Six sessions to stop going round the same loop.
For mid-career people who are competent, reasonably successful and quietly certain something needs to change. We work out what, and then what you are actually going to do about it.
Coaching is not therapy, and I will tell you when you need the other one.
Coaching works on what you want to do next and what is stopping you acting. It is forward-looking, practical, and time-limited on purpose. It is not treatment for anxiety, depression or trauma — those need a therapist, and if that is what shows up in our conversations I will say so and help you find one rather than quietly coaching around it.
Three situations, over and over
Different details, remarkably similar shape.
The competent plateau
Good at the job, promoted appropriately, and increasingly unsure why any of it matters. The most common conversation I have.
Newly leading
Promoted into managing people and finding that everything which made you good at the job no longer applies.
Deciding something big
Leaving, retraining, going out on your own, or finally admitting you do not want to. Deadline-driven and usually urgent.
Six things we might actually do
Coaching is often described vaguely. This is what the hours contain.
Get specific
Name the actual problem.
Widen the options
There are never two.
Test it cheaply
Before you leap.
Rehearse the hard bit
Out loud, badly, first.
Change the conditions
Not just the mindset.
Check what moved
Honestly.
Shared with permission, after the work finished
I expected to be told to follow my passion. Instead I was asked, repeatedly, what I would actually do on Monday. I did it, and eight months later I run a team I like.
In the second session she said this sounded like something a therapist would be better placed to help with, and gave me two names. That honesty was worth more than the coaching would have been.
Six sessions and then it ended, as agreed. No upsell, no ongoing retainer, no suggestion I needed more. I have recommended her four times since.