What is coaching?
Pure coaching is partnering with you in a thought-provoking and creative process to inspire you to maximise your personal and professional potential. In a coaching partnership we focus on areas of your life you’d like to improve or get a different result starting from where you are, right now.
A typical coaching conversation between you and your coach focuses specifically on your outcomes and helping you discover the answers for yourself. After all, we’re more likely to engage with solutions that we’ve come up with ourselves rather than those that are forced upon us – right?!
What’s the difference between coaching and mentoring and training and counselling?
A mentor is someone with experience in your field. The key difference between mentoring and coaching is that a mentor will offer advice, from their experience as they’ve ‘been there done that’, whereas the coach will support you in your own journey of self-discovery. In an organisational setting, a mentor is usually someone who will bring you up through the ranks on their career path.
Training is a pre-determined schedule or programme of learning which may be delivered in a variety of different ways; classroom style, one-to-one, online or in-person. With training you know what you’re going to get before you embark on the journey. A coach will ask you what you want from a coaching partnership so you get to set the agenda, and from my experience, my clients are often surprised at what they already know, or may have forgotten to remember. Also, the coaching partnership discussion may end up somewhere completely unexpected and surprising.
Counselling is collaborative, generally retrospective and looks to identify goals and potential solutions to past problems which may have caused emotional turmoil. Counselling seeks to develop coping skills, strengthen self-esteem and promote behaviour change for optimal mental health. Coaching is forward-focused where you are met where you are right now, and your coach partners with you confidentially and collaboratively to help you move in the direction you desire.
As your coach, I’m a subject matter expert at coaching, not the subject matter expert for your specific coaching topic. I’m skilled and experienced in observing and hearing patterns and supporting you to create change through effective questioning and deep listening. I walk alongside you to support you in implementing new behaviours to achieve your desired outcome.
“Easy is hard and hard is easy. When we do easy, life can sometimes become more difficult.
When we do the hard stuff, life often becomes easier.”
– Barbara Jaques, mindMoves
Why use coaching?
• Develop your sense of perspective;
• Engage your own personal accountability partner;
• Challenge yourself with intentional thought, action and behaviour changes in a way that you wouldn’t usually ask of yourself;
• Identify gaps between where you are and where you want to be;
• Find support with planning and implementing your roadmap to success;
• Clarify your thinking around a problem or concern;
• Develop a clear future path so you can get out of your own way;
• Resolve a long-standing issue;
• Grow new skills to respond differently in testing situations;
• Elicit confidential, honest, objective feedback;
• Inspire & motivate yourself;
• Create a your own personal, confidential, supportive and safe space to ‘let off steam’ without damaging your relationships;
• Find your confidence, energy and vitality and feel happier;
• Build your personal brand;
• Have your own personal cheerleader!
If you’d like to activate your inner strength through:
• Skills development to build & maintain your relationship muscles;
• Opening up how you see yourself and your world;
• Uncovering your hidden gifts and talents;
• Rediscovering your confident self;
• Co-creating empowering beliefs & habits;
• Effortlessly implementing teeny tiny and easy changes, one caterpillar step at a time.
Elite athletes and business executives hire coaches to help them enhance their performance in decision making, management, interpersonal effectiveness or on-field performance. Call me now to find out how to start, with an obligation-free compatibility check session.
How do I start?
If you’d like to get started or, you don’t know where to start, phone or email me for your FREE, no-obligation discussion.
Yeah right – nothings for free right? Well, yes, our complimentary compatibility check sessions are. We walk our talk when we say the most critical aspect of a coaching partnership is the trust and confidence you have when you partner with your coach. And how do you get to discover that if you don’t know the coach? What better way to find out with a conversation over a cuppa, over Zoom, or in-person if circumstances allow. Phone or email me to experience a coaching conversation to assess if coaching with me is the right match for you. Totally free, no hooks or catches! I promise!
Client Testimonials
“Kept in contact throughout the coaching and ensured the staff were well supported.”
LH
“Thank you for your help, you made me realise I can’t just wait for the right thing to come along. After speaking with you I got brave …”
S.S.
“I appreciated Barbara’s open, direct and kind communication style … was refreshing and prompted me to self-relfect … I always felt safe to explore personal issues around what was holding my business back from development.”