What to expect from coaching
Congratulations - your resolve to improve your situation outweighs your desire for the comfort of staying the same! Perhaps you've been steeping yourself in podcasts, books, articles, scrolling relevant hashtags that are motivating you to make a move, and now you're ready to take the plunge and invest in coaching.
In this brief article, I offer a simplified outline of what to expect when you start coaching. Logistically, coaching sessions are by phone, zoom, or in person (I do mostly zoom now, but meet when requested in downtown Chicago), and are 30, 45, or 60 minutes. Many coaches offer packages of sessions for one price, or charge you monthly for a set amount of sessions that include email support. (I do a free 15 min discovery call, then charge by session, with a slight discount for up front payment for packages of 6 or 12 sessions.)
Initial stage: Setting your Goals
The first 1-3 sessions are focused on clarifying your coaching goals and identifying your current state. Whether you are crystal clear about your goal, or only know what you don't want (the situations that brought you to coaching), your coach is trained in active listening and will observe and ask questions to draw this out of you.
Defining success for yourself is essential. We are influenced by others' definition of success as part of the growing up and belonging process - our parents, mentors, teachers, bosses, colleagues, peers, and even our social media feeds all give us their opinions of what we need to do to be successful. Coaching helps you get to the heart of what deeply matters to you, what you yearn for and what you value, apart from others' definition of success.
In this initial stage, your coach may also give you personality, skills, or values assessments to better understand yourself on this transformational journey. (I use the CARE profile, most similar to DISC, and the PREPARE/ENRICH assessment for couples coaching.)
Middle stage: Insight and Action
The job of this stage is to build awareness of the gap between where you are and where you want to go through honest reflection and observational feedback from the coach. You may feel both liberated and dismayed as you identify unempowered thinking, unexpressed emotions, and mistaken beliefs you hold about yourself and the world. You may see family patterns you swore you wouldn't repeat, and speech habits you were not even aware of. And, you have strengths you may not have realized you had, and your coach will help you name those and other unconscious areas of competence that you can lean on as you grow.
Coaching is a compassionate, safe space for you to build empowering thoughts, validate your feelings, test out mistaken beliefs, and 'wire' in new ones about yourself and the world. Your coach will also help you identify what new skills you will need to meet your goals.
Each coaching session usually ends by naming an action step to take between sessions. This could be homework to reflect, observe and journal, or may be more active "doing" steps toward your goals. If you're in a coaching program with a structure (I coach people in programs that give weekly assignments with built in accountability) or working with a coach alone, naming something you plan to do no matter how small, is essential to keep your momentum between sessions - even if it's planning to catch and shift a thought in the moment.
!: When we claim action steps that are too big and we don't do them, we get discouraged. Orienting to the law of little things (check out Rick Hanson's work) is a sure way to build more positive habits, hope, and belief in yourself.
In each subsequent session you'll share with your coach how you did on your action step and what you noticed between sessions. Having your coach to celebrate with, highlight your accomplishments, and savor them so they become parts of your newly transformed identity is one of the benefits of the coaching relationship. And, if you didn't do what you said, you likely didn't have a good plan, you bit off too much, or you have a pattern around accountability that will be useful to approach.
Final stage: Wrap Up and Completion
As you near the end of your coaching package, it's time to harness your learning, celebrate your progress, and assess if you are satisfied with your results, or want more coaching. Your coach likely will be asking if you are satisfied and getting what you need throughout the process, but in this final stage, it's a chance to internalize and claim your results! Your coach may ask if there is anything else you wish to work on for yourself at this time or in the future. I suggest with many of my clients that we schedule 1-3 months out as a "check-in" session to see how the results are sticking and if anything new emerges.
I've had clients experience phenomenal results in as little as three 30-minute sessions, and have some clients who use coaching ongoing for years. It's up to you how you wish to engage the relationship. The ICF's ethical standards state that either the coach or client can terminate the relationship at any time, and any coach with an ICF certification (ACC, PCC, MCC) will understand if you choose to stop, for whatever reason.
Lastly, as you live into this dynamic process, you may experience grief as you mourn your old self. Achieving your results brings about many feelings, not just ones of accomplishment! Give yourself space for anything that may emerge inside you, and happy journeying.