What is coaching?
The International Coach Federation defines coaching as follows:
“Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their lives.
Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.”
How is coaching different than therapy?
“Therapy focuses on the life an individual is living as related to past, often childhood issues. Therapy focuses on accompanying feelings and emotions, patterns of behavior and any self-destructive tendencies. A typical outcome of therapy is healing the individual, the creation of more useful and healthy coping skills, and dealing with current issues and challenges. Coaching focuses on what a person wants, beginning in the present and moving forward, developing the person to engage life with new behaviors and ultimately to achieve his or her definition of success. It can be useful for the coachee to access information or knowledge from the past in order to identify past patterns of behavior that do not produce the preferred outcome. A succinct way of identifying the line between coaching and therapy is that if a coachee’s past is an issue he or she may benefit from therapy, but if the past is a fact, he or she is coachable.”
How is coaching different than mentoring?
“A mentor is an expert with knowledge in a particular field or within a particular company who can guide others to move forward within the company or field by benefiting from his or her experience. A coach is an expert on the development of people in general, and helps people move forward on their own unique path that may be very different from that of the coach.”
What should I work on with my Coach?
What is a transformational coach?
A transformational coach works with clients as they navigate change, helping them live their most authentic, ideal lives. They support their clients to have a deeper understanding of their inner world, so the client can live a life that is aligned with their highest values.
A transformation coach’s role is to support their clients in creating a life of meaning that is congruent with their highest wisdom, using a combination of practices from different modalities. Transformational coaches also have a strong emphasis on self-care and conscious living.
What is coaching with a horse?
Horses are very perceptive and intuitive animals, which makes them wonderful co-coaches. When you do a Coaching with a Horse meeting with me, you will meet at a local horse farm. You will be introduced to a horse that has been chosen specifically for you on that day. This meeting will be done in an enclosed pen, usually a round pen (which is exactly what it sounds like – a pen that is round). The horse will be loose in the pen with you. You are able to interact with the horse (e.g., pet it) and get comfortable being together in this enclosed space. Once you are ready, the coaching will begin to address your current challenge. The horse’s behavior is how he/she communicates messages he/she wants to share with you. Therefore, as you go through your coaching meeting, we will observe the horse’s behavior and will discuss this (e.g., what is the horse’s response when you talked about your challenge, did you notice what the horse did when you talked about a particular topic). At the end of your coaching meeting, you will share what you discovered during this meeting, as well as, your next steps. Additionally, if you’d like, you’ll spend a little time with the horse.
Since you may be curious about some of the types of behavior a horse may share with you, here’s an example. I did a Coaching with a Horse demo with a woman who just graduated from college and was looking into graduate school. She didn’t know whether she wanted to “follow the money” or “follow her heart”. My co-coach during this demo was a very intuitive horse named Cody. During the coaching, every time the client talked about “following the money”, Cody looked away from her. Every time she talked about “following her heart”, Cody kept staring at her. This went on through-out the entire coaching demo. At the end, the client said the messages from Cody were very clear and combining that information with the coaching, she had what she needed to move forward.
How often do I talk to my coach?
How much does it cost?
The cost varies depending upon the type of service you choose. There are a variety of individual coaching services, as well as a number of group programs. Please refer to the 1-to-1 Coaching page for more information.
What do I have to do when I’m working with a coach?
Are my conversations with my coach confidential?
What is a certified coach?
The International Coach Federation (ICF) has created a certification program that is considered to be the gold standard for coaches internationally. They provide the requirements for achieving various certifications. Please refer to the ICF website for the full certification details. The ICF also has regulatory and ethical standards. Please click here to review these standards. I earned my Professional Certified Coaching (PCC) certification from the ICF.
Additionally, various training programs provide certification. Please refer to the specific training program’s website for the requirements for their certification.