Blog Post: What Can Coaching Do for You?

Life coaching, creativity coaching, transition coaching helps you discover how you show up in the world. If you want, it helps you decide if that is the way you want to continue showing up in the world. Beyond that, if you want to change how you show up in the world, a coach will help you explore change, create some steps, follow the steps, and move ahead.

Coaching is about you, the client. Your coach won't give you advice, tell you what to do, focus on your past, or let you make up excuses. Coaching works in the middle of turmoil, anger, fear, losing your job, getting a divorce, and a 20-page to-do list, none of which is done.

Coaching also works when you are eager, happy, creative, present, and productive. It helps you identify how you got to the point you are and if you want to continue, and how to continue making good choices.

Each coach has techniques that work for clients. I ask questions. For my clients to figure out their motives, their reasons for making choices, they have to think about what they value, what they want, and where they want to go. All that involves questions.

What's interesting about questions, is that the answers change from day to day. I'll as a client, "What pushes your buttons?" and she might immediately reply, "Friends who don't respect me."  Because I don't know what that means for her, I'll ask, "What does respect mean to you?" And here is the interesting part. She might blurt out, "Not treating me as if I'm stupid." We'll talk some more and at the end of the hour, I'll as her to write down what respect means every day for a  week. When we talk about it the next week, she will have quite a list.

--Respect me by listening to me when I'm talking
--Respect me by considering my ideas and not making me do yours all the time
--Respect me by being on time
--Respect me by asking me what I want to be called, not assuming you can use my first name just because I wrote it on a piece of paper you have
--Respect me by not telling me how to run my life

Those are all very different answers, but they all define respect for this client. It gives me information about her values, and it helps her see what is important and perhaps, what is missing in her life.

From there we can move on to how to show respect, how to ask for respect and how to act in ways that encourage respect. Those are positive steps that start with questions.

Coaching is valuable if the road of life is rocky; coaching provides a guide. And when the road is smooth and easy, it provides a companion to help you notice what is working to keep the road smooth.

--Quinn McDonald is a life and transition coach who helps people re-invent themselves. She is also a certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com  (c) 2008 All rights reserved.