What’s in a Chemistry Session?
Chemistry, a good connection between the coach and client, is paramount to the success of a coaching relationship. Experience and credentials are important too, but finding a coach you feel you can trust and communicate easily with is what enables the relationship to become a powerful collaboration.
Before we commit to working together, I offer my new coaching clients an initial Chemistry Session. It’s an opportunity for you to learn more about me and how I work and for me to find out more about you and what you’d like to get from coaching. I can answer any questions you have and we can see if we’re a good fit to work together.
What to expect in the session…
We’ll spend around an hour together by phone or Skype. I’ll send you some questions to answer beforehand to help us both prepare and be focused for the session. We’ll do some introductions and agree a plan for the session and you can bring a topic that you’d like to be coached on.
Coaching is a process that supports changes in mindset and behaviour over time, so while you can expect to gain some valuable insights from this initial conversation, it most likely won’t transform your life just yet!
How we work together…
It’s important to me that we collaborate as equals in our coaching relationship – you as the expert on yourself, your career and your business and me as the process expert with the tools to support you. We design the process together all the way through, to suit you. I trust your innate wisdom and creativity and when I offer you ideas or observations it’s without attachment to being right.
I encourage fearless self exploration, with curiosity, without judgement. I enjoy finding imaginative ways to help you gain clarity, deeper insight and access to your full range of personal resources. I’m a fan of slowing down as it can offer the space to notice significant things that we don’t notice at the usual pace of life.
I work primarily with tools from Co-Active Coaching and Organisation and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC). These include exploring vision, values, motivations, strengths, patterns of thought and behaviour and trying on new perspectives and choices.
Based on my study of somatics, neuroscience and physiology, I also emphasise awareness of the body, both in terms of your nervous system’s response to stress and the impact of your personal presence on others.
Depending on what’s called for and what you’re interested in, I include ideas and practices from a diverse range of other sources.
Coaching is sometimes compared with mentoring, therapy or consulting and while there can be similarities and some areas of overlap, as a coach I won’t offer you a diagnosis, analysis, advice, answers or ‘fixes’. We won’t focus on problems or figuring out why things have happened in the past. Our focus will be on the present, where you want to get to and closing the gap between here and there.
And what’s next?
Once we’ve spent some time exploring the topic you’ve chosen to focus on in the session, we’ll identify any next steps for you to move forwards.
We’ll discuss how the session went, I can answer any questions you have and we can talk about options to continue working together.
And if we agree to continue, we’ll work together over a period of months to explore where you are now, what you want, what’s between here and there and what needs to change in order to get there. You’ll develop new strategies, put them into action, refine them according to what you learn and integrate what works for you.
Ready to arrange a time for your Chemistry Session? Get in touch here. And have a look at my testimonials if you’re curious about what my other clients have to say.