Continuity

n.  An uninterrupted succession or flow; a coherent whole (The American Heritage Dictionary)

You know, or believe in, the significant benefits that coaching can deliver. You will, most likely, have experienced the transformative, significant or long lasting results achievable from a coaching programme. You recognize the role coaching has to play in your personal and professional development.

Of course coaching can yield considerable one off transformations in our ways of sensing, thinking, doing and being. However, imagine how that might play through in your life if you were to continue the momentum?

Some changes encountered appear ‘one off’, whether they are events affecting us, or activities planned by us. The degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that we are expected to make sense of, let alone thrive from, is accelerating in today’s world. There is then a need to equip ourselves with a mechanism for ensuring we are keeping abreast and making the most of the opportunities available to us.

Through an ongoing coaching programme we are able to constantly expose our map of the world to ourselves, to evaluate how well that map serves us and help us divine a way forward for our personal and professional development to give us what we most likely want – to be healthy, wealthy, happy and free. Coaching can help us with this and assist us in achieving it with ease and grace.

At times it may yield significant, almost revolutionary change, in the way that we see ourselves and how we are sensing, thinking, feeling, doing and being. At other times it may be more evolutionary change. Not always detectable, small nuanced changes in our perception or learning. These too can have remarkable impacts on the results we get for ourselves in our lives.

So with change being the new constant, we can find refuge in securing continuity in what we strive for from our disposition for change. This is what my ‘Continuity’ Coaching Package is designed for. This is the package a significant number of my ongoing clients select and renew annually, benefiting also from an interest- and fee- free payment plan. If this appeals to you as a driver of your ongoing personal development and lifelong learning ethos then contact me today and let’s discuss how to get the programme up and running for you to enjoy its many benefits.

About the coaching approach adopted by me

My role as coach will be to facilitate the coaching process, ensuring that you are given the space to air and explore your thoughts on the issues and the topics you have chosen to bring to the sessions. I will help you gain clarity on your situation, gaining new perspectives on it. From this, goals for both the session and the specific topic brought to the session will be established. Further, I will help you generate a choice set, which ensures that you are not seeking to decide from a limited pool of ideas, or narrow thinking. In doing these things I will help you understand your current situation from a vantage point that promotes insights and new learning for you. With these in mind, you will be invited to make choices and generate a plan of action, in so far as it makes sense to you to do so at that time.

Throughout the sessions, I will pay attention to the psychological contract that is present between us, ensuring rapport is appropriately managed for a safe and expansive space to be maintained. At times I will voice opportunities to make shifts in what we are contracting to have available to you, ensuring you can make decisions for best effect for yourself. At times this might touch upon mentoring, or consulting, but only where that is desired by you. You will always be the one deciding where we go in each coaching session.

What makes me the best coach for you at this time?

My joy of coaching comes from every session being different and therefore unique. Whilst your presenting ‘situation’ might sound familiar to me from previous coaching engagements, my extensive coach training has me focus on the uniqueness of the situation from your perspective. In this way, I avoid coming with preconceived notions of what the outcome of the session will be, irrespective of the topic and how it resonates with me.

Having said this, my extensive coach training, experience in working in organisations, managing others, and my own life experiences, enable me to consider and articulate suitable coaching approaches in our sessions together. Through this I will help you gain advantageous new perspectives on your situation which will promote both insights and learning for you. Further, through the attention I give to how we are ‘contracting’ as the session progresses, I can access the breadth and depth of my own knowledge and skills to best serve you, where you find this helpful.

From past experience, I am sure that the value you glean from my ‘Continuity’ coaching package will be so great that you are likely to want to renew the programme annually.

Case Studies involving my Continuity Coaching Programme

• Michael is a self-employed professional and runs a SME organization over a few premises and employs a small number of equally skilled and qualified staff. We are into our 6th year now in our coaching relationship. Michael came to me in crisis mode originally and signed up to my 3-session ‘Impetus’ Coaching Programme. The issue was he felt trapped (physically and metaphorically) in his chosen profession and self-employment. Through questioning and reflective listening, it soon became apparent that a personal issue relating to Michael’s partner was the source of the crisis. Michael had been avoiding conflict and burying himself in work. Our three sessions centred on values, boundaries and behaviours. Michael explored the issue, generated scenarios and options, and made some big decisions about next steps. It paid off. The issue was addressed with boundaries laid down and loving support offered up. With this success under the belt, Michael renewed the programme, upgrading to my 6-session ‘Momentum’ Coaching Package. Attention now shifted to business matters. Addressing the multiple sites, and the number and type of staff employed, decisions were made to sell parts of the business and streamline the residual operation. Working on the business, not in the business, was the credo. Activity on this spilled over into the next coaching contract which was upgraded to my 9-session ‘Continuity’ Coaching package, has been renewed twice more since then. Through these programmes we have moved on from the business streamlining to establishing new interests and exploration of purpose for Michael. He has set up a consulting business helping others in his profession with similar challenges and along the way we have tackled a number of personal development matters such as low confidence in unfamiliar areas, procrastination, low self-belief and so on. For Michael, the renewal of the annual coaching programme is the bedrock of personal and professional development.
• Amanda is a highly skilled and qualified professional who has alternated between employment and self-employment. She had experienced coaching before, having received coaching as part of an employer’s coaching programme and also some pro bono sessions from a couple of acquaintances training as coaches. She had a positive view of coaching’s role, but some reticence about the quality of coaching delivery. She wanted to ‘end the cycle’ and was keen to get some clarity about what she was doing with her life and why each period in her life led ultimately to so much frustration and change. Given her concerns about coaching quality, I agreed to a trial session on the basis that she was committed to signing up for my 9-session ‘Continuity’ Coaching Package. I clearly passed the test, as we were soon underway exploring her values and looking for patterns in her decision making over time. We identified the role relationships with others played in her personal and professional life and unearthed some interesting aspects of her ‘map’ of the world, especially around beliefs and presuppositions. We have now known each other for almost a decade and she has renewed her ‘Continuity’ Coaching Package with me for each of these years. She says that the coaching has paid for itself ten times over each year through her business results, her relationships with others and her happiness.