Some people know exactly what they want from life; others don’t. Even if you do, it’s not always clear how best to get there.
As a life coach, my job is to help you unearth your latent dreams and passions, match these with your values, strengths and talents, and encourage and support you to make the changes that are best for you. Life coaching is a journey from where you are now to where you want to be.
How does coaching work?
All aspects of life — career, relationships, health, leisure time, emotional development and spiritual wellbeing — need to be considered when finding the right path in life. If you decide to work with me, we will look at all of them.
We’ll begin with a discovery session, during which you get to tell me about yourself. Together we explore what really drives and motivates you, what’s important to you, and what unfulfilled dreams you may have tucked away somewhere. We’ll look at the obstacles that might be getting in the way of you achieving your full potential, and possible ways to overcome them.
After that we’ll have weekly sessions of 30–45 minutes — either in person or over the phone, depending on your schedule and where you live (you don’t have to be in the West Midlands). In each session we’ll look at your progress so far and what you want to achieve in the coming week, and agree some action plans.
I believe that each of us already has the innate resources to achieve our goals. As your coach, my job is to help you tap into these resources. In this way, life coaching ensures that you do what’s absolutely right for you — and not what anybody else thinks you should do.
The coaching model — GROW
I use the GROW model of coaching, which enables you to achieve specific personal or professional goals. GROW is deservedly one of the best-known and most widely used coaching models: a simple yet powerful framework for navigating a route through a coaching session, as well as a means of finding your way when lost. It is described in a number of coaching books, including John Whitmore’s Coaching for Performance.
G — Goal
A session must have a goal or outcome to be achieved. The goal should be as specific as possible, and it must be possible to measure whether it has been achieved. “How will you know that you have achieved that goal?” is a useful question here.
R — current Reality
As well as knowing where you are trying to get to, you need to know where you are starting from. It is surprising how often this is the key part of a session: by just seeing the situation clearly — rather than what was thought or imagined — the resolution becomes obvious and straightforward.
O — Options
Once you know where you are and where you want to go, the next step is to explore what options you have for getting there. A useful metaphor for GROW is a map: knowing the destination and the starting point, you can explore possible routes and choose the best.
W — Will
You must also have the motivation — the will — to make the journey. Others read the W as ‘wrap-up’, or What, Where, Why, When and How. Whatever is emphasised, the desired outcome from this stage is a commitment to action.
The GROW process is presented sequentially here; in practice it is a much less linear process which may start anywhere and revisit each of the stages several times. Often, when a session has lost its way or got stuck, I turn to the GROW model to check where to put attention.
Coaching location
Cradley Heath, near Halesowen. My clients come from Birmingham, Bromsgrove, Walsall, Wolverhampton and the surrounding West Midlands — and telephone coaching means you don’t have to be local at all. Directions and map →