Items tagged with "coach":
Building Your Coaching Practice
So, you’ve just completed your coach training and you are newly minted Life Coach. Now what? This is something I have thought a lot about over the last 12 years – both for myself when I was starting out as a just-certified coach in 2007, and for the many new coaches I have mentored and supported...
Women and Burnout
Every year, there is much attention and fanfare about International Women’s day. The week that 8 March falls in is filled with news and views about women and the importance of recognising our importance. While some people are not convinced that there should be a day dedicated to thinking about women...
When the Coach is Ready, the Clients Appear
I coach, supervise and/or mentor many coaches. One of the recurring issues that comes up in sessions is bewilderment and frustration about erratic work. It’s a phenomenon I also experience, as I suspect most coaches do. Some weeks we are so busy we can barely draw breath and other weeks we have...
Why Don’t We Pay More Attention to Ourselves?
Last week I gave a free continuing education phone seminar for coaches. The topic was “Understanding and Preventing Compassion Fatigue for Coaches”. Having been on the receiving end of compassion fatigue more than a couple of times, and having witnessed and coached a not inconsiderable number...
Supervision – somewhere to put things down.
Coaching can sometimes be a very challenging profession for me. I hear all my clients’ secrets and hurts, fears and dreams. I share their joy and their sadness, their triumphs and their defeats. And then I go home and can’t share it with anyone. Part of my contract with my clients is absolute confidentiality...
Love and Work
“Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” Way back in 1930 Freud made the observation that much of our life purpose is influenced by our ability to do meaningful work and our ability to love meaningfully. Not much has changed since then. We are still defined – rightly or wrongly–...
Just because you don’t like hearing something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
How often have you consciously and willfully ignored the truth of something that you didn’t want to hear? I know I have - more times than I care to remember. Two (out of many) examples to illustrate what I mean: Years ago I decided to buy a new car. Despite many people warning me that the make of...
Life Lessons* From Plumbing
Last week there was a burst pipe near my home and we had no water for almost 24 hours. There were lots of life lessons to be learned throughout that day: appreciate what you have when you have it, be grateful for being part of the privileged few who usually have round the clock access to clean water...
My Quick and Easy Time and Task Management Tool
“As you get older; you've probably noticed that you tend to forget things. You'll be talking with somebody at a party, and you'll know that you know this person, but no matter how hard you try, you can't remember his or her name. This can be very embarassing, especially if he or she turns out to be...
I am a Renovator, not a Cheerleader
Some people need someone to help them stay motivated and on track to make and meet their goals. They need a Cheerleader to stand in their corner, pick them up when they fall down and cheer them on when they do well. Others need someone to help them dig a little deeper to understand why they are the way...
True Love
There is nothing like Valentine’s Day and all the publicity and media hype surrounding it to make you hyper-aware of your love-life (or lack thereof). Everywhere you look, there are hearts, cupids and teddy bears on display. I’ve never been a fan of Valentine’s Day. I don’t think there is...
The Truth About To-Do Lists
Every morning I write a to-do list. My daily goals are well-intentioned and, even though they may be ambitious (I am an adult child after all), seem perfectly feasible and reasonable at the start of the new day. But as the day progresses I start to run out of steam. What seemed so achievable in the...
3 Steps to Getting Unstuck
Feeling stuck is horrible. That sensation of spinning in infinity on a hamster wheel (often of our own making but sometimes not), or being imprisoned in a web that we have weaved around ourselves is nasty beyond description. Feeling stuck sucks. It keeps us in situations that we don’t want to...
Meet them where they are
For some reason (some) coaches feel that a ‘proper’ coaching session is only a coaching session when the client leaves with a new skill, an epiphany, a new life-path, a personality change, or any or all of the above. There has to be a lot of ‘heavy-lifting’ and technical work in each session. ...
Valentine’s Day Blues
The sight of Valentine’s Day paraphernalia in shops can be a little depressing. The in-your-faceness of all that enforced romance is hard enough for people who have an ‘other half’ (be that half better, worse or indifferent). But for people who are not-so-happily unattached, all that stuff is...
What’s in a name?
I often struggle with knowing how to name and describe what I do. 'Coach' is such a loose term; there are so many different kinds of coaches and so many different approaches to and philosophies of coaching. Many of them I am deeply respectful of. Some, unfortunately, I am deeply suspicious of. (I...
My Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook
I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I was a late-comer to the phenomenon. For a long time I didn't seen the point of virtual relationships and therefore resisted signing up for years. When I did sign up I was pleasantly surprised by the possibilities that Facebook provided. There are...
S is for…
Stories We tell ourselves stories all the time – stories about how we should think, feel and act. Stories about what we can expect for ourselves and of others. Stories about the world and our place in it. Horror stories. Bad-luck stories. Poor –me stories. We use the stories to...
R is for…
Resilience You are more resilient than you think you are. We all are. I use a starfish (or a sea star as I prefer to call them) as my coaching logo because of their resilience; when they lose an arm, the grow a new one it the old one’s place. Every one of us has responded to the challenges...
Q is for Quotes
Here are some of my favourites: Be the change you want to see in the world. Mahatma Ghandi For me, this quote encapsulates what coaching is all about. It speaks to taking responsibility for what we are not happy with, and what is not working for us, and making changes to how we are, in order...