At its core, my coaching is about developing awareness, creating environments for success and inspiring clients to committed action in the present and future. I work with people at the organisational and individual level to gain clarity on values and identify what they want — then support them in obtaining success through more meaningful choices, complete commitment and consistent action.
I have worked with individuals, couples, organisations, professionals, corporations, executives and entrepreneurs to achieve the changes they sought, unblock energy traps and realise creative undertakings. My clients have included national communications companies, such as Telus, international advertising agencies, such as JWT, international blue-chip non-profits, such as YMCA, international corporate lawyers, surgeons, artists, writers, pilots and professionals in the wine industry and across the communication field, working with them on their professional and personal challenges.
Whether it’s help needed to complete a creative and challenging project, write a book, polish one’s communication skills, manage stressful job situations, elevate a relationship with a partner to a new level, connect more closely with one’s children, appreciate the wonders of wine or generally improve the way one does things in business and life, I am able to provide the expertise to design the supportive environment to make it happen.
As the coach, I use, where appropriate, thought-out, extensively practised, context-sensitive techniques and on the basis of an empowering alliance, I tell clients things no one else will, while listening for their best — something it may be difficult to hear on one’s own. My coaching is not merely the utilization of a collection of techniques, but the development of a relationship in which the client moves from challenges to solutions, insights to action and on to success.
By helping clients become more focused, I work with them to look closely at habitual and unexamined behaviour, craft supportive environments, and build a framework of expectations that takes them to new levels of success at home and in their professions. In this way, often through spirited questioning and illustrative exercises, I am able to elicit their best, uncover blind spots and improve performance. In this process, structures of thought are researched and re-interpreted, issues reframed and supportive environments, rich but simple, created.
There are not many relationships that offer the levels of support and attention that coaching does, and I do this boldly and provocatively, seeking clarity of communication with richness of meaning.
Hiring a coach is becoming increasingly common, with people and organisations looking to coaches to help with specific short-term projects or retaining them for ongoing challenges over a period of years.
As a coach with particular skills in communication, research, writing, book projects and transition processes, I engage with clients who are going through significant professional or personal change and people working on new challenges. My clients are drawn from communication and consumer companies, small businesses, consultancy, coaching and the academy, ranging from owners, chief executives, designers, writers, journalists and others engaged in research, development, communication, writing and design projects.
I help create the structures required for successful performance and the creative spaces needed for innovation and change. In addition, I help clients develop effective relationships at the personal and professional level, make career moves, business changes or move from one professional stage to another. Along with my clients leading their companies into new territory, taking on new challenges and promotions, starting or reformulating businesses, I work with organisations that are restructuring, or employees taking on new jobs, I help them refocus their personal lives while making changes to their professional lives, increase life or leadership skills, gain awareness, seek balance or learn ways to develop effective techniques out of hitherto unexamined experience. Where clients are looking to design and complete projects, I can shift perspectives so as to open up new possibilities, refine and expand their communication abilities to that end or examine habits that have previously held them back from greater personal and professional achievement.
I also develop and coach workshops on team-building, negotiation skills and wise leadership. I design symposia on the skills, knowledge and conduct required for elegant living in the 21st century, as well as seminars on writing and wine (a field in which I am certified).
Most coaching is done either on a monthly basis, with the fee providing three sessions a month at pre-scheduled times, or through one of a number of packages in which clients can use hours as they go (details can be found here).
Sessions can be conducted either on the phone or face-to-face or through a combination of these. Given 21st century technology, my clients and coach need not live in the same geographical location. Coaching is usually taken for a minimum of three months, and more usually at least six months. While 90 per cent of coaching sessions take place over the phone — because this allows more flexibility in terms of time, cost and geography — the coach and client create a format that works best for them and which is tailored to the issues the organisation or individual brings to the sessions and what takes place within sessions is determined by the context, the purpose and the specific requirements of the client.
My sessions are informed by techniques developed within the field and its associated disciplines — from the more recently established disciplines such as organisational and personal development, leadership studies, communication theory, language studies, psychology and neuro-linguistic programming, to the earliest, such as philosophy and Buddhist thinking and meditation. Communication between coach and client is confidential, within the parameters set by law.
In my experience, a period of at least seven months — 21 sessions — is necessary for most projects, but coaching can deal with a particular issue and thus be of a far shorter duration. I have had one client whose goals were met within a month and another who worked with me on different aspects over 20 years, a period during which she set goals, met them, went on to create new and bigger goals, overcame an obstacle that had been blocking her for many years and created a supportive environment in which to develop professionally and personally.
Clients — be they couples, physicians, lawyers, airline pilots, pharmacists or artists, or whether they work in large institutions, small businesses or as solo operators — most often face the same challenge of isolation and the same difficulty in remaining solution-focused and setting up structures and systems of accountability.
© S Fuller 2011