One-day breakthrough coaching

Julia Rai

Background and situation

Julia Rai is a qualified hypnotherapist and psychotherapist who is also trained in counselling. She is an NLP master practitioner and a Time Line Therapy master practitioner. She completed a coaching course for NLP practitioners with The Performance Partnership and uses a variety of skills and a basic coaching methodology which looks at values and beliefs, goals and achievable outcomes and has a practical, organizational element. This case study centres upon a 38-year-old management consultant who had been made redundant. She was finding it hard to find another job, even though she was very well-qualified and experienced . The coachee had become so depressed that she was taking anti-depressants. She decided she needed some help initially to come to terms with her fear and anxiety. Julia suggested a one-day breakthrough session and when she and the coachee met she realized that the individual did not seem congruent with getting another job like the ones she had had before. Julia suggested that they begin the coaching process by looking at the coachee s life purpose to see what she really wanted to do, what she was best at etc.

The process

Julia used various activities to support her coachee in analysing her personal values and reaching a conclusion about her life purpose. The first activity was an internal drive inventory; this involved Julia providing the coachee with a list of words or phrases “ eg happiness, independence, being a leader “ and the coachee explaining which words gave her a positive feeling. The words chosen were then grouped into key themes or patterns. Following on from this, Julia and the coachee went through some key stages in her life and looked at a key accomplishment at each age “ one which had given the coachee the most joy. By exploring what was happening during these accomplishments they were able to draw out what the coachee really loved doing. An evaluation of the whole exercise allowed trends and themes to be identified.

Julia and the coachee then used a values exercise to find out which values were of most importance to the coachee. Having completed these exercises they worked together to discover some of the underlying issues for the coachee using a psychological approach involving NLP, Time Line Therapy and visualization “ this work identified limiting beliefs and released some negative emotions.

Positive aspects of this approach

Julia comments that the approach uncovered some underlying personal issues for the coachee that were impacting upon her professional life. This is something that Julia finds happens regularly in this type of coaching. Coach and coachee were then able to work on these issues together, ie work on some of the causes rather than simply addressing symptoms.

Challenges faced

In this type of work, Julia finds that some coachees feel that their problems originate outside themselves and one of her roles is to encourage coachees to take responsibility for making changes within their lives. This process of supporting the individual to take this responsibility can be time consuming and challenging.

Learning

Julia comments that key skills and qualities for a coach in this situation are creativity and flexibility. Additionally she found that she needed to maintain empathy with the individual, even when she had some rather difficult messages to get across. Julia valued her own intuitions, which helped her to adapt her approach throughout this one-day session.

Top tips

Get as much training and read as much as you can.
Pay particular attention to goal setting.
Choose a methodology that works for you before you work with others as you must practise what you preach.
Demonstrate through your image and your way of working that you are successful “ this will help others to believe that you will be able to support them in becoming more successful.
Demonstrate your credibility within your particular area of specialism.

Advice for the coachee

Take responsibility for your own success. A coach is someone who should challenge, support and encourage you but he or she can t make the changes for you.
Be clear about what you want from your coach. Initially, you should have a goal in mind or a problem you want to resolve. As you work with your coach, other things may emerge that need to be addressed but initially, a clear outcome will help you both to get a good result.
Do your homework! If your coach gives you tasking between sessions, make sure you do it. You are wasting your money if you don t do what you re told to do.
Use your coach as a support. When you get downhearted or something knocks you back, call your coach and talk it through. Your coach is there to support you and keep you focused.
Look out for sabotage by those who know you. When you begin to work on yourself, you sometimes find that people who know you start to see you change. They often have a natural tendency to want to pull you back to where you were. This makes them feel comfortable but may be detrimental to your progress. If you find some people begin to put you down or tell you you ve changed for the worse , talk to your coach about how to deal with them.
Be prepared for unexpected outcomes from coaching. You may find all kinds of areas of your life are affected by being coached, some you weren t even working on. Julia has had people find that the problem they have with work colleagues is also a problem they have with their children. Some people find the courage to cut ties with people who have not been good for them, sometimes husbands or wives.

Final words

Coaching changes lives. If you re not living the life you want to, coaching can help you get what you want for yourself. But be careful what you wish for! This is a powerful process and you should only begin it if you truly want to change your life.

Being a coach is a huge responsibility and you need to have integrity to be a good coach. You should also be able to walk away from someone you feel isn t ready for the changes that coaching can create. But it s great fun and highly rewarding .

Authors comments

Julia works in the very specialized field of personal development coaching, but her comments and approach contain learning for all types of coach. Her comments around flexibility, empathy and creativity are important for us all, as are her comments about the power of coaching as a development method. Also significant is the fact that Julia mentions that some people around your coachee may try to sabotage the changes that the coachee is trying to make and also that coaching in one area of life may impact upon others.