We all have dreams and desires for our lives. Why do some people seem effortlessly successful, while others never get going? Knowing how to meet goals and get what you want is a learned skill, but it's not taught in school.
Some people find success by trial and error in the "school of hard knocks," a time consuming, hit-or-miss process. Some have had a parent, teacher, or other mentor who guides us to acquire success skills. If you did not, a well-trained professional coach can do the job with you.
Coaching is an intensive professional relationship between coach and partner (or partners), directed at helping people define, clarify, reach for and attain important life goals. An experienced professional coach works to help clarify your learning style, so that you acquire the specific skills that best suit your approach to success.
As in sports coaching, personal coaching provides structure, stimulation, and support for the things people want to do or have to do. Coaching is not therapy or counseling (see below). Coaching helps you toward your goals by focusing real action in the here-and-now. Action steps are planned together, using simple methods that ensure your follow-through.
Our quiz, "How Coachable Are You?" can help you determine if coaching could be useful for you now.
The Arena Method® is a sophisticated behavioral system for coaching individuals and groups. It borrows from behavioral and cognitive psychology, organizational theory, and traditional disciplines to help coaching partners (individuals, families, or work groups) to analyze the unique structure of their particular desires and ways of wanting. It guides partners in examining the potential loss attached to every desire, and the desires affected by every loss. This allows them to make their conscious choices "honorable" -- choices that are "do-able," and also are "worth doing."
Some goals are necessary but not preferred, and some are the reverse. Whether partners see a goal they "have to" achieve, or ones they "have always dreamed of" achieving, the Arena Method® builds on their work with desire and loss to help partners understand both the negative and positive power of their intentions. It helps partners to separate conflict from intention, creating the space for conflict-free action.
The Arena Method® is concentrated and powerful. As part of the pre-contract assessment process, candidates' readiness for risk and change is carefully evaluated. Before contracting, potential partners are challenged to identify and perform a single action related to a simple goal. This step introduces a popular Arena Group tactic, "Do One Thing" -- and it provides valuable information for both candidates and coaches.
Our 10-item survey for individuals, How Coachable
Are You? gives you a glimpse into Arena Group coaching.
Most of the time you meet with your coach by phone -- thus, personal coaches serve people anywhere in the world, on your time. This is very efficient for you -- no commuting time, no parking hassles.
Personal coaching begins with a careful assessment of your goals and your resources. Then personal phone sessions take place regularly by appointment, usually weekly for half an hour (other schedules are easy to arrange). The sessions provide a very safe environment to try on and explore dreams, hunches, and new ideas.
During the phone session, actions and results are reviewed, and new actions steps are planned. This becomes very exciting as you build momentum the way every successful person does -- one step at a time.
That depends on your goals and needs. Most important goals take a few months to achieve, at least. Coaching is an ideal place to plan for longer-term goals too, which you may carry out on your own after coaching has helped you master your own style of successful action.
The cost for personal coaching is within the reach of most employed people. Most coaching contracts involve a regular monthly fee, comparable to a new car payment.
The cost of personal coaching is one of the most worthwhile life expenses people choose to manage with a credit card. Back to the TOP
The difference between the two procedures is very important.
Therapy is a specific medical procedure aimed at using your understanding of your past experiences to overcome emotional, medical, and other life problems. It is appropriate that medical insurance helps with the costs of this care.
Coaching is a future-oriented, goal-directed mental and behavioral process which relies only a little on information from your past. Coaching puts a demand on your energy and requires some capacity to plan and act. It is not a medical procedure and is not usually covered under medical or health insurance plans.
In the pre-contract assessment, a well-trained coach should be able to help you identify current emotional or situational obstacles, if any, which would interfere with coaching and the attainment of your goals. A well-trained coach should be able to recommend appropriate legal, financial, therapy or other help to address those obstacles.
Our quiz, "How Coachable Are You?" can help you determine if coaching could be useful for you now.
Quite the opposite! Think of sports -- do Olympic champions and players in the major leagues have coaches? Of course they do! Do beginners in Little League and varsity play also have coaches? Yes, they do. So do Academy-Award-winning actors, opera singers, pilots, and many others.
Anyone who wants to stay on top of their game, or to learn the latest in the science of success, uses a coach. The effort you put into coaching is life-changing work.
Often family and friends give us advice tinted by their own interests, such as when discussing job changes, legal or money decisions, or relationships that may require you to move away.
A professional coach is completely impartial, trained to look at the situation only with your goals and your best interests in mind.
Here's another way your personal coach is not like your family, friends, or boss. Many people worry that their coach will 'take over,' telling them what to want, or giving them assignments they will naturally resist. But in good professional coaching, the client always leads the action, buoyed along by the clarity and support of a trained professional.
A good coach is totally focused on your effort, respects your time frames and styles of action, and adds only loyalty, security, know-how and optimism.
Executive coaching is a service that focuses principally on clients' goals in the context of their business or professional activity. Executive coaching serves the person's as well as the company's goals.
However,
modern Executive Coaching is not provided only to business
people in corporate settings -- its power is relevant
to the work of entrepreneurs and inventors, start-ups, and self-employed
professionals -- anyone who carries responsibility and authority over
leadership matters for the business involved.
Companies and work groups sometimes expend vast sums launching team efforts that are not focused and structured for success. And when things do not develop as they should, often they do not know why. Coaching and consulting for success in this arena is a specific, technical activity relying on theory and content that many companies do not own in-house.
Hiring a coach or team consultant is one of the most cost-effective steps a group can take in the formulation and early implementation stages of an important program or project. A good coach can significantly improve group cohesion, help clarify and communicate team expectations, organize feedback mechanisms, and focus actions steps that match project goals.
