Six Months In - How are your New Year's Resolutions doing?

Did you make any New Year's resolutions?  Or are you among those who cynically reject the whole concept, knowing that most people who make New Year's resolutions have abandoned them half way through February?

If the only planning you do is a last-thing-in-December resolution that "I'll eat less in the New Year" based on guilt over your over-indulgence at Christmas time, then the chances are that your New Year's resolutions won't last.  But planning is an essential part of a successful life.

Imagine building a house without any plans... no idea where to dig the foundations; when to have the concrete delivered; how many bricks to buy... not a good idea.  It's a cliche that many people spend more time planning their summer holidays than they spend planning their lives, but sadly it's true.

If we are to make the most of the opportunities life offers us, we would do well to think it through, plan it, monitor our progress and get some accountability for actually doing what we plan to do.  Of course, our plans need not begin on the first of January, but periodic reviews are essential and January and July are as good a time as any to begin a new cycle.

So here's my review of goals I've achieved over the last few months:

1) Completed my first degree - 36 years after first enrolling at university!
2) Run my first half marathon in 25 1/2 years.
3) Enrolled for a Certificate in Mentoring and a Diploma in Coaching, which will take me a long way towards a long held goal of becoming an expert in personal development.
4) Been accepted as a "matriculated" student for an MBA - another long held goal.
5) Launched my career as a professional coach. Professional status and paying clients are still to come, but I am coaching and my coaching is making a difference.  I'm on my way.
6) Last, but not least, I've broken out of a six year long mental slump, feeling a failure, and I'm getting back to feeling like the high achiever I was previously.

I've set myself a list of new goals ... which I'll share with a small group of people who support and believe in me, and I'm on course with plans to achieve them.  I'll be writing more about setting and achieving goals in the coming weeks.

If you'd like some help planning your life, rather that letting in be "what happens while you're busy making other plans" give me a shout.

FREE COACHING - LIMITED OFFER

I am currently studying for an Advanced Diploma in Coaching with Kingstown College in Dublin and a Certificate in Mentoring with Moorlands College, and I am coaching clients in three countries on two continents. The feedback I have had so far is 100% positive. I am looking for more clients in order to build up the experience needed for International Coach Federation accreditation. 

Sign up in the next week and I will give you 3 x 45 minute coaching session free of charge.

 I coach by Skype, telephone and for those in Malvern/Worcester, face to face. My clients include professionals, students, stay at home moms, aspiring novelists...

The kind of topics we discuss are life balance, goal setting, time and energy management, anger management etc, etc. The idea is not that I am an expert on all these areas, but that you, a healthy, well educated, balanced individual have all the potential you need to achieve your dreams. What might help you is the trained ear of someone who will listen to you, challenge you and help you to work out your own solution to getting from where you are to where you want to be.

Go on, give it a try!

Life Coaching and Christian discipleship

I first read about life coaching in 2005.  At the time I was assistant pastor of a York church, and my thought was "It sounds new agey and it'll never be accepted in church circles."  So when in February 2006, an article titled "Coaching for life - Putting a secular idea to spiritual use" appeared in Direction Magazine, the monthly magazine of the Elim Pentecostal Church, it grabbed my attention. 

The author, Karen Green together with husband Dave are pastors of the Elim church in Halifax, not far from York.  I gave them a call, took a drive to Halifax and spent a morning hearing about how they were using coaching techniques as a means of helping people in their church grow in confidence and become doers - disciples.  Karen recommended a book, Christian Coaching by Gary R Collins, and a correspondence course taught by a college in Newcastle.  My scepticism behind me, I began to study and apply what I learned, and was thrilled to discover how simple techniques of listening, questioning, feedback, etc, could help a person achieve clarity about their values, goals and the path needed to get from where they are to where they want to be.

A few extracts from the article:

The introduction states: "Many have heard of 'Life Coaching' and may be suspicious of this latest trend in personal development. But Christians hold the secret of 'life to the full' - so shouldn't we be doing the coaching?

"Karen  writes,  "Make disciples, make disciples..." - that was all we could hear God saying to us. "We get the message, God, but how?" ... Then I began to hear about life coaching. It's a tool to help people move forward in their lives through asking the right questions, clarifying their values, setting goals, identifying plans of action, and establishing accountability. ... The tools in life coaching help us in discipleship in that they work by helping the individual make his or own decisions, not by imposing our ideas on them. ... 'What do you want?' was a common opening line Jesus would use. It is invariably the opening line in life coaching.

From my recent reading on Christian leadership, I've concluded that Jesus' leadership training was so broad that it encompassed much of what is taught today as "coaching," "mentoring," and "leadership development."  As one of my lecturers would say: "good research only reveals what God already knew." 

Coaching - what's it all about? Part 5

Chad Hall writes that “all coaching is life coaching; coaching brings forth life for a client, a company, a church, a team, a community, a family, or anyone touched by the coaching  relationship."  That is true, and as I've indicated so far in this series, the primary tools that all  coaches use are good listening skills and good questions.  I've also indicated that each coach has  specific tools in their tool box, depending on their background, experience and training.

