Frequently Asked Questions About Coaching
When it comes to coaching for lawyers and entrepreneurs, clients usually have a ton of questions, but often find answers difficult to come by. Some clients are not sure about what their goals and objectives should be, and some do not know how to value themselves, which leads to the creation of doubts about themselves. To ensure you have all your doubts cleared, as the best professional lawyer coach in Toronto, I have answered some of the most frequently asked questions about coaching.
1 What is coaching?
The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
Coaching honors the client as the expert in his/her life and work and believes that everyone is creative, resourceful and whole.
The coach’s responsibility, therefore, is to:
a. Discover, clarify and align with what the client wants to achieve.
b. Encourage client self-discovery.
c. Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies.
d. Hold the client accountable.
The coaching alliance is designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Coaches help people improve their performance and enhance the quality of their lives.
2. How is coaching different from other service professions?
Therapy: Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction, and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual’s ability to function.
Whereas the primary focus of coaching is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one’s work or personal life. The emphasis in a coaching alliance with a client is on action, accountability and follow through.
Consulting: Consultants are generally retained as experts in a specific field to diagnose problems and prescribe and sometimes implement solutions.
Coaching on the other hand respects that clients are the experts of their own lives and careers and are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
3. What happens in a coaching session?
The first meeting is the “discovery session” and lasts approximately two hours the purpose of which is to lay out a roadmap for the coaching going forward.
After the initial session, Client and coach agree on the regular coaching schedule for two or three sessions per month. Session length depends on the program chosen. Coaching duration generally ranges from three to twelve months.
Clients bring their own agenda to each session about what they would like to discuss and what they would like from the coach.
The coaching for the session is driven by that agenda.
At the end of the session, the coach and client agree on a structure of accountability by deciding together what actions the client will take during the week based on that session’s topics.
The whole process is action-oriented and is designed to drive the client towards his/her ultimate goal or goals.
4. How is the coaching process initiated?
A questionnaire comprising of some powerful and provocative questions about where the client is in his/her life, where they get stuck, their goals, hurdles, dreams, and passions, etc.
This questionnaire helps to guide the conversation during the Discovery Session and develop the roadmap for the coaching going forward.
If you have any more questions about coaching, get in touch with Ian Solomon, professional lawyer coach in Toronto, ON. My practice is focused on helping individuals develop strategies for coping with the changes in their career transitions so that the process is less distressing, disruptive and more productive. I also help lawyers and law firms monetize their true value by working with them to discover the truly relevant issues that keep them from capitalizing on their greatest strengths. To learn more about how I can help you, please click here or contact me by clicking here.