At The Leader’s Journey, we believe that coaching is a relationship between equals that focuses on the client’s growth and learning. Coaching creates a safe and challenging interpersonal environment that helps leaders develop clear, focused goals and then provides shame-free accountability around reaching those goals.

To hear a more comprehensive answer to this question, check out Episode 17 of our podcast.

Coaching can help you solve a problem, get unstuck, reach important goals and practice new skills and ways of being while increasing your self-awareness and growing your emotional intelligence.

The process of coaching is highly customizable based on the needs of the client. However, typically it involves at least two things:

1. Helping you see your organization’s system and to see yourself in the system

2. Helping you grow your emotional maturity so you can deal with the anxious reactivity of the system without being crushed by it.

Usually, we toggle back and forth between understanding the system better (the corporate work of discernment and leadership) and seeing yourself better (the individual work of personal growth).

We believe that adults learn in a fairly simple way: we gain information, we practice in real life and then we reflect on our practice. Then we repeat, with support, until we start to see real change.

A coach can help share information from a pool of expertise, can help you decide how to practice and give you support for your practice, and then can help you reflect in a way that helps you learn from both success and failure. We believe this kind of learning is at the heart of discipleship.

Your coach’s role is to help you clarify your goals and keep them in front of you with enough focus, accountability, support and challenge that you can disrupt your autopilot (the way you habitually show up) and make real changes in your life.

Your role is to supply the goals, the authenticity, the courage, and the hard work. Each session should end with a clear sense of how you can be in action until the next session.

In some ways coaching and counseling (or psychotherapy) overlap. Both use an interpersonal relationship and a set of skills to help people change. Both are interested in the client’s growth and learning. Both may focus on a person’s past, present or future to help them better understand themselves and their relationships. They are overlapping disciplines that share a knowledge base, a set of skills and ethical commitments.

There is one main difference between coaching and counseling: a counselor is uniquely trained and skilled to deal with issues related to mental health and mental disorders. If you are primarily wanting to deal with depression, anxiety, or some other mental health issue, you will need to work with a counselor. If you have a mental health diagnosis but are wanting to work on issues related to your current goals for your life or work or increasing your emotional intelligence, you may want to add coaching to your therapeutic routine.

Coaching is not the appropriate setting for depth work, personality restructuring, addressing serious relationship problems, or managing emotional emergencies.

We cannot. Even though our coaches are trained and licensed as professional counselors, ethical considerations require that we keep counseling and coaching work completely separate. If your coach believes you would benefit from working with a counselor, they will tell you so and give you personalized recommendations.

Although people’s goals may differ, here are some things that we do with virtually all of our coaching clients:

● Co-create a coaching climate that is both safe and challenging.
● Clarify your goals and the resources you’ll need to get there.
● Explore the process of confronting the “autopilot” that keeps us from making changes or fully living out our guiding principles.
● Encourage the adoption of new or renewed practices that help you experience a new way of being.
● Learn the basic concepts of emotional maturity through the lens of living systems using personal instruction, reading, and interactive learning.
● Design experiments for change and growth, supporting you as you make changes and evaluate your learning.

You will typically meet with your coach via Zoom for 45-50 minutes. Your coach will send a link before each coaching call. Depending on your location, your coach may give you the option to meet in-person.

You and your coach will spend the first session or two getting clear about your goals and objectives so they can get an idea of your history, or first formation. After that, you will check in at the beginning of each session and review what you have done since oyur last meeting. You will build the agenda together based on what your coach has prepared for our session and what you want to focus on.

At the end of each session, you will take on some form of practice, experiment or homework to enhance your learning between meetings.

We usually recommend meeting twice in the first month and then monthly after that, unless you want to accelerate your work by meeting more often. This is a very customized process so feel free to ask your coach for what you want.

Our coaches fees range from $100-$200/hr, potentially discounted for those who indicate that they need the adjusted fee. You can put a credit card on file (we use Square to keep your information safe and secure) or you can arrange for our accountant to invoice you after each session.

Definitely! In many ways, the process is very similar—working on shared goals in a safe and challenging environment. In a group context, your coach will also help facilitate communication as a way of supporting a “defined and connected” way of interacting.

Your coach will translate, reframe, and encourage team members to experiment with different ways of expressing themselves and listening deeply to each other.

If you’re interested in group or team coaching, let us know and we can customize an experience that will meet your needs.

Visit our Team page to explore each coach’s bio and learn more about their unique backgrounds and experiences.