Clients who work with an experienced, professional Life or Business Coach report many benefits.   A study conducted by the International Coach Federation reported the following on why people work with coaches and what some of the benefits were:

Role of Coach

By far, most coaching clients pay their coach to be a sounding board - to really listen to them and give honest feedback. Clients, who were offered the criteria listed below as to their usefulness of working with a coach. The waiting average revealed the following:

Team work between the You and the Coach

Coaching Issues

Most clients turn to their coach for help on time management as well as career guidance and business advice. To a lesser but still significant extent, they seek coaching on relationships, family, wellness and spirituality. Clients, who could select as many choices as were applicable, said they work with their coach on the following issues:

So one can see the scope of a good coach.

Results of Working with a Coach

The outcomes that clients most often attribute to their coaching are a higher level of self-awareness and self-confidence, a more balanced life, smarter manifestation, better goal-setting and lower stress levels. Clients reported experiencing the following outcomes as a result of working with a coach:

Value of the Coaching Investment

- A landslide of 98% of coaching clients said their investment in a coach was well worth the money.
- 2.% said their investment in a coach had not been valuable.

 Case Study of Coaching a certain Executive
(moving from middle to Senior) in a Company
The following Case study was reported for a medium sized company employing between 50 and 100 employees.
In the story below one can see that an illness and ambition can be helped at the same time. This is often the case. In this story it involved Diabetes, but in many other cases it could involve anyone of a huge range of illnesses such as Depression, Migraines, Cancer, Ulcers etc.

Mary is a successful senior executive programmer for a well known auditing firm. She had enjoyed steady advancement through the firms ranks, based largely on her technical ability. She desperately wanted a senior management position. She had Diabetes and it was often told to her that the senior management position and the stress would be too much for her and that they did not want to consider her for a senior position. They also said that her co-workers found her distant and difficult to get along with, and so exposing her to a senior management position and managing people would be very difficult for her. It might even make her illness worse. She was desperate, yet she realized that she was always in conflict with people and that her technical abilities were not going to carry her all the way. She felt trapped and angry at life. She knew that she had to develop leadership and soft skills but had no idea where to start.

Mary came from the technical side of the business.  With a sharp intellect and high self-confidence, she could quickly understand a situation, implement a solution and achieve the objective.  However, as she moved up the management ladder, her confrontations becoming more pronounced, she found these skills weren't enough to have the impact she wanted.  

More and more, Mary found that she needed to build the skills associated with connecting with and getting extraordinary results out of people. A task that seemed impossible to her. The disease was also starting to have more impact on her life and found that she was unable to keep up the many hours needed at times. Mary wanted to understand and master the nuances of leadership. She did not even think that diabetes could be healed or drastically pulled back.  

Early in our coaching Mary came to see that her introverted "leave me alone and I will come up with a brilliant solution" approach was doing little to empower her team and build a culture where she could leverage her skills. She also found that she could not trust easily and that relationships had always been disappointing and so she had delved solely into her work.

Through our coaching and counselling , Mary got to understand the emotional source of her diabetes and the impact it was having on her life, not only physically but her social and professional life. We initially worked with the focus of addressing and resolving the Diabetes problems. Once we had done that her sugar levels fell drastically and then we could focus on the interpersonal skills (coaching, empathy, trust building, etc.) to build far more productive and enjoyable relationships with the key members of her team, her family and her friends (in fact she even made new friends).  Over a five month period, with her diabetes almost totally under control and starting to become more normal, together with her knowledge and practice of the competencies of leