Coaching is about getting clear on what you want for yourself, personally and professionally, setting intentions, identifying the best way to achieve your goals and going for it!
It takes courage to pause, consider what really matters to you, and to be in conscious action. Through a committed partnership with your coach, you will be asked thought-provoking questions to uncover your values, behavioral patterns, and beliefs that you hold (which may or may not serve you), and as a result, exciting new perspectives will emerge to propel you forward.
In the corporate world, an employee generally receives coaching for one of two reasons:
High Potentials (75% of executive coaching engagements) - coaches work with exceptionally talented employees, who desire to further refine their craft & steepen the trajectory of their careers. (E.g., maybe a "coachee" wants to be a more assertive leader, or a more empathetic boss, or wants to be promoted and needs to finesse certain parts of their leadership.) At Optimism, Inc., working with high potentials is the type of executive coaching in which we engage, using a lens of strengths, positivity & resilience.
Performance Management (25% of coaching engagements) - when an employee is not performing up to company standards, a coach is brought in to try to rectify performance. In severe cases, a coach might even provide outplacement services to assist a low performing individual to find another, more suitable job. At Optimism, Inc., we generally do not engage in Performance Management coaching as we have found that such individuals are not generally committed to the process, in which case, it will not be successful in attaining truly transformational results.
Separate from corporate engagements, an individual might engage in Private Coaching for a variety of reasons:
You may want more of something (at work or in general):
engagement
leadership presence
aliveness
career momentum
meaningful, authentic connections
an increased sense of empowerment
Or, you may feel you are missing something (at work or in general):
work/life balance
time for yourself
peace
fulfillment, passion and meaning
joy
Or, you might have too much of something:
your plate is full of things you don't really care about
you have trouble setting boundaries
There are various tools a coach can use to bring out your own personal leadership (assessments, techniques, etc.), but mostly it's about the coach asking questions to challenge the status quo, to uncover both natural, unique talents, as well as impediments that might be in your way, to open doors of possibility and empowerment.
It is not a coach's job to "fix" you, so while the coach is asking the questions, you'd be doing most of the "work" by supplying the thoughtful answers - but you'll always know where you stand and get completely honest, private feedback from the coach in service of you. You can count on that.
The coach and client will focus on what energizes you and gives you momentum, and you will be challenged to get into specific, accountable action in order to turbo-charge the areas you want to develop.