Executive and Life Coaching

Coaching focuses on enhancing achievement and accomplishment with a motivated client.    According to the Coach Federation:   “The coaching client is someone who wants to reach one or more of the following:  a higher level of performance, enhanced learning, a new level of personal development, greater career success, or increased life satisfaction.  The client is not seeking emotional healing or relief from psychological pain.   The coaching client takes action to move toward a goal, and often to reach higher levels of personal development, with the support of the coach.  Clients who are appropriate for coaching can readily move from thoughtful reflection into action and are not significantly bogged down by “unfinished business.”   Coaches and clients arrange the schedule and means of contact (e.g., in person, by phone, or via e-mail) that are most appropriate to the goals of the coaching.  The coach and client create the focus, format, and desired outcomes for their work.  The client and the coach share responsibility for the design of the coaching agenda.   Coaching is designed to help clients improve their learning, performance, and personal development and to enhance their quality of life.  Coaching does not focus directly on relieving psychological pain or treating cognitive or emotional disorders.   Coaching concentrates primarily on the present and future.  Coaching uses information form the client’s past to clarify where the client is today.  Coaching does not focus on the resolution of past trauma as a precursor to help the client move forward.  Thus, compared to many forms of psychotherapy, coaching spends proportionally less time discussing past upsetting events.  Instead, most of the focus is on designing the future, supporting current peak performance, and nurturing the client’s merging developmental edge.   Coaching assumes that there will be emotional reactions to life events and that appropriate coaching clients are capable of expressing and handling their emotions.  Coaching is not psychotherapy, and emotional healing is not the focus of coaching.  Although coaching can be used concurrently with psychotherapeutic work, it is not used as a substitute for psychotherapeutic work.   Advice, opinions, or suggestions are occasionally offered in coaching.  Coaches often make requests or suggestions to the client to promote action toward the client’s desired outcome.  Both parties understand that the client takes the ultimate responsibility for action” ( www.CoachFederation.org ).   Call for a complementary half hour phone consultation: 414.220.4334