My Approach to Coaching

My aim in coaching is to facilitate performance and happiness for people in their jobs and careers. Happiness and performance tend to go hand-in-hand, but are wrecked by a person’s negative ideas and behaviors. We use coaching to examine those negative factors and to find practical ways to manage unproductive thoughts and actions so they don’t get in the way of joy and productivity. Anyone at any level of work can fall prey to bad habits and poor decisions. For leaders, such liabilities can have outsized effects on others around them because of their power and influence. When the stakes are high, people need to deeply grasp their unhelpful mindsets and learn how to create new kinds of behaviors. I help people reach important goals by focusing on the reciprocal relationship between deep learning that is needed for insight generation and taking action on productive steps.

I believe that insight and action are both necessary to help people hurdle blockages and propel forward. Creating insight involves slow downing thought and inwardly reflecting to create valid ideas about life. Taking action pertains to making corrective actions about problems or obstacles and usually sooner rather than later. Yet these two parts, insight and action, exist in tension with one another. Go too fast without sufficient insight and you’ll simply repeat your historical mistakes. Reflecting too much without taking action might result in navel gazing. If you manage the tautness of the tension between these two forces, then you’re doing well.

In coaching partnerships, people and I strive to strike a balance between creating valid insights and finding ways to carry out those insights in practical ways. People bring-in their goals and obstacles for us to examine and then we generate useful ideas, strategies, and tactics. When people genuinely commit to learning about themselves and to practicing productive behaviors, they tend to move along an upward trajectory and find more satisfaction and success in their occupations. They also know how to spur others for more success and, in turn, improve their missions.