Below are some answers to the most commonly asked questions about coaching.

• What is coaching?
• What can I expect?
• What is a coach?
• How can you determine if coaching is right for you?
• How is coaching delivered? What does the process look like?
• What does coaching ask of the individual?
• Is it possible to try coaching out before signing up?

What is coaching?
Professional coaching is an interactive process that helps individuals and organizations improve their performances and achieve extraordinary results. Professional coaches work with clients in all areas including business, career, finances, health and relationships. As a result of professional coaching, clients set better goals, take more action, make better decisions, and more fully use their natural strengths.

What can I expect?
Individuals and organizations who engage in a professional coaching relationship will experience fresh perspectives on personal challenges and opportunities, enhanced decision-making skills, greater interpersonal effectiveness, and increased confidence in carrying out their chosen work and life roles. Consistent with a commitment to enhancing their personal effectiveness, they can also expect to see appreciable results in the areas of productivity, satisfaction with life and work, and the achievement of personally relevant goals.

What is a coach?
Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performances and enhance the quality of their lives.

Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach's job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.

How can you determine if coaching is right for you?
To determine if you could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish in coaching. When someone has a fairly clear idea of the desired outcome, a coaching partnership can be a useful tool for developing a strategy for how to achieve that outcome with greater ease. Since coaching is a partnership, ask yourself if you find it valuable to collaborate, to have another viewpoint and to be asked to consider new perspectives. Also, ask yourself if you are ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes in your work or life.

How is coaching delivered? What does the process look like?
The coaching process begins with a Foundation Session to assess an individual's current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the relationship, identify priorities for action, and establish specific desired outcomes.

The coach and client then meet 3 times each month for 40 minutes by telephone or in person. Between scheduled coaching sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of one's personally prioritized goals. The coach may provide additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments, or models, to support the individual’s thinking and actions. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on the individual’s personal needs and preferences.

Coaching incorporates an appreciative approach. The appreciative approach is grounded in
what’s right, what’s working, what’s wanted, and what’s needed to get there. Using an
appreciative approach, the coach models constructive communication skills and methods
the individual or team can utilize to enhance personal communication effectiveness.

What does coaching ask of an individual?
To be successful, coaching asks certain things of the individual, all of which begin with
intention…

• Focus—on one’s self, the tough questions, the hard truths--and one’s success
• Observation—the behaviors and communications of others
• Listening—to one’s intuition, assumptions, judgments, and to the way one sounds when one speaks
• Self discipline—to challenge existing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors and to develop new ones which serve one’s goals
• Style—leveraging personal strengths and overcoming limitations
• Decisive actions—however uncomfortable, and in spite of personal insecurities, in order to reach for the extraordinary
• Compassion—for one’s self as he or she experiments with new behaviors, experiences setbacks
• Humor—committing to not take one’s self so seriously, using humor to lighten and brighten any situation
• Courage—to reach for more than before, to shift out of being fear based in to being in abundance as a core strategy for success, to engage in continual self examination, to overcome internal and external obstacles

Is it possible to try coaching out before signing up?
Yes. We offer an initial sample session free of charge to give you a feel for what coaching is like and to help you decide if it is right for you. You will also have an opportunity to ask any additional questions you might have. If you are interested in scheduling a sample session, contact us at info@connectedadvantage.com.