11. Coaching as Adventure Gear. How's that for an adventure! It's no less exotic than the other couple we interviewed who ended up selling their home, and most of their belongings, after two successful careers in information technology. "Coaching assisted us to take the plunge on something we had been talking about a for a long time," observed the husband. "We decided to buy a recreational vehicle and to travel around North America for a year. Since we knew this would be an intense and critical time for our relationship, we also decided to take our coach along on the adventure. Regardless of where we were, we could still call in for our telephone coaching sessions." "And those calls did assist us to focus on our identity, vision, and communication patterns as a couple," continued the wife. "The coaching made us more respectful, attentive and sensitive to each other. It was the gear that made the trip work even when it became challenging, difficult, and strenuous. It set us up for life."
12. Coaching as Talking Mirror. If one couple took coaching with them on a trip around North America, then others can call in from around the world. And that's exactly what makes us an international coaching company. Take, for example, our work with an Irish entrepreneur with grand designs on the U.S. market. "For my dream to come true, I needed to attract a large amount of venture capital," he remembers. "But I never would have done that without the positive habits, systems, and attitudes we worked on together. With your assistance, I was able to eliminate much of the frustration, clutter, and delay in my life. I was able to increase my success by decreasing my stress. I was also able to identify and focus on the leadership challenges that success would bring. That includes not only my professional challenges, as CEO, but also my personal challenges, as husband, father, and friend. I live a more balanced life now than ever before, and coaching was part of making that happen. It was like looking in a mirror that would talk back; I got to see myself with new eyes, warts and all. It got to the guts of who I am and enabled me to move on."
13. Coaching as Sounding Board. So too for the finance director of a large pharmaceutical factory in Puerto Rico. "I signed up for coaching because I needed a sounding board," he recalls. "After being in the corporate world for many years, I started my own system implementation consulting business in 1996. But that was growing old and I needed to catch wind of a new vision for my life. I didn't want therapy. I wanted someone who could assist me to design and organize my life around my passion. I knew that if I got really excited about something, the rest would fall into place. And sure enough, I quickly made huge transitions. I left my apartment in San Juan and moved full time to a mountain home in the country. From there, my relationships as well as my profession changed dramatically. Your out-of-the-box perspective, not to mention your contacts and wisdom, were exactly what I needed to reengage with the corporate world and to disengage from my significant other. It was great to have a coach by my side through those important transitions."
14. Coaching as Noise Reduction. Others have described the same coaching dynamic in terms of getting out of our own way. It's as though coaching lowers the volume on all the internal and external noise that we live with everyday so we can hear and speak the voice of our own, true self. "I knew that I wanted an exit strategy from my position at the bank and that I wanted to decipher my options for the future," noted our next interviewee, "but I did not know how much had to be weeded out in order for me to be successful. We did an enormous amount of work on the things that were getting in the way, the things I was tolerating, and I became very proficient at saying, 'No, I don't need that.' Now, I've rid myself of tolerations and things that don't add value. I worry less and I smile more. I've gotten more connected to the things that matter."
15. Coaching as Employee Benefit. Not every coaching client is an individual. Sometimes, the client is a company or an organization which retains a coach to work with one or more people who may be identified as high-potential, at-risk, in-conflict, stressed-out, or otherwise able to benefit from working with an external coaching resource. "I decided to make coaching available to the top 30 people in the company," the CEO of a mid-size engineering company told us, "because we had been through a tough reorganization and everyone was feeling the pressure. Morale had become an issue." "Bad attitudes can come from so many directions," observed the CFO, "we needed someone who could help us look not only at the work environment but at the whole environment of our lives. Fortunately, that was the perspective you brought to the coaching process." "And it really made a difference," concluded one of the Engineer Managers who worked with a coach for three months. "Life balance issues are not things we normally talk about as a company. Performance rules when it comes to business. Coaching elevated both the acceptability and the importance of life balance issues, thereby assisting us to do better and to feel better all the way around."
Check back tomorrow for more thoughts about coaching!
Coaching Inquiry: Do you want to make some changes in your life? Does it
sound like the process of coaching would assist you to shift from contemplating
those changes to getting into action? Give me a call or email me:
Sheila Mikulin, M.A.
Life Vision Coaching, LLC
email: sheila@lifevisioncoachingllc.com
Phone 216 932 6012
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