FAQ
What is professional coaching?
Coaching is professional partnership between a client and coach that engages the client in a creative, structured, thought-provoking process that inspires and supports the exploration, resources, actions, change, and mind-sets clients need to achieve their goals and realize their personal and professional potential.
​
In order to fully understand what coaching is, it may be helpful to consider what coaching is not. Coaching is not “therapy,” “consulting” or “mentoring.”
Here’s how the ICF differentiates coaching from from therapy, consulting, and mentoring:
Therapy: Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationships. The focus is
often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual’s emotional functioning in the present, improving
overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways. Coaching, on the other
hand, supports personal and professional growth based on self-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes.
These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is future focused. While positive feelings/emotions
may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in
one’s work or personal life. The emphases in a coaching relationship are on action, accountability, and follow through.
Consulting: Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely,
the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions. With coaching,
the assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
Mentoring: A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. Mentoring may
include advising, counseling and coaching. The coaching process does not include advising or counseling, and focuses instead
on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.
Where do we start?
We can start with a brief call to get to know each other and see how my coaching services can help you achieve your goals. If we both agree that we’re a good fit for coaching, we take the next step of setting up an introductory 30-minute coaching session. You may also choose to start with an introductory 30-minute coaching session. Because it’s important that you know what it’s like to work with me, this session is complimentary. After our introductory session, if you decide to move forward with coaching, we can start the process of designing a coaching engagement that is right for you
How is coaching delivered? What does the process look like?
Coaching begins with us designing a coaching engagement that is right for you. We begin to design the coaching engagement by discussing your expectations for coaching, assessing your current opportunities and challenges, identifying your priorities for action, and establishig specific desired outcomes with measures for success. We also discuss and define the scope, duration, and location of the coaching engagement. Once we establish the design of the coaching engagement and agree to move forward with a specific coaching plan, we start our regularly scheduled (usually weekly) coaching sessions, which will take place either in person, by phone, or Zoom.
At the beginning of the session, I will ask you questions to identify the focus and outcome for the session and clarify how the session’s goal supports the outcome for the coaching engagement. In coaching, the agenda for the engagement and each session comes from the client.
Once the goal for the session is identified, I will continue to engage you in a structured dialogue that is primarily driven by your responses to questions, observations, and exercises that promote self-discovery, heighten self-awareness, foster shifts in perspectives, elicit new insights, inspire you to reframe challenges, and identify opportunities and options that support your coaching goal.
Toward the end of each session, we will identify specific actions that support the achievement of your prioritized goals and create a plan to implement these actions. Between scheduled coaching sessions, you may be asked to implement your action plan. I may also direct you to additional resources or exercises that I may ask you to review or complete between sessions to support self-discovery, self-awareness, new habits, actions, behaviors, thinking, and accountability. At the beginning of our next session, we will review this action plan and discuss progress, obstacles, opportunities, and successes.
As we approach the end of the engagement, we will assess where you are in relation to your desired outcome, review the measures and milestones for success, and discuss your plan to move forward once the engagement is complete.
​
How long does a coach work with an individual?
The length of the coaching engagement varies depending on the individual’s specific needs and preferences. For most types of focused individual coaching, a three to six month engagement is recommended.
How much does coaching cost?
There are different packages available. Please contact me for more information.
Where do you conduct your sessions?
.Most coaching sessions are conducted by phone or Zoom. We can also meet in person in New York City.