First of all, Coaching is not therapy or consulting.
- Therapy focusses on your past, coaching focusses on your future life.
- Consulting means that an expert gives you advice, in coaching YOU are the expert.
Coaching takes you powerfully into your future. Coaching helps you to make a good life even better, to define what matters to you and to help you to behave in ways that are in line what matters to you.
- Coaching helps you to identify beliefs about yourself that do not work for you (example: I am not good enough, I am not intelligent enough, I have not worked for a long time and will never earn money again etc.) and eliminate them.
- In a Coach you have a partner who accompanies you along the way. It is helpful to talk to friends about your concerns or dreams, but you may get more advice than you wish.
- A Coach has your interests in mind and will support you to find your individual answers.
- A Coach helps you to structure your life and provide new meaning and focus to it.
What Coaching can do for you
Let's look at two women and how coaching changed their life:
1. Accompanying Partner moving to Basel
Rachel is a 44 year old French woman from Paris, who moved about two years ago with her husband and four children from Paris to Basel, Switzerland.
Rachel was a stay-at-home mum. Her husband works for a pharmaceutical company embassy in Basel. She had felt for a while that she was living somebody else's life instead of her own life. Everybody was happy and excited. She was frustrated and bored which led to frequent arguments with her husband and children. Rachel was caught in a vicious cycle and had no one to talk to about her deepest concerns.
I met Rachel when whe was at her lowest point and introduced her to the 'Wheel of Life'. Looking at her whole life from a 'helicopter view' she identified the two top life areas that she felt needed improvement, namely her relationship to her husband and her own career aspirations. It was her wish to find a new passion and to eventually turn this into a career. Or to continue on her previous path, find a further education and a few years later move back into her previous job.
Rachel developed a clear vision for her whole life while concentrating on improving her two top life areas. She realized how making changes in those two areas changed the quality of her entire life. Rachel and her husband defined one common hobby, namely dancing, and now go out once a week. Rachel did an online course in Interior Decoration and established a small business that allows her to live her passion while being primarily a stay-at-home in Basel.
2. Female manager moving to Zurich
Let's take the example of Lee, a 34 year old American woman, who moved from Shanghai to Basel with her two children (aged 10 and 14) for a duration of three years.
Lee
was very excited when she arrived. She lived abroad for the first time. She had enjoyed her fulltime job as an accountant in the corporate world. She also knew that she would be a better mum going back to work quickly and finding a fulltime job again.
What kind of work did I do with Lee?
Defining
. Lee's life and career vision (incl. how does she want her family life to look like, how much time does she wish to spend on leisure and personal growth, .....)
. Lee's values that she wants to live by and that she doesn't want to compromise on in a job environment
. defining clear job criteria (must criteria for her job) to then be able to evaluate potential job offers/job advertisements against those criteria
Updating
. Lee's CV to make it relevant for the Swiss job market
Defining
. a job search strategy and the ideal mix for Lee on how to find a job (advertisements, cold calling, networking, job search engines etc.)
Pracitising
. job search interviews and how networking is being done in Switzerland (70% of jobs go through networking)
Understanding
. expectations of Swiss employers, the importance of speaking the local language etc.
After 8 sessions of coaching Lee had two job offers to choose from. She now works happily in the chemical industry in Basel.
A coach is a great companion on your journey of discovery and will guide you through the exciting process of finding and living your true self.
To find out more about my coaching packages please go to this page.
