Managing Work

Coaching helps you to achieve your goals, quicker and with a greater degree of certainty. I hesitate to add 'easier' to this list. In my experience achieving a significant goal can rarely be described as an easy process. An easy goal is unlikely to be a valuable goal in your life. Valuable goals are always an adventure, your adventure. Your coach is a guide through the process of change working towards your goals demands. Here I describe my approach and style of coaching with a view to helping you decide if I can be additive to your adventure.

Coaching is first and foremost a relationship between two people, one that operates within agreed boundaries. The most significant boundary is it is not your coach's role to tell you what to do. All decisions are your responsibility, at every step of the way. The second boundary is it is your coach's role to listen to you, grasp your intentions and help you clarify these. This fosters a creative tension in the relationship that helps you to move forward. The ideal is a gentle, dynamic balance is achieved. The challenge for the coach in the relationship is to provide appropriate awareness changing experiences along with hard practical examples you can take away and adapt within your own decision making. This should help move the creative tension into the framework of your adventure.

Coaching is an emergent process for everyone involved(see this Wikipedia entry for a highly academic explanation of emergence). A brief description is:

"the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems."

Applying this to coaching it can be described as unexpectedly new (and usually good) things happen as you enhance your ability to self-organize.

This means it is virtually impossible to identify exactly what is going to happen. In my experience the outcomes are usually much better than anticipated. You can facilitate an emergent process but you cannot control the outcomes. This is what makes coaching so powerful but also potentially nebulous at the beginning. Below I try to expand on how I facilitate this emergent process.

My preferred over-arching style takes a gentle, measured, collaborative approach towards moving forward; with an emphasis on evolving non-violent solutions to a wide range of issues. I have captured this approach into a 20 point guide with the grand title of 'A 20 Point Guide to the No Plan Style of Living'. I use this as my own guide in my adventures. If we feel it appropriate we may at some point use this within your adventure.

Where appropriate I also like to inform this work with a balance of simple descriptive model/structures with stories of how these have worked for me in practical situations. The goal of this approach is to provide you with a descriptive framework and a practical example for you to compare with your current state. If I lack a suitable practical experience a model can provide a useful framework for exploring a range of options in which you develop and evolve a storyline.

How does your coaching work in practice?

It all starts with listening. Sometimes it is enough having an informed listening ear at your disposal. My contribution is often guided by helping you uncover the best way to use the attention you have available.

Attention is the bottleneck in most plans. It is the most significant and valuable asset our mind has for converting intention into action. Arguably, it is also the least understood.

I like this approach because it is universally applicable and provides a good starting point, though not the only one, for helping you explore a wide range of issues. Also, I do have to own up to liking this approach because I have had so much more success using it in the past 30 years, with myself and others, rather than alternatives.

Over the years I have evolved a number of useful tools used to frame a wide range of situations in a way that helps you to identify the issues you are facing. These all fit within the 'available attention' framework. If you are interested in the subject of attention it is covered in more detail elsewhere on this site under AIM.

I often find the early stages of coaching address identifying and nurturing the state of being needed to drive you forward. Later, focus shifts towards the 'ways and means' of actualizing intention. With your plan underway coaching focus naturally moves once again, onto troubleshooting and keeping ahead of the curve, so you are guiding yourself forward as smoothly as possible.

How do I know if our relationship will work?

You should try to enroll a coach who has some familiarity and experience with the changes you wish to make. A golf coach may be able to help you with some aspects of your tennis game. However, when it comes to the finer points of play a coach who has at some point mastered tennis is going to have a better grasp of reality when it comes to the pinch.

When choosing a coach try exploring the following three 'vital signs' with him/her:

• Do you feel some affinity with the person? Affinity is tough to describe but you know if you feel its absence more often than its presence. If you do feel some affinity, then proceed a little further. If not, stop now and find another person. Without some degree of affinity between you and your coach it is hard to establish an easy working context.
• Does the coach have some practical, hands on, experience of the issues you anticipate addressing? Again, if not (and there are no other outstanding mitigating circumstances to consider) move on and find another coach.
• While talking with your prospective coach, do you feel you are able to communicate clearly and understand each other? Again, if you feel uncomfortable with communication it is best to seek out another coach.

These are the three 'vital signs' I check out with a prospective client before taking them on. Agreeing these three appear to work for both of us indicates there is a really good chance we are going to work well together.

You can check out if I have the necessary experience areas you anticipate addressing by going to the Coaching Type page. Here I have grouped my experience under various headings, along with a summary of my relevant hands on experience. You may also find some ideas here to help you clarify what you hope to achieve from using a coach.

How do we work together?

Most contact is via telephone, though sometimes I do like to see people in person it is not always practical. Using the phone, supported by email if you are comfortable with this, makes it easier and more flexible to keep consistent contact.

Like many coaches I offer a free initial telephone consultation where we can check each other out and scope out your objectives. After this initial discussion I prefer you take a day or so to absorb this initial contact before progressing to a formal relationship.

When you feel its right to start, I like to schedule three or possibly four contacts ahead; though I only ask for a financial commitment to the next confirmed appointment. You are free to stop at any point, or to change the forward schedule - obviously we will need to co-ordinate our calendars.

How much does coaching cost?

My basic coaching fee is $120 per hour (or equivalent local currency) and for a percentage of my time allocated to coaching I offer a sliding scale based upon your personal circumstances. As a general rule of thumb I try to ensure no more than 30% of my scheduled time is discounted, so if you wish for a discounted slot I may ask you wait until one becomes free.

How much coaching time should I budget for?

Initially you may wish to check in weekly, for a month or so. Once you start actualizing your plans my feeling is weekly contact becomes less productive, simply because it takes time for plans to evolve. It may be that a single monthly contact becomes sufficient to help keep you on track. Sometimes a month may feel too long for you, in which case we can book additional contact.

How does coaching end?

It becomes obvious at some point that you have achieved what you need. There is no hard and fast rules to define this. It can happen early or it can take place later than either of us may initially anticipate.

What should I do now?

If you have got this far and have a strong feeling that my style, approach and experience could work for you, please email me a couple of convenient times for me to call and I will get back to you with a confirmed time. This will be your first free consultation. Email: john@managingwork.com