What is Coaching?

Coaching is about helping people achieve their desired outcomes.

The issues that our client's bring to coaching can include: fear, frustration or lack of confidence in their work; they may be searching for more fulfilment or need to understand their own or others' motivations and goals. They may want to be more innovative and influential, resolve conflicts, manage time better or shape their own or others' performance. Maybe they are in a bind with regard to their relationship, need to set priorities and get more balance in their lives, or align business goals with people goals.

Our coaches are trained in Rapid Mind Empowerment Coaching, an extremely powerful coaching technique which is highly effective in helping people overcome any difficulties they may be having in their minds or lives in general. Although it has its roots in coaching, RMEC has taken all the best aspects from NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), clinical hypnosis, counselling and psychology and 'welded' them into a very potent new form of coaching.

The goal of coaching is essentially to maximize client's ability to respond to their situation resourcefully; to increase the choice they have. The coach's job is to assist the client to discover [or map] their own present approach to their situation, to establish what works for them currently and what they want to improve or change. The coach then engages the client in learning more effective means to reach their goals. The outcome of coaching is to assist the client to increase the reliability and value of their own thinking and performance to themselves and their chosen associates in and for the future.

By going through this mapping process the client moves towards greater self-awareness, behavioural flexibility, choice and effectiveness. The goal of coaching is to clarify the client's present or 'problem' state, their desired out-comes, and to use various powerful techniques to enable the client to access their inner resources and resourcefulness to get the changes they want.

Clients want to achieve their goals, but there are obstructions and interferences, otherwise they would not consult a coach. These obstructions are usually in the client's mind rather than in the outside world. Clients have limiting beliefs about themselves, their resources or other people. Rapid Mind Empowerment Coaching does not treat beliefs as the truth (although they seem true for the client), but as best guesses based on previous experience. These limiting beliefs act as self-fulfilling prophecies. When we believe something, we follow it. We never question it, because we always act as if it is true. Everyone believes in gravity, so we do not try to fly unaided or the result would be very painful, if not fatal. However, beliefs about ourselves, others, how men and women should treat each other are very different from beliefs about gravity. They are learned or copied from significant adults in our childhood and adolescence and are not true. They become true when we act as if they are. Beliefs are learned, so they can be unlearned. We are not born with all the fears and restrictions we carry into adulthood. When beliefs are limiting clients, we help clients see them differently, get feedback and change them if they wish.

What coaching can do for you 

Coaching can help you find the right balance, enjoyment, and meaning in your life. It encourages you to look at every aspect of your life, to take the time to question and challenge your own assumptions, to focus on working out what your own life is really about, rather than what you or others think it should be. The end goal is to get more balance, enjoy yourself more, and work out the meaning of life for you.

What to expect from your coach

It is a coach's job help you identify what is stopping you from doing what you want to do, and then help you to remove it. It is absolutely nothing about giving advice or imposing knowledge on you. Coaching is about removing the obstructions and not adding any new ones. We concentrate on balancing all the areas of your life. We believe that you have all the resources you need to solve your own problems and that it is our job to help you remove the obstacles that prevent this happening.

A coach engages you in a conversation. Everyone has conversations all the time - from social chit-chat to serious, purposeful talks. A 'coaching conversation' is a structured dialogue that cuts through the chit-chat and gets to the heart of everything:

• Why you do what you do.
• What is stopping you doing what you want to do.
• What your options are.
• How you go about getting the results you want.
• How you maintain your motivation.

The focus of the coaching conversation is on knowing what you want to get out of the conversation itself. Your coach encourages you to set a goal for the session itself, for example, 'By the end of this session, I want to have clarified and fully understood my limiting belief about my ability to close a sale.'

Your coach asks you many powerful questions that get you thinking deeply about what's going on and what's important. Some of these questions may be ones you've never considered before or dared to ask yourself.

What not to expect from your coach

Counselling or psychotherapy

Counselling or psychotherapy usually start from the perspective that something is broken, and needs fixing. They often focus on the past, and involve reliving past trauma to enable people to come to terms with what has gone wrong. In coaching we start with the assumption that clients are whole, healthy and strong enough to deal with the challenges of coaching.

Mentoring

A coach doesn't mentor a client. However working with a mentor is a great way of developing yourself. You find someone who is farther ahead on the road than you are in some important respect – skills, knowledge, awareness – and model yourself on the best that you see in them. A mentor freely passes on wisdom, and you then choose whether or not to accept it. A mentor may also coach you to draw on your own inner resources – but the function of mentoring tends to focus on building your capability in an informal way.

One of the possible outcomes from coaching is that you decide to find yourself a mentor to model. Perhaps someone you work with who can pass on their wisdom in a very specific work context. Or it could be a person who you respect for their overall attitude to life – maybe some- one who excels at building strong, positive relationships, or who always exudes an air of calm and balance. You can actively work with a mentor or simply observe a strong role model rising to life's challenges so that you can adapt your own style to theirs.

Advice

A coach doesn't give you advice. A coach may discuss and suggest options for you, but essentially coaching facilitates your own thought processes.

Choosing coaching for long-term results

Plenty of places offer you solutions to life's challenges. You can attend a training course and come away with practical options. You can read a great book and be inspired. You can talk to wise friends and get guidance. You can find a role model and kick-start your motivation. These options are highly effective in their own ways, but they do have drawbacks. In order for any or all of these strategies really to work, you have to do two things.

1. First, you have to make those options, inspiration, guidance and motivation your own.

2. Then you have to commit to carrying out the plan of action, even when your motivation wavers.

Be honest now. How many times have you made a commitment to change and found that, sooner or later, the resolve that you had at the start has deserted you, or that the methods you've chosen seem too hard? That wavering point is where coaching steps in to strengthen your resolve.

Coaching generates in abundance all the inspiration, motivation, guidance and practical options that you need. At the end of a coaching conversation you come away with an action plan that you are genuinely excited about and can't wait to start. A coach constantly supports you in finding the right solutions for you as you eliminate limiting beliefs about what is possible in your world.

When you're ready to take the next step, contact us to arrange your free initial session.