Coaching - what to expect

Coaching is a strategic investment in your future. This blog tells you what it might be like to do coaching with me. See if it speaks to you. Please do get in touch if you have questions: hello@coachingwithdeb.co.uk. I also offer coaching with therapeutic depth, which is described in a separate blog.

Key facts about coaching, at a glance:

·         The coaching I offer is targeted on your work/career

·         It’s for leaders and aspiring leaders (however you interpret that)    

·         You can work in any sector, in any career, employed or self-employed, or seeking employment just now

·         I work online and have flexible scheduling to suit you, including very early mornings (5am starts), evenings and weekends

·         I work with self-funding individuals. I also offer packages for organisations

·         Coaching is often monthly but can be more frequent when you are working on a live issue where you want to keep up the momentum

·         You choose the focus and direction of your coaching

·         I also have a bespoke offer, which is ‘Coaching to Enhance Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ - a systemic coaching approach that offers a confidential space to explore your intersections and consider how to apply your learning to your work

Here are some examples of why you might invest in some coaching:

·         To enhance your leadership impact

·         To get ready to apply for more senior posts – with all the examples to hand when asked at interview to ‘tell us about a time when…’

·         To create brilliant plans for your first 100 days in a promoted post

·         To resolve a particular pain point in your working life

·         To enhance Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in your organisation

·         To create a work-life balance that feels right for you, avoiding the burnout that you’ve seen happen to others

·         To work out what to do next if you’re encountering stress, bullying, or discrimination

·         To position yourself to change your job, location, or sector, for instance through your post being made redundant

·         To progress an idea for a new business/a business you want to grow

·         You can bring any work/career issues to coaching.

In a nutshell, you can expect the following from your first coaching session

·         The opening up of a dedicated space to explore, plan and grow towards the working life you want

·         The beginnings of a partnership with an EMCC-accredited Senior Practitioner Coach committed to your investment in your future

·         Rigour combined with humanity and respect - it’s not a boot camp. Your psychological safety is paramount.

Chemistry/discovery call

Before your first coaching session, we'll have an informal telephone call of around 15 minutes. It’s a discovery call for you to find out about coaching and a chemistry call for us to see if we’re a good match to work together on whatever you’re bringing. Before the call, please note down broadly what you’d like to work on. That is likely to change over time, but you want a ROI (return on investment) from coaching, so try to be specific about what you’re bringing and for what purpose.  

Contract for coaching

After our call, I'll send you a straightforward contract and a brief information form. Please ask any questions before or during our first session.

The Live Issues page

I’ll also send you a page called the Live Issues page. Either on the day of each coaching session or the day before it, spend some time noting down what’s particularly live for you right now. Don’t do it too early as things can change in the approach to a session! If you do this page of writing/typing, you’ll know where you want to focus our conversation when we meet. You may be surprised what emerges. You don’t need to send this form to me, so you can write as personally as you like.

The GROW model

The GROW model (developed by John Whitmore and colleagues) is widely used in coaching – your goals, your reality, your options, your will to make changes. We’ll start each session by looking at your goal/s for the session and how they connect to your wider plans and how things have unfolded since we last met. Your goals may emerge from your Live Issues page. We’ll explore to make sure the goal you mention really is the goal that feels right for you today. I tend to find that, from there, the realities and opportunities discussion is more organic. That way of understanding it is consistent with my theoretical approach to coaching, which is person-centred. It means I don’t direct where you’re going - you know best where you need to go. I’ll check in with you as we explore to make sure you are focused in the place that is of most benefit to you today, as intentionality and you being in control is vital. In our discussion, questions, as well as noticing what you’re saying and bringing it to your attention (perhaps you’re consistently expressing unhappiness about your relationship with your line manager), will be the main tools that I’ll use. Coaches often refer to some of their questions as ‘powerful questions’ - you are likely to feel that some questions I ask and how you answer them radically change how you see your work/career.  

Tools

Coaching can involve other tools too, activities that can help with the issue you’re bringing. For example, doing an analysis of your strengths if your confidence has been knocked by a difficulty at work or speaking to yourself in the persona of a trusted former boss if you’re struggling to decide which course of action to take: what would they advise you? Some clients like to use these sorts of tools, sometimes or often. Others don’t like them at all! It’s entirely up to you. If I think a tool might be useful with an emerging issue, then I’ll offer it as an invitation, and you’re always welcome to say if it doesn’t feel right for you and then we’ll move in a different direction.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tools that coaches can use and coaches often have preferences for particular tools. The way I like to work is that if you do like the idea of tools and you want to use one with a particular challenge, let me know very briefly what the challenge is at least 24 hours before we meet, and I will identify a couple of potential tools to use in the session. This keeps the use of tools focused: it’s part of a bespoke approach that I offer to you.

Progress and accountability

During our session, I’ll make some notes. This allows me to closely track what you’re saying, to tailor my interventions to what you are saying as the session unfolds. I’ll be shredding these notes after we meet because your next session may take an entirely different direction and to re-read the notes before we meet next time might lead me in a direction that you’re not taking!

What we will both have a record of (with both of us writing this information down) is what you agreed to do after the session. You’re likely to have something like 1-4 key goals you want to meet before the next session – e.g. research a company you’d like to work for, explore some CPD you’d like to take. We’ll look back at these goals when we next meet. If you didn’t meet them, there is likely to be a reason which gives us information about the next round of goal-setting - e.g. you decided you didn’t want to work for that company, the CPD didn’t inspire you!

Progress isn’t about having to do what you said you were going to do – it’s about being curious what particular outcomes are telling us and where they might lead you next; that’s how you move incrementally towards your goals.

Dr Deborah Lee, coach

EMCC-accredited Senior Practitioner coach. Welcoming cis-gender, heterosexual, LGBTQAI+, trans and non-binary clients. Working with awareness of relationship diversity. Seeking to offer a neuro-affirmative space. Always working on developing an intersectional lens.

Coaching with therapeutic depth and counselling/psychotherapy

I also offer coaching with therapeutic depth, and counselling/psychotherapy. They are described in separate blogs.

Book your free discovery call/chemistry call

I hope this blog has given you an idea of what it might be like to do coaching with me. If you’d like to have a discovery/chemistry call, please email: hello@coachingwithdeb.co.uk and we can arrange a time to speak on the telephone for around 15 minutes.