What do I mean by ‘coaching‘ and how is it different from ‘counselling‘? This is how I see it:
Counselling is looking within ourselves for the answers to who and where we are today. Coaching is looking forward to where we want to be, and planning a route to get there.
With 20 years experience of mentoring and coaching in the workplace and 13 years of counselling experience, I combine my professional business experience with my counselling training to offer coaching to help you decide what you want your future to look like, and how to reach it. I’ll work with you to design yourself and your life (work and home) to maximise your potential. Be your best self. Live your best life. All those overused slogans.
If it was that simple, you’d be doing it yourself. So I’ll work with you to see what’s holding you back. Maybe you procrastinate? Find it hard to prioritise your own needs? Put everyone else first? Struggle to delegate? Feel stuck/worried/anxious? Have no clue what you want to do? These are the kind of areas I work with when I say I’m ‘coaching’.
As with counselling, I’ll tailor our sessions for you. Unlike counselling, there’s usually less magic happening in the sessions themselves. Fewer ‘Aha!’ moments. There’ll be more ‘homework’. (We can give it another name, if that feels more grown up … an ‘action plan’?) Something which you work on and try before our next session. It’s a bit like going to the gym. Sure, you’ll make progress if you go once a week, but if you do exercises at home in between, then you’ll reach your goal faster. I suppose in that analogy, I’d be your personal trainer. A personal trainer to help you achieve your life goals? It kind of works.
Within our coaching sessions, we may identify a block, or unhelpful pattern of behaviour which is holding you back. If you want to understand that, and explore why you have it, then we may dip into a bit of counselling. Only if you want to. It’s all interlinked and you decide what you want to work on. Maybe you don’t care, haven’t the headspace or inclination and that’s fine. But because I’m a qualified counsellor, we can go there if you want to. Or not. Shall we cross that bridge if we come to it?
If you have an area of your life that you want to develop or change, then contact me to arrange a free initial meeting .
(NB I also trained as a Group Coach at Oxford University. Please get in touch if you want to find out how I can help your team.)