Celebrate International Coaching Week!
About nine years ago, Mark Tidsworth asked me to join Pinnacle Leadership Associates as a coach and consultant. Although I had no formal training in coaching, Mark assured me that I have been coaching for most of my ministry. I immediately began training as a coach and practicing coaching.
After about a year, Mark asked me to become the Coaching Coordinator for Pinnacle. In this role, I not only continue my coaching practice, but lead in promoting Pinnacle’s Disciple Development Coaching © training and provide coaching for Pinnacle associates as needed.
This is International Coaching Week, an annual weeklong global celebration of the coaching profession, sponsored by the International Coach Federation. Sometimes I still struggle to define what I do as a coach or find the proper descriptor to use. Although I usually say that my specialty is clergy coaching, this is really a subset under the practice of “life coaching.” One source defines a life coach as “a professional who helps you reach a goal or make a change in life.”
What can a coach help you to achieve? Here are a few ideas:
1. Become more accountable. The task of a life coach is not to hold a person accountable but to help a person develop his or her own accountability structures—those reminders, guides, or supports that are sustainable after the coaching relationship ends.
2. Save time and gets faster results. Working with a coach allows a person to focus and get down to the hard work of change. The coaching relationship is very intentional and designed to help the client achieve what is most important to that person.
3. Saves money. In the long run, making good decisions about one’s life and work avoids poor investment of time, money, and effort.
4. Less stress and frustration. As a person works with a coach, they discover that they can make appropriate and effective decisions and then follow through on them.
5. New ideas to solve problems. Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” A coach helps a person to take a fresh perspective on his or her challenge or recognize a new paradigm to address it.
6. Insights into yourself. Most people are capable of achieving more but they often neglect to realize their own capacity. A coach helps to draw out those resources.
7. Increased self-confidence. A coach helps a client achieve attainable and productive results that reinforce one’s desire to do more. Small victories are the first steps to greater achievements.
Have you thought about working with a coach? This would be a good week to take action.
If you want to know more about coaching, please contact me at ircelh@pinnlead.com and we can set up a time for a free coaching call so that you can learn more. Happy ICW!
Ircel Harrison
Coaching Coordinator, PLA