FAQ About My Coaching Practice

Coaching is an iterative, targeted, interactive process designed to facilitate concrete changes in performance and bottom-line results. Coaching helps clients achieve their goals through powerful conversations that are intended to inspire new thinking, perceptions and behavior that actualize your potential, improve your performance, create focus and directional clarity, support the achievement of your personal and professional goals, and enhance the quality of your life.

The objective is to focus on your potential (your not-yet-realized ability, capacity, or possibility) by leveraging your talent and strengths, discovering what limiting beliefs are holding you back, and targeting specific growth areas to help you reach your goals faster and more effectively.

Yes, you can. I’ve seen many clients start off with specific ambitions, goals, concerns, and challenges. And as they discover more about themselves and about things they didn’t know they didn’t know about, they start making better decisions, prioritize meaningful values and shift to a new and different mindset. They change in powerful ways and thus their goals and direction change. Coaching can be the catalyst to profoundly shift the trajectory of your life, enabling you to change the quality of your life and the direction of your career in ways you never dreamed of. You might find yourself saying “If you would have told me I’d be doing… I would have called you crazy.” And I am O.K. with you calling me crazy.

What happens in our sessions stays in our sessions. I fully understand the value of your trust, and I take every precaution to safeguard it. I aspire to conduct myself in a manner that reflects positively upon the coaching profession and recognize that I am also bound by applicable laws and regulations. I will provide you with a link to the detailed description of the International Coaching Federation’s (ICF) Code Of Ethics that governs every client-coach relationship I enter. This document not only places my standards before you in plain text, but also codifies my commitment to you, the client, and your progress.

In general, my clients and I meet once a week. Through many years of experience and testing of different time frames, I’ve found that this frequency yields the greatest returns in terms of change. Meeting once a week offers time for reflection and application of learning between sessions, while maintaining the momentum of our work together. However, I also offer sprint-like collaborative sessions for those who are in a time crunch and have a time sensitive goal.

In order to make coaching as convenient as possible for you, I offer several options. Coaching services can be conducted in person, on-site for corporate engagements, or over the phone and/or over video calls (Zoom) for remote clients around the world. I live in the Pacific time zone and I can accommodate many time zones.

The time frame can vary greatly and depends on a wide range of factors: your goal(s), your commitment and openness to change, your capacity for introspection, your circumstances, how quickly and thoughtfully you complete homework assignments, and other unique factors.

I have individuals who seek my support for as-needed engagement only (e.g., prep work for an upcoming interview or executive meeting, clarity work before a big decision in their lives, or a half-day transition management planning session). I have others who are focused on one goal and achieving that goal, like getting a significant career promotion. Those transitions take usually between six to twelve months. And there are those who start with a single goal and continue to work on another goal and then another because they have outperformed their own expectations of what they were capable of. Those individuals who partner with me in multiple capacities and for multiple goals work with me for a year or more.

You may choose to terminate our work at any time, although it is helpful to have a week’s notice in order to prepare a final session together that focuses on review and closure. Ultimately, that decision is up to you. This option is clearly defined in the coaching agreement every client and I sign before we start our engagement together.

I believe that you are the expert in your life. I believe that you are whole, not broken and you don’t need to be fixed. I believe that you are resourceful and capable of far more than you know right now or imagine. I believe you are a creative individual who has the capacity to change how you think about change and transitions in your life. I believe you can choose to live life differently.

Coaching is a dialogue between a coach and a client with the intention of finding creative ways to address the client’s most desired goal in a sustainable and measurable way. My approach to coaching is an emergent, iterative, holistic process designed to elicit powerful conversations. These conversations are intended to inspire new thinking, perceptions, and behavior to improve performance, create directional clarity, achieve personal and professional goals, and enhance the quality of your life. NOBODY needs coaching. Only when you want to improve the quality of your life will you choose to work with a coach. I don’t need clients. I WANT to work with amazing people who want to expand their minds and hearts to see the things they haven’t seen in the world yet.

We start each coaching engagement with a comprehensive discussion that, occasionally, includes a few assessments. We create a coaching structure that will work for both of us, and we establish “the rules of the game”. We also clarify what success will look like to you and then identify the gaps between the present and the desired future success. This allows me to develop a deep understanding of you, your life stories, and your underlying operating system in a short period of time. Armed with this knowledge, you then begin to learn to think about your situation in a different way and look for possibilities that might also be truly present in your life right now.

I ask powerful questions, assign individualized homework, utilize proprietary exercises and processes, and often evaluate individualized metrics to help you tap into your unique potential. My process is energizing and comprehensive; you will begin to find more and more clarity and connectivity between things, change your mood, attitude, and mindset, and take powerful new actions in multiple areas of your life.

The foundation of my coaching incorporates these primary styles:

Transformation-oriented: Although change in individuals is often measured on a behavioral basis, real change happens below the surface on a deeper level. Cultivating self-awareness, recalibrating your observational perspectives, and promoting paradigm shifts can yield huge personal and professional dividends and deep change. When systemic change occurs, it allows for adaptive, not technical application. That, in turn, allows for more masterful navigation of the complexities of your relationships, career and life.

