to pop into our heads when we are trying to create real, long-lasting change.

True leaders are many things to many people, while being true to themselves. I have been in various management roles throughout my career and my experience has shown me that without people understanding how they are perceived by others, that any growth is not real or sustainable. I am a Certified Assessment practitioner through Hogan Assessments allowing my clients to take a deeper dive into how they show up on a good day, on a not so good day, and what their resonant values are. This type of assessment highlights the need for understanding what is true about you and what some of the difficulties will be as you dive into leadership development.

As a manager, I recognize the internal struggle of keeping a team functioning at optimum capacity while organizationally, the changes are coming so quickly that it feels almost impossible to manage. Team management and functionality are crucial to departmental efficiency however as ‘there are no bad teams, only bad leaders’, leadership development must bridge the gap in a way that empowers individuals and strengthens the team. Through understanding your own strengths and areas for development, you will be able to bring the best of you to work every day, thereby supporting and promoting individuals and your team to bring their best every day.

My Master’s Degree in Leadership has deepened my understanding and appreciation of the nuances within organizational change, politics, and decision-making while also highlighting the way business is conducted today. The need for flexible organizational and leadership models, collaborative engagement, and servitude is a cornerstone of amalgamating the multitude of generations that make up today’s workforce. While no one ‘right’ answer exists, understanding how your leadership impacts every aspect of business, is the key to creating sustainable change.