Impetus

n.  Something that encourages a particular activity, or makes that activity more effective (Cambridge Dictionary)

Has there been a significant development in your personal or professional life that requires some thought before you decide what to do? Or perhaps you are considering being the instigator of such a substantive change? Either way, these have typically been the impetus to my clients committing to this coaching package.

The types of significant developments that they have encountered have included:

• Opportunities for promotion, relocation or secondment
• Business challenges from external environment and internal operations
• Impending and actual restructuring of role, or redundancy
  New career, or job opportunities (including self-employment) outside of current employer
• Creation, changes in, or ending of, one or more significant relationships
• Employment/career adjustments due to pregnancy, disability and so on
• Loss of confidence, or increasing anxiety, in relation to personal or professional life
• Addressing communication, or other behaviour related matters, at home or at work (related to self or others)

The types of change they have been considering instigating have included:

• Career break or adjustment for study, travel, or starting a business
• Desire to find purpose, or new challenges in career, or in life generally
• Self-employment linked to desired lifestyle changes
• Starting a business with intention to scale up
  Buying or selling whole or part of business
• Career or lifestyle change or adjustments

These are not exhaustive lists. They do, however, give you a strong indication of the types of matters that have brought others like you to the realization that coaching is a highly powerful strategy in gaining clarity, generating choices and making decisions in the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world we all find ourselves living in today.

Make contact with me and we can discuss how best my services can help you with what you are facing at this time.

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 ‘Impetus’ coaching package will be so great that you will not only want to renew the programme but also progress to my 6-session ‘Momentum’ coaching package.

Case Studies involving my Impetus Coaching Programme

• Andy had been in his public sector role for a number of years in Auckland and he had built a great reputation with his employer and work colleagues alike. In 2013, for family reasons, there was a desire to move closer to extended family in Hamilton. As a result, Andy was acting on the basis of changing his employer, and possibly even his choice of career, in order to make the geographical move. His employer was keen not to lose him, if at all possible. Through our three ’Impetus’ coaching sessions held over 8 weeks, what was important to Andy was established and an expanded choice set of options was generated. The end result that he went with was a proposal to his Auckland employer of him becoming a part-time contractor. After some negotiation, the proposal was accepted by his employer and he is still in the newly created role all these years later. He got to keep a job he excelled at and his employer got to keep his skills and experience.
• Karen was pregnant and worked in a senior management role for a private medium sized company in New Zealand. She contacted me in 2020 having previously been a coaching client of mine between 2012 to 2015 which ended when she moved out of Auckland in 2016. With Covid-19 now being rife, she was looking at options with her employer and wanted to decide what would be the best approach for her to minimize career disruption from the multiple events happening around her in her personal and professional life. Although our previous coaching engagements had been longer duration ones, she was clear about what she needed right now and so a three session ‘Impetus’ coaching programme was agreed upon. Through her gaining awareness of her situation and greater clarity around what was most important to her, she developed a proposal to look at strategic projects directly for the owner/CEO for the duration of 2020. After some negotiation, her proposal was accepted and, as well as baby now having been born, she is still happily working in her new role with a level of flexibility she had never imagined could ever be possible.