So, as in counselling, we find specialisms within the field of coaching.  Life, or personal coaches  work with individuals, dealing with the broad scope of “life”: priorities, relationships, purpose etc.  Corporate coaches deal with individuals or teams within a corporate setting: values, teamwork, and customer service are some of the areas corporate coaches may deal with.  Executive coaches  work with senior leaders, who are often assumed to “know it all,” and are least likely to receive training and mentoring, but, like everyone else need someone who will journey with them and provide a sounding board.

An area of interest to many people today is wellness coaching. A coach whose specialism is wellness may have a background in sport, nutrition etc, or perhaps they have themselves overcome health problems, giving them  valuable insights and experiences to share.  I am in the midst of such a transformation, having lost 2 stone, 9 pounds (37 pounds), and reduced my blood  pressure by 49/23 in 14 weeks.  In two weeks time I will run the Plymouth Half Marathon after a break from running of 27 years.  This has been achieved through diet, exercise and stress management.  My experience is equipping me to help others achieve their weight management,  fitness and health goals, and this is a specialism I am building into my coaching practice.

Time for the TurnkeyCoach to Go Pro

Coaching is one of those “people helping” skills that everyone does, with or without training, to some degree of proficiency. Like parenting and mentoring, it is something that most of us will be called upon to do, usually with little or no formal training.

When first introduced to coaching, I was wary of the field until I met someone in a recognised profession who had adopted coaching techniques as a means of developing the people in their sphere of influence. My training consisted of reading the book that person recommended, attending a number of introductory courses and enrolling for a correspondence course I didn't complete. More importantly I took the plunge and coached a number of friends and acquaintances and together we learned what worked and what didn't, what was useful and what less so.

Coaching today is a profession, with an established body of knowledge, standards, and professional associations. While the informal coaching I have practised to date has, I've been assured, helped my clients, the time has come for me to “Go Pro.”

This week I will enrol for a 140 hour ACSTH course (that's an International Coach Federation designation for Accredited Coach Specific Training Hours). I'll also be applying for admission to an MSc in Personal, Corporate and Executive Coaching at the University of Lincoln, a city I'll be moving to later this year.

As part of the accreditation process with the International Coach Federation I need to report on 100 hours of coaching, 25 of which can be free of charge! I will therefore be offering coaching services at no, or low cost and will appreciate your help in achieving professional status.

Please email me at frank@turnkeycoaching.co.uk if you'd like to know more.  

Coaching - What's it all about? Part 4

In part 3, we looked at life balance, an area that often yields significant progress for a client in the early days of a coaching relationship. Having achieved a degree of clarity on priority areas for change, and identified a few specific steps that they should take, the next logical task is to set goals and make action plans. I suspect this is an area where most coaches don their mentor's hat, and do a bit of teaching. Despite the fact that we are the most educated generation in history, surprising few have ever been taught how to set goals.

There are variations on the theme, but the general formula is that goals must be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. With the definition explained and a few examples given, the lesson is over, and we're back to coaching mode, the client setting their own goals and plans of action to achieve them. One of the keys to actually achieving the goals we set, is to make ourselves accountable to someone who will help us keep our word to ourselves when we say, “I will do, become or have ... by this date … .” Here a coach can play a vital role, as an “outsider” who we've actually paid to help us set goals and to hold us accountable for taking the necessary action. We're often more likely to “perform” for this uninvolved outsider, than we would be for friends or family.

Of course whole books have been written about goal setting, project planning etc, but there, in a nutshell is the role a coach can play in helping us prioritise, set goals, make plans and carry them out. While I've presented the process in, perhaps deceptively simple terms, the value and importance of this process can not be overstated. For most people, the failure to carry out this process, means a life lived well below its potential, and for many it is the cause of the proverbial “life of quiet desperation” we so often hear about.

Coaching - what's it all about? Part 3

In my last note, I said that this time we'd look at how a coaching session might help a client.

A coaching relationship is a designed alliance or collaboration between coach and client, aimed at helping the client achieve more of their potential.  The coaching conversation could therefore begin in any number of different places depending on the client's situation.

One starting point that often yields valuable insights is to explore the balance in a client's life. We could begin with a "wheel of life," a circle divided into 8 segments which represent various life areas, e.g. career, money, health, relationships, spiritual, personal growth, fun & recreation, and home.  The client rates each area of their life on a scale of 0 (couldn't be worse) to 10 (couldn't be better).


The coach begins the conversation by observing the scores, e.g. there might be several 3s and 4s, and one 8; how does that feel?  There is no judgement, nor even a sense of where the conversation is headed - that will be determined by the client.  The client may then indicate that he'd like all areas to be in the 8 - 9 range, to which the coach might respond by asking which area would have the most impact if it were improved.  The client might come up with career, and in the same breath mention self development.  On probing the connection, the client clearly sees a causal relationship between the two, decides that personal growth is the priority area, and as the discussion develops, he comes up with a further link between recreation and personal development.  

Asked by the coach to suggest next steps that he could take, the client suggests that he could a) call a colleague or customer and arrange a golf game, and b) go through the things he had learned in this coaching session, and explore further steps that he could take.

Asked to "dip in" and come up with another area that could yield significant change, the client returns to career, and with further questioning, decides on changes he can make to his relationships, which might improve his working environment.  

Using this sort of process a client could potentially move from confusion and a sense of life spinning out of control, to clarity, and a clear set of action steps to take based on their own priorities in less than one hour.  

In the next post, we'll explore goal setting which could be a logical next step.