Results-oriented: While I understand that it is process that will get us to the result, I am not attached to a particular tool, technique or approach. This means that if something isn’t working, we will quickly apply a new strategy or approach. My primary style is emergent, iterative and results oriented. Very pragmatic, targeted strategies and tools are often used to promote more effective action to achieve goals more quickly.

Bold & Honest: I am leading with heart, honesty and curiosity through crucial conversations, bold approach - when appropriate - and always with a positive intent.

Unattached: Everything that will be offered to you during the coaching sessions (questions, inquiries, resources, so on) is yours to take, to leave, or do nothing with it. I am not attached to my thoughts, ideas, processes, or frameworks. If they don’t mean anything to you or don’t bring value to you, I will let go without any hard feelings.

Holistic: Currently, we live in a world that encourages specialization, reductionism and separation. While I may focus my work in a very targeted way, my coaching approach and lens is holistic, integrative and systemic. I know that a change you make in one area often influences and impacts another. My clients understand that once the underpinnings of a particular challenge are unearthed and effectively dealt with, it can have a domino effect, positively impacting many areas of their lives. Then, the result is real, lasting, and truly life-changing, not just a superficial and temporary fix.

The foundation of my coaching incorporates these methodologies:

Ontological and Systemic Change Approach: A dynamic, transformative coaching model that systemically addresses how you relate to the world through your language, moods and emotions, mental models, physiology, and observational lens. Ontological coaching is often a catalyst for paradigm shifts. It is a bedrock model of coaching that addresses where real change happens - below the surface. In fact, behavioral change accounts for only 10% of your overall performance and results.

Neuroscience and Neuroleadership Application: An emerging field of study focused on understanding the elements of change from the perspective of the brain. I apply the latest neuroscience discoveries to better leverage change in my clients.

Cognitive Behavioral Coaching: This approach develops an awareness of the habitually recurring thinking patterns that create your mood states and reactions to events, circumstances and others. As negative thought patterns and moods can be personally and interpersonally destructive, I coach you to examine negative thoughts to minimize the impact on your performance, mood and results.

Mindfulness: This is a process of creating sustained awareness and focus in the moment to override reactive emotional tendencies and begin to change habitual neurotransmitter patterns.

“Competing Commitment to Change” Model: While individuals can change and can be taught to change, they often don’t change or resist change. The root cause is often a competing commitment outside their conscious awareness. This Kegan and Lahey model is a four-step process that exposes an individual’s hidden commitments that conflict with their conscious goal.

Positive Intelligence Model: Your mind is your best friend. But it can also be your worst enemy. Your mind is constantly sabotaging your potential for performance and happiness. All your negative emotions, including stress, are the result of self-sabotage. This Shirzad Chamine model includes breakthrough, research-based tools to strengthen the part of your brain that serves you and quiet the part that sabotages you. You handle life’s challenges with a more positive mindset, and less stress. I call this mental fitness.

You should not choose me as your coach if:

• You are looking for someone to fight for you.

I will only fight with you and be 100% on your side. Because you have to want to fight for the life you want.

• You are looking for someone to remove all the obstacles for you.

I will watch your back, guide you and point out dangers you don’t see. Because you can only grow by facing and solving obstacles, not by avoiding them.

• You are looking for someone to give you advice and answer your questions.

I will upgrade the quality of your questions instead. Because when you ask better questions, you come up with better ideas and thoughts.

• You are looking for someone to act like your friend, to please you and tell you what you want to hear.

I will serve you powerfully by hiding nothing and holding nothing back. Because being honesty and transparent means I care more about you and your success than about stroking your ego (or mine).

• You are looking for someone to hold you accountable and tell you “You can do better next time.”

I will help you find a mission, your mission, that is so powerful and inspiring that nothing will stop you from doing everything you can to achieve it.

Choose me as your coach after:

• You had one or more calls with me.

• You felt different in our conversations.

• You felt a sense of safety sharing things about you that you usually don’t share with others.

• You felt a little comfortably uncomfortable.

• You had this thought during our conversation “I’ve never thought about that or… that way.”

• You are not 100% ready and feel a little scared, but you are more afraid of your default future if you stay where you are today.

• You have been saying ‘no’ to putting yourself first but now is the time to say ‘yes’ to your dreams and goals.

• You have decided you are willing to pay for your dreams to come true.

The differences between coaching and therapy are:

• Coaches focus on the future. Therapists focus on the past.

• Coaches center their work around the belief that clients are healthy. Therapists utilize a framework that is based on pathology and illness.

• Coaches work with the conscious mind. Therapists work with the unconscious mind.

• Coaches’ work is often time-limited with specific desired behavioral outcomes. Therapists’ work is open-ended with “understanding” as the primary objective.

• Coaches work effectively over the phone and in person. Therapists usually prefer working in person or via video.

There are similarities between coaching and therapy as well. They are:

• Both are concerned with making concrete changes in your emotional state and life.

• Both work to understand the self-limiting beliefs or behaviors caused by thoughts and emotions that you may or may not be aware of.

• Both practices help you grow, change and master your emotions.

Being an ICF accredited coach with an 18-months intensive training certification and many other continuous training sessions, I have a broad perspective that allows me to help you understand and master your habits, thoughts and feelings that hold you back from achieving your most important goals.