Get the Most from Coaching. Part Two: Individual Coaching

How do you get the most from coaching as an individual?

In this series, Coaching and Mentoring in 2022, I have addressed myths about coaching. In particular, coaching is not a performance intervention or a quick fix. Effective coaching is a collaboration in a developmental process that requires a qualified coach, a coachable client, and sufficient preparation and planning.

If your coaching is being paid by an organization or your employer, they are known as the "sponsor". The coaching process requires protection of your privacy (legal and ethical). The coaching contract needs to be very clear about boundaries and restrictions for what and how coaching progress is shared with your sponsor. An accredited coach is bound by a Code of Ethics and is trained on interpretation of those ethics. The accredited coaches in my network are diligent about being up-to-date and well-educated on ethics, standards, and legislation (local and global) for protecting your personal data and privacy.

What is Most Important to You as an Individual

Have a Coaching Plan

A personalized coaching plan is critical as a foundation. Flexibility is acceptable and encouraged as opportunities and challenges change. My signature programs, THRIVE in Work and Life and THRIVE at Work After Cancer, are both designed with a structural foundation based on a model for emotional intelligence while being flexible depending on shifts in the needs of the client and/or her sponsor. The THRIVE at Work After Cancer program can also be adapted to address returning to work after other critical illnesses and COVID.

Work on What’s Important? What Really Matters?

When you are working with your coach, talk about your important needs—what really matters. Here are 10 tips to get the most from your coaching as an individual:

1. Make space for feelings and emotions: While productivity is important, focus on how you feel, your emotions, and how you want to feel. Feelings and emotions drive behaviours. To change behaviours, change how you feel and explore your emotional intelligence.
   • Yes, I have had clients who refused to look at an issue based on “how they feel”. Unfortunately, the negative bias towards emotions in business and the workplace perpetuates blind spots in awareness, relationships, decision-making, and stress.
2. Simplify: Simplification creates space that allows you to be curious, to learn, and to evolve. If you have trouble with simplifying, work with your coach on strategies and tactics that will work for you, your life, and your work. Not everyone can be a minimalist.
   • I offer my clients two powerful tools: “NeedsLess” and “Clean-Sweep”.
3. Make “Self” a priority: Examine activities, environments, and attitudes that impact your energy. Be aware of phantom energy vampires and identify how to replenish and build energy reserves. “Phantom energy vampires” was first coined in reference to electrical energy. The concept transfers well to personal emotional energy.
   • I encourage my clients to “unplug” to restore, replenish, and build energy reserves. 
4. Be curious and open: You will get more from the coaching process when you are willing to examine your assumptions, ways of thinking, expectations, beliefs, emotional triggers, and reactions.
   • As a coach, I stay curious and open to what my clients bring to the session. I often ask my client to "tell me more".
5. Practise mindfulness and awareness: Sensitize yourself to observe and experience thoughts, feelings, and emotions quicker. With greater awareness, you can mindfully respond to events and opportunities more quickly, more effectively, and with less stress.
   • Being present in the moment with my client is crucial to our connected awareness and trust.
6. Clarify goals and objectives: Coaching without an intended outcome that leads to action is just a conversation. Ensure that you and your coach are clear about your goals, short- and long-term. Have a plan and a framework for action. 
   • I trust that my clients know what needs to be done. Co-creating a framework for action (the how) is both practical and magical in helping my clients achieve the desired results.
7. Prepare for your scheduled coaching session: Come to your scheduled coaching session with an agenda or at least an idea of what you need from your coach. The agenda does not need to be documented. However, you do need to be ready. What do you need? What will be most valuable? How do you want to feel after this session? 
   • I ask my clients to invest time to reflect before each session and come to their sessions prepared.
8. Allow yourself to deviate from the plan and agenda: There are times when you need a compassionate listener and confidant. Someone on your side to help you focus on what you need in the moment - reassurance, validation, recognition. When life seems to be “too hard”, it’s time to focus on you. An emotional sharing can produce AHAs and a “nudge” towards the next step can be powerful. 
   • I meet my clients as they are and as they show up for each session. There's more to life.
   • I also offer concierge coaching between sessions to address those moments when coaching is needed outside of a scheduled session. 
9. Improve feedback skills: Practise giving your coach feedback, especially at the end of each session. Share what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d like in the future. Exercise your right to ask for what you need.
   • I ask my clients to share what was most valuable to them in the session as a way to connect with a moment of insight, to relive the AHA experience, and to reinforce the power of their insight. I want my clients to develop their ability to live consciously in tune with their insights. 
10. Make notes, track your progress, fieldwork, and resources:  Have a dedicated notebook or other method to record your notes, your insights, and assignments, and to track your progress.
    • I share valuable resources when appropriate and I recommend that my clients create an electronic folder for keeping resources in a dedicated and accessible location.

Continually appreciate that you are making an investment in yourself and that you expect a return on that investment of time, money, and effort. Remember that the power of coaching is in the action you take between sessions to develop habits, behaviours, and best practices for improving your ability to effectively lead both personally and professionally.

Double your level of willingness: Be ready to commit to “great” things. Mediocrity is not an option. I will ask more of you. I will ask you to be willing to experiment with fresh approaches and be open to redesigning parts of your life that you see as critical. In some cases, I will ask you to unplug from anything that distracts you from what is critical. Uplevelling your willingness will allow you to reach your goals and live an integrated and fulfilled personal and professional life with ease and grace, using the gifts you have and enjoying life as is intended.

Coaching is a developmental process. As you evolve, you will think differently. You will experience moments of insight and self-awareness. A more accurate and expanded personal vision of yourself—and your place in the world—will replace outdated beliefs and assumptions. You will learn how to accomplish more of what is most important with less effort and a higher sense of Self leading toward self-actualization. You will learn to trust yourself to do what is in your best interest.

Take care of yourself. Do what's best for you. And...Don't jeopardize what you have built for yourself.   Quote by Stanley Wicketts (my father)

You can reach me on LinkedIn. Or click to Get in Touch.

• Learn more about emotional intelligence leadership by subscribing for updates and downloading the EQ Worksheet.
• Check out the THRIVE in Work and Life^TM programs.
• Check out the online mini-course Your Building Blocks to Emotional Well-Being and Resilience.
• Feature Video: The Secret to Creating a Sustainable Business Foundation - Best Practices For Female Entrepreneurs

Related Blogs:

Coaching and Mentoring in 2022 Series