My Coaching Philosophy
Coaching is is not leading or following, but rather walking beside. It is a partnership that allows the client the freedom to discover the answers and solutions that lie within them. As such, the client is the resident expert on them and I approach each coaching session on that premise. I work from a strengths-based approach rather than a “fix-it” based approach, recognizing every individual is a whole person with their own motivation. Together, we just need to call forth than motivation.
- Coaching services exist to benefit the client. The needs of the client always have top priority.
- The coaching partnership/relationship is based on an attitude of profound acceptance that:
- that values the inherent worth and potential of every human being.
- respects the irrevocable right and capacity of self-direction.
- exercises accurate empathy (the ability to understand another’s frame of reference and that the conviction that it is worthwhile to do so).
- seeks and acknowledges the person’s strengths and efforts.
- Clients are the experts on themselves. No one knows more about them than they do.
- Coaches don’t have to come up with all the good ideas. Chances are they don’t have the best ones, the client does as they are the “experts” on themself.
- The coach doesn’t make change happen. The truth is they can’t do it alone, or have the right to do so. Change is owned by the client.
- Clients have their own strengths, motivation, and resources that are vital to activate in order for change to occur. As such, change requires a partnership, a collaboration of expertise.
- Change is not a power struggle whereby if change occurs we “win.” The conversation about change should feel like dancing not like wrestling.
- Motivation for change is naturally evoked, not installed in the client. Motivation is already there and just needs calling forth.
- A coach can never revoke the client’s choice about their own behavior. Client’s make their own decisions about what they will and will not do, and it’s not a change goal until the client adopts it.