The word ‘coaching’ means many things to many people. In some contexts it is taken to mean teaching of or training in a specific technical skill of some sort, for example, sport, writing CVs or making public presentations.
While my work is intended to have real world impact, my coaching focus is on the person, not the problem. Time and again I find that when we pull away from dwelling on the cognitive thinking and the external, and bring focus onto feelings and internal experience, shifts occur. We can think about situations and other people to our hearts’ content, but if we have come for coaching with respect to these, by definition we are stuck. We can’t change something or someone who is not here.
It is only by changing ourselves – our own feelings about and responses to what is external – that we can change a dynamic, become un-stuck and get a different result. My role as coach is to help you unravel and alter feelings and responses and support you in progressing where before you were not (which may include getting specific training in technical skills!).