Executive Coaching: Transform Your Leadership and Achieve Your Goals

Before we start coaching sessions to talk about your goals and challenges, you will have completed an intake form that gives me insight into what is front of mind for you and gives you a chance to reflect on what you really want out of coaching. I will have reviewed those materials to learn more about you and I will be listening to deepen that understanding in our first few sessions.

Typically, our first few meetings are discovery sessions. We review your intake materials together and perhaps discuss some reading you did in preparation for a session. We may also do exercises designed to explore a career/life inventory and your satisfaction with each area. This helps us both recognize areas that might need to be included in the coaching before we can get to the broader coaching goals.

50 to 60 minutes

Usually, the client will come to each session with an agenda of what they want to work on that day. This list is generated by a combination of what we uncover in the discovery sessions and what is dominating your life in the time between sessions. During coaching sessions, I’ll ask you open-ended questions to see what it is you really want (not just what you think you “should” want) and then we will examine together whether there are narratives from your past or present that are keeping you from having what you really want. Generally, coaching sessions occur twice a month. My approach is to tailor the schedule to what works for you so we might coach more or less frequently than twice a month.

50 minutes

Books and other out-of-session work are learning accelerators in the coaching process. Rather than spend weeks or months having me try to recreate the brilliance and wisdom that already exists, I frequently ask clients to read books or review other materials. This “homework” might give you a new perspective on an issue we are coaching on or set the groundwork for future learning.

Sometimes you will want guidance on a business issue that falls into one of my areas of expertise. And while sometimes we might coach on that issue to tease the answer out of you (it’s probably in there!), we might also leverage my knowledge to solve business problems. When we do that I’ll tell you that I am “taking my coaching hat off” so we are clear that you are getting consulting and not coaching in those moments. Over time we will move between those paradigms easily.

Coaching will stir things up. Sometimes it gets personal. I’ll keep all that personal information confidential and I’ll create a space where you can be your most authentic self. I’ll be authentic too. I will hold the mirror up, I will challenge you to take on issues that might intimidate or frighten you and I’ll do so knowing that it might mean you get upset with me, and I will do it in service to our relationship.

How do you know when you are done? You will know. You will look back at what you learned and the changes you have made in your life and career and you will know whether the work we set out to do together is over, or not! You can coach with me for weeks or years, it’s up to you. At our best, we are all lifelong learners, so I’ll push you to continue the work we did together on your own if our coaching relationship ends—and I love to hear about the success of former clients. It means the world to me. 😊