FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is professional coaching?

Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires you to maximise personal and professional potential. I honour the client as the expert in his or her life and work and believe every client is creative, resourceful and whole. Standing on this foundation, my responsibility is to:

• Discover, clarify, and align with what you want to achieve

• Encourage your self-discovery

• Elicit your own solutions and strategies

• Hold you responsible and accountable

This process helps you dramatically improve your outlook on work and life, while unlocking your personal potential.

What are some typical reasons I might work with a coach?

An individual or team might choose to work with me for many reasons, including but not limited to the following:

• Something urgent, compelling or exciting is at stake (a challenge, a goal that stretches you or new opportunity)

• A desire to accelerate results

• An exploration of ideas or goals

• A need for clarity with choices to be made

• Success has started to become problematic

• Work and life are out of balance, creating unwanted consequences

• Core strengths need to be identified, along with how best to leverage them

• A gap exists in knowledge, skills, confidence, motivation or resources

I have worked with architects and designers who:

• Are aiming for promotion

• Returning from maternity or long leave

• Are new to leadership or want to be a better leader

• Are facing conflict at work

• Are stressed or anxious in their role

• Are working towards exams

• Run their own business and value a sounding board

• Want to raise their performance at work

• Need support through a grievance procedure or stressful periods

• Are transitioning to a new role or looking at what the “next step” looks like

• Wish to change company and manage the transition well

What is your style of coaching?

I am open, non-judgemental and strive to ask questions that will open your mind up to new opportunities and possibilities.  Like many of my clients, I value flexibility and creativity that may surface in a variety of ways; from role-play and mind-mapping to building with LEGO. I find that my clients appreciate an efficient and organised way to get from A to B and my process-oriented nature helps you stay on-track with focus. Along with many of you, I value achievement and thus understand the pressures undertaken by architects, designers and leaders and the support they need, in an empathising and confidential space. I am trustworthy, friendly, grounded and am passionate about helping you achieve your goals.

How clients describe my style:

• "Karen provided a coaching environment in which I was both supported and challenged."

• "Her professional ethical no-nonsense approach helped me connect with her professionally very quickly."

• "Karen is very professional, reliable and friendly."

• "Karen sees clearly into the heart of the matter at hand and elegantly emphasises what is important and why."

• Read more words from my Clients.

I draw from a variety of concepts, models and principles from coaching, psychological, neuroscience, behavioural or management backgrounds. These help enhance your self-awareness, foster shifts in perspectives and provide you with frameworks for looking at challenges, opportunities to inspire, re-energise and invoke progress.

How long do you usually work to coach an individual?

The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on your needs and preferences. For certain types of focused coaching, six sessions is typical. For long-term goals or for personal development, my clients find it beneficial to work with me over a longer period. I also do bi-annual or annual sessions, as clients may require. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the way you prefer to work, the frequency of coaching meetings and financial resources available to support coaching. We will work out what type is best for you!

Where do you work?

I can work at your office, in a pre-booked meeting room or near the office at an agreed meeting spot. These places need to be quiet enough so that our conversation has no distractions. An ideal environment is one that you feel comfortable in and don't feel watched, or overheard. Some individuals prefer not to work in glass fronted meeting rooms, or in the office at all, and so we have worked from locations such as hotel foyers, parks and quiet restaurants or cafes. 

For personal clients there is the option of working from Skype and I can offer evening appointments. 

Within the partnership, what does the coach do? What do I do?

The coach:

• Provides objective assessment and observations that foster you or your team’s self-awareness and awareness of others

• Listens closely to fully understand the you or your team's circumstances

• Acts as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making

• Champions opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with your personal strengths and aspirations

• Fosters shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives,

• Challenges blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios

• Maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession's code of ethics

Yourself:

• Creates the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals

• Uses assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others

• Envisions personal and/or organisational success

• Assumes full responsibility for personal decisions and actions

• Utilises the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives

• Takes courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations

• Engages big-picture thinking and problem-solving skills

• Takes the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach and engages in effective forward actions

How does Coaching differ from other service professions?

Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change. Sometimes it’s helpful to understand coaching by distinguishing it from other personal or organisational support professions.

• Consulting: Individuals or organisations retain consultants for their expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions. With coaching, the assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.

• Mentoring: A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience. The coaching process focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.

• Training: Training programs are based on objectives set out by the trainer or instructor. Though objectives are clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the individual or team being coached, with guidance provided by the coach. Training also assumes a linear learning path that coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum.

• Therapy: Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationships. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways. Coaching, on the other hand, supports personal and professional growth based on self-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in your work life.

How can the success of the coaching process be measured?

The majority of my clients measure success with self-scoring/self-validating assessments, changes in the individual's self-awareness and awareness of others, shifts in thinking that create more effective actions, and shifts in one's emotional state that inspire confidence.

Examples of external measures include achievement of coaching goals established at the outset of the coaching relationship, performance feedback (e.g. from colleagues, leader, peers, the team, clients), personal and/or business performance data (e.g. productivity, efficiency measures). 

ADAPTED from the ICF website. Original copy can be found here.

Contact Karen Fugle today to learn how SleepingGiant can help you.
E. karen@sleepinggiant-consulting.com   M. +44 (0) 77628 11703