Coaching
What Do I Mean by Coaching?
The services I provide as a coach focus on topics decided jointly with you, the client. I think that the purpose of coaching is to develop and implement strategies to help you reach personally identified goals of enhanced performance and personal satisfaction. Your coaching experience with me may address a wide variety of goals including the management of life changes, examination of core values, the enhanced practice of life balance, the exploration of the assets of age and experience, the identification of purpose, vision and unrealized potential, and the creation and implementation of a plan for moving ahead.
I think of coaching as a process that will provide you with an opportunity to explore existing challenges, explore current and alternative responses, test new responses, access supportive resources and options and evaluate your outcomes.
I place an emphasis on meeting your objectives in a timely, focused, and humane fashion. I also think the process itself can be fun, interesting, amusing, challenging and deeply gratifying.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E. Frankl
What Kinds of Coaching Do I Provide?
My summary description of my coaching services is that I invest in the Wisdom Work of my clients. Wisdom, the soundness of an action or decision, is highly individualized, transcends the formulaic or linear, and is often best served through intuitive choosing and progressing. Work is physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something. Hence, Wisdom Work!
In this context, all the coaching services I provide are individualized to fit a specific person’s goals in seeking coaching. In that sense, what a person seeks coaching for determines the focus and desired outcomes, and my extensive life experience makes me comfortable in a wide variety of goals and desired outcomes.
We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust
To voice something you’re feeling and put observations into words with another person who is totally present is a creative act embodying soul and love.
Jean Shinoda Bolen
There are specific client goals that I believe I am particularly effective in coaching. I have described these as I practice them.
Transition
Coaching
Transitions involve movement, passage, shift or change from one state, position, place to another. We humans often see that a transition is necessary or desired, yet find ourselves immobile or stuck. Coaching can sort through the current state of affairs, reveal emergent options, devise action plans and lead to a more complete, successful and satisfying transition
Developmental
Coaching
One type of transition all humans face is moving through the developmental stages of being a human. While coaching can help in all these transitions, the one of particular emphasis for me involves the end of employment for income, often described as “retirement”. This is a stage undergoing substantial social change, and the result is often uncertainty or confusion. Coaching can provide a platform for exploring the unique challenges each human faces in making this transition and crafting an equally unique response to the challenges.
Elderhood
Coaching
Elders are persons who are leaders or senior figures in a group where they have authority, dignity and influence. Aging is not optional; it is an inevitability. Becoming an elder is a choice. Frederic Hudson, the avatar of the Hudson Institute of Coaching has stated that “Elderhood is a time of life for each of us to gain our highest level of consciousness, conscience and mission as human beings”. Coaching toward that desired outcome involves a partnership of commitment and discovery.
Spiritual
Coaching
One dimension of being a human is our fundamental spiritual nature. Many people, especially later in their life journey, realize that they want to focus their energy on actualizing their potential toward spiritual self-realization. Coaching can provide a framework to stimulate and support this personal choice. This is not to be confused with a focus on institutionalized religion but provides a platform to explore and actualize one’s personal potential as a spiritual being. I offer this opportunity for those in search of a partner on this very personal and unique journey.
Ask what’s possible, not what’s wrong. Keep asking.
Margaret J. Wheatley
How Does the Process of Coaching Work?
The process of coaching itself involves a few uncomplicated steps once you decide to take action and explore your options: Send me an email indicating your interest (you can provide as much information as you wish, or as little) The link is: pbkritek@msn.com
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I respond to your email, recommending a phone conversation; we set a time acceptable to both of us.I will call you so you will need to provide me with a phone number.
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We have a phone conversation where you tell me why you are seeking coaching, your desired outcomes, your concerns.I explore these with you. We both are determining if we can work together as a coach and a client.
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You have a set period of time after the phone call to email me your decision; it the answer is you wish to start coaching, we schedule our first session.
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Concurrently, I send you an introductory letter, an intake form and an agreement.
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You indicate concurrence with the agreement and complete and submit the intake form to me before the session. (In some cases, the first session isn’t scheduled until these two steps are completed.)
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Sessions can be either on the phone or with the use of the Zoom platform. I provide you with a link for the Zoom sessions.I send the link close to the time of the meeting so it is easily located in your email.
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We initiate the first session.
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Some additional details are often useful:
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Most agreements extend over a three-month period with an option for extensions as desired.
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Most clients meet with me every two weeks though some have negotiated for different patterns of scheduling; I am open to this kind of adaptation.
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Most sessions last 60-90 minutes; longer ones can be scheduled as needed.
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The day and time of the next session will be scheduled at the close of each coaching session. Sessions will begin with an update and a mutually conducted assessment.
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At the conclusion of the session, a plan for the next phase of work and the next session will be mutually negotiated
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I will send you an electronic invoice at the termination of each session; payment is due within 30 days.
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You can pay using check, Paypal or Zelle.
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The coaching sessions conclude based on a mutual agreement of completion.
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All prior clients have the option to recontract for additional coaching once an initial contract has been completed.
Every single choice we make is either going to enhance the spirit or drain it. Every day, we’re either giving ourselves power or taking it away.
Caroline Myss
