What is Coaching?

Q. What is Coaching?

Coaching is an interactive process which helps individuals and organisations develop more rapidly and produce more satisfying results. Coaches work with clients in all areas including business, career, finances, health and relationships. As a result of coaching, clients set better goals, take more action, make better decisions and more fully use their natural strengths.

Coaching uses a process of enquiry and personal discovery to build the client's level of awareness and responsibility and provides the client with structure, support and feedback. The coaching process helps clients define and achieve professional and personal goals faster and with more ease than would be possible without support, using intuitive questioning and a range of coaching tools and techniques such as NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and positive psychology.

Q. What is Wellbeing Coaching?

1:1 confidential coaching is an ideal way to provide ongoing support to employees who are struggling to cope. Talking about situations in confidence with a supportive coach helps employees resolve issues - personal or professional - which are affecting them at work. This type of coaching is a particularly useful option to support employees who are at risk of short or long-term absence or who need ongoing support after counselling.

Wellbeing Coaching takes a wider, more holistic view of every aspect of a client’s life – your emotional, physical, financial, work, leisure, social, environmental and spiritual wellbeing. By helping you examine your life from all these different angles, coaching helps you identify and remove any barriers you may be putting in your own way and helps you to see everything in a different and more positive light. The purpose of coaching is to help clients identify their own solutions to achieve their personal and professional goals by developing a comprehensive set of actions to achieve them.

Wellbeing Coaching is designed to help people identify the wide range of options available to help them manage their own health and wellbeing more effectively. Wellbeing Coaching can also be particularly useful for people struggling to manage change, suffering from stress, feeling lonely or miserable or wanting to resolve a specific problem or situation.

Q. What is Management Skills coaching?

At TMP Coaching we believe that every person has the potential to become an outstanding manager. Quite often, however, people end up in management positions with little or no training which can make managing people quite a challenge. Many managers frequently find themselves fire-fighting or struggling to get the job done. By their own admission, they are unable to devote the time they feel they should to long-term planning, taking the ‘helicopter’ view, considering alternatives, supporting their staff or just stepping back from the front line. We definitely believe that learning how to be a good manager is much easier with the right support …. our management skills coaching is delivered by people who have already been there, done that and worn the t-shirt for many years. Whether you want to learn how to manage people more effectively, plan your workload to achieve a better life/work balance or just improve your knowledge of day-to-day management activities, management skills coaching will help provide an objective perspective and pro-active support through the process of personal and management development.

Q. Why do people use a Coach?

People hire a coach when they are struggling to manage change, feel stuck in a rut, want to start a new business, make a career transition, re-evaluate their life choices or simply feel ready for a personal or professional breakthrough. Coaching can be useful to help resolve a specific issue or problem, to turn a good situation into a great situation or simply to help client explore new ideas and experiences.

Q. How does Coaching differ from counselling, therapy or mentoring?

In many situations, a counsellor will look at your past to try to formulate and advise you on a specific solution to a particular problem. Your coach may need to develop an understanding of how your past has shaped your present, but the focus of coaching is to take a holistic view of where you are now and where you aim to be in the future. Your coach cannot give you the answers to your situation - every situation, every client and every coaching session is unique and the overall aim of coaching is to enable you to take control of your life by accepting responsibility for who you are, what you do and what needs to happen next. Your coach’s solution would not fit your situation, your expectations for your life or your ability to make changes – you need to find your own solutions and your coach will guide you in how to achieve this and be there to support you every step along the way.

A therapist typically addresses a specific physical or mental condition, while your coach sees you as a single, complete person; a culmination of everything that you are, that you have been and ultimately all that you can be. Instead of looking for causes and reasons in the past, your coach helps you achieve your objectives by helping you to focus on yourself from all angles - emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually.

A mentor will generally be there to help someone learn a particular task or to acquire a specific skill-set. The mentor will have a lot of experience in a particular area and will be able to help the client find short cuts and learn how to gain specific results in specific areas. The mentor will generally know the ins and outs of a specific job-related situation in advance and will give advice based on their own experience. Coaching does not require that the coach has personal experience of a client's industry or occupation. Indeed it may be that the absence of experience adds to the effectiveness of coaching in this area - a mentor already knows the answers but the coach works with the individual so they can first discover the questions for themselves and then find their own answers.

Q. Why should I use a Coach instead of just talking to colleagues, friends or family?

Professional coaches are trained to listen and observe, to customise their approach to their individual client's needs and to elicit solutions and strategies from their client. They believe that the client is naturally creative and resourceful and that the coach's job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources and creativity that the client already has. While the coach provides feedback and an objective perspective, the client is always responsible for taking the steps to produce the results he or she desires. While colleagues, family and friends can often be sympathetic, they are not trained to take an objective view to help find the right solution for you - in many cases, family and friends can sometimes be the problem as they may (consciously or unconsciously) resist you wanting to change in a way that may directly affect them. You could therefore be given conflicting or unconstructive advice and it is likely that their preferred solution would not be your preferred solution.

Coaches can also provide additional types of support for individuals who wish to develop specific skills, for example, business coaching or management skills coaching.

Q. What happens during Coaching?

First, you’ll be asked to complete a coaching questionnaire to identify what you’d like to achieve. You’ll then have six face-to-face meetings with a coach who believes totally in your ability to achieve what you set out to do. Each meeting will be approximately 1 hour and will be held at a location which is convenient for both client and coach.

Your coach will use the I-CAN-DO coaching programme to :

I     Gather the relevant background information
C    Define your current situation
A    Identify and agree what you would like to achieve from coaching
N    Discuss a number of options to help you achieve your goals
D    Set dates and timescales for any actions to be completed
O    Decide on and work towards achieving your specified outcome

You will take part in a range of coaching exercises to help you see your situation more clearly and explore options in a safe, non-judgmental environment. You will then design a personal action plan for success with extra work to be completed between sessions to help develop self-awareness and encourage new ways of thinking and working.

Your coach will be focused purely on you and what you want to achieve – your coach will not give you the answers but will encourage you to go out and do it FOR YOURSELF so that, by the end of the coaching programme, you will have a clear view of the way forward and how to achieve it.

Typically, each session closes with agreement on the actions that you will take before the next meeting. The next session will go over those actions, their results and your feelings about what you have achieved. It is this level of agreement, commitment and performance analysis that makes coaching effective as you may have promised yourself in the past that you will one day do X or Y, but coaching gets you to make that promise to someone else – your coach – and you know that they are going to challenge you if you don’t step up and deliver. That makes coaching exciting, challenging, unexpected and empowering – you will learn a lot about what has been holding you back and why. But, more importantly, you will learn how to change your life and achieve your personal aspirations.

Q. What are the benefits of taking part in coaching?

1. Learn how to set goals, take smarter action, get better results

Your first task will be to identify your professional and personal vision. You will then learn how to develop a plan of consistent actions to help you reach your personal goals and objectives

2. Make better decisions

You will learn to see things more clearly and become more focused as you share your ideas. Your coach will understand you and be subjective enough to want a lot for you, yet objective enough to be unbiased. Talking about your options with somebody who really listens is often enough to clarify things

3. Reach for more (much more)

And not be consumed in the process. When you have a coaching partner you can trust, you will reach for much more because you can afford to. Your coach will recognise your potential and give you the space to truly look at your options, to consider options you never even knew you had and to excel and exceed your own expectations

4. Create a layer of accountability

You will be accountable to your coach for your actions, so your coach will expect you to do what you say you will do, when you say you will do it. This expectation from your coach provides the impetus to ensure you can be sure of achieving the results that you set out to achieve

5. Have a balanced life

Success is maximised when you enjoy a sense of personal fulfilment and a healthy life/work balance. Your coach will help you look at your life holistically so you can learn to balance every aspect and carve out enough time so your life (both inside and outside of work) is exactly the way you want it to be

6. Have a lot more sustainable energy

You will learn to get rid of stress and the things that are draining you. Your coach will help you identify the things, people and situations that are exhausting your energy. With a great diet, good exercise and planned relaxation time, you’ll discover just how much more energy you have each day to enjoy your work and home life

Q. How do I know if coaching would help me?

You don't – yet. But to start finding out whether it might, then ask yourself these few questions, and answer them honestly. Do you have clear goals and an overall plan for your life? Do you know and plan where you will be and what you want to achieve next week, next month or next year? Are you as successful as you would like to be with your career, your relationships, your finances, your health and your personal happiness? If you can answer these questions positively and truthfully, then coaching might not be of great benefit to you. But if you answered 'no' to any of the questions or if you even hesitated about any of your answers, then coaching could definitely be of help to you.

If you ever feel that your life should be better than it is or that you want to have more control over your life at home or at work, then coaching can help provide you with a way of achieving your aims and goals. Your coach knows that every human being has the potential to achieve almost anything they want out of life and can show you how to tap into, and enjoy developing, your full potential. By helping you to question your life and your current direction, your coach can help you come up with answers which will both change your life and improve your personal health and wellbeing.

Q. How many sessions would I need?

Coaches usually prefer to meet clients and work face-to-face. Coaching sessions are usually held at fortnightly intervals over 3 months. It usually takes a month to six weeks to start achieving the desired results, although clients will often start to feel the benefits of the coaching approach more or less straight away. It is unusual for the coaching process to last longer than six months without a break, but it is not uncommon to have a series of coaching relationships, each one building on what has been achieved before.

Q. Who will be doing the coaching?

Coaching will be provided by qualified, professional coaches and wellbeing advisers with experience in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques and positive psychology.

Q. What types of coaching are available?

TMP Coaching provides the following coaching services :

Executive and Corporate Coaching for :

• Human Resources Departments interested in hiring external coaches

• CEO's, executives, managers and other professionals who would like a coach

• Companies looking to launch a coaching initiative

• Companies intending to train their managers to be coaches

• Companies interested in coaching workshops

• Companies wanting the support of a coach in any of the following: strategic planning, process re-engineering; creating a compelling vision; launching and developing teams

Wellbeing and 1:1 Confidential Coaching for :

• Companies interested in introducing Workplace Health & Wellbeing programmes

• Employers keen to promote better health by introducing a range of health initiatives and support for employees (including mental, physical and emotional health)

• Organisations with high levels of absenteeism

• Managers and employees who need help to prevent and manage stress more effectively

• Managers who want to learn how to support employees through health issues

• Employees who are struggling with change and would benefit from 1:1 support

Small Business Coaching for :

• Entrepreneurs

• Owners or Managers of small companies

• Start-up companies (actual or planned)

• Professionals in private practice

• People who run a business from their home

• Executives thinking of leaving companies and launching a business

Personal/Life Coaching for individuals interested in :

• Life planning

• Changing direction

• New projects

• Relationships (singles, couples, families, etc.)

• Health and fitness

• Creativity

• Financial freedom

Career/Transition Coaching for :

• People in career transition or out of work

• People in a redundancy situation or at risk of losing their job

• People with a big career decision to make

• People in a corporate job or considering one

• People struggling with the decision of whether to stay or leave a job

Coaching and training for companies or organisations interested in :

• Coaches who give keynote addresses

• Coaches who give talks to groups

• Coaches who deliver seminars and workshops

Please contact us if you would like more information on any of the professional or personal coaching services we offer.