What is CoachingAF?

Yes, the name is a bit cheeky. But all jokes aside, CoachingAF is here to help individuals like yourself gain the clarity and confidence to make the best decisions in your personal and professional lives. 

Below you'll get a better understand of what coaching is, how you personally can benefit from a coach, what a coaching relationship with me entails, and a little context on my history with coaching. 

Coaching is about working with someone to deal with an unresolved issue. That issue can be anything, including but not limited to the following:

• How do I find a job where I love to go to work?
• What elements should I consider in my next job?
• Why am I so unfulfilled in my current role?
• What steps do I need to take to be the best version of myself?
• Where do I see myself in five years?
• How can I take on activities (paid or volunteer) that are deeply meaningful?

Coaching is NOT about me telling you what to do - it's about helping you to realize the innate power and confidence you've had all along. My role is to guide and shepherd.

Once we get further into the career exploration journey, I often help my clients with the specific details around job planning:

• Resume review
• Interview prep
• Mastering how to tell stories
• Identifying target companies and roles
• and many other elements!

I tend to work with three distinct groups. If you can't answer some of these questions below, then coaching might be for you. 

• New Graduates
  • How do I take my knowledge and ambition and apply it to all of the options I'm considering?
  • How do I plan my next steps to find a career I love?
  • I'm not enjoying my current job - where do I need to be and how do I get there?
• Mid-Career Professionals
  • How do build my career on my existing successes or stop and start anew?
  • What are the topics for which I am consistently recognized as doing great work?
  • How do I manage teams or myself better?
• Executives, Business Leaders, and Entrepreneurs
  • How do I lead teams in complex organizations or my own business? 
  • Am I truly self-aware of how people perceive me? 
  • What drives me on a daily basis? 
  • What will this awareness help me do with teams, customers, or others?

Part of addressing any unresolved issue is first identifying what that issue is. Often times, "I hate my job" becomes "My jobs doesn't address the things I value," which then becomes "What do I actually value?"

If you're interested in proceeding, we have two ways to do so:

• "Let's do a Trial Session": 
  • A 45-minute long session to explore if there’s a fit (style, questions, interactions, subject matter expertise, etc.)
  • The cost for this introductory session is $175, of which I will donate $50 to the charity of your choice upon session completion. 
• "Let's do this thing!"
  • Normally two 45-minute coaching sessions per month, spaced out every two weeks
  • The cost for this option is $375 per month.
  • My minimum required commitment is ten sessions (approximately five months of sessions). ~5 sessions are usually enough to begin diagnosing your values, career aspirations and the activities to help start you on your transformational journey, but any transformation requires a strong commitment of your time, energy, and resources.

Everyone's journey is going to be different. Some coachees arrive with a clear idea of what they want and simply lack the how to get there. Others don't know why they should pursue something or have not found the end destination. As a result, you'll get some intangible benefits. Ideally this will include clarity on what's important to you or new ways of looking on information (what I call "wrinkles in the brain." 

There are also tangible things you'll take away, including a wide variety of tools that are designed to identify different ideas, including but not limited to:

• Wheel of Life activity
  • How are you doing in all facets of your life? What needs to change?
• Personal Values List
  • What actually matters to you? How are any of the activities in your life (work, hobbies, family, friends, health, etc.) aligned to what you value?
• Lifetime Activity Map
  • An exercise designed to identify patterns in your life/working history. The kinds of places you thrive in, the kinds of people you love to work with, activities that deeply frustrate you, etc.
• Target Company/Role List
  • How do you identify what kinds of organizations (corporate, nonprofit, academic, or government) and roles are the best fit for you? Why?

This is a fantastic question. I've been the beneficiary of three amazing executive coaches in my professional lifetime. 

• The first helped me calm my hyperactive brain and fast-talking self. 
• The second helped me come to the conclusion that HR, Recruiting and Talent Management were passions of mine. 
• And the third enabled me to make the leap from consulting to the talent branding and recruiting technology world. 

And through all of those hard conversations and tough questions, they never told me what to do. They helped me discover what was locked away inside my head and heart all along. That's what coaching can do for anyone - as it did for me.

I've also completed the Co-Active Professional Coach Training program and utilize the Co-Active methods when engaging in clients.

For more on how I found my dream job, see my post on LinkedIn from 2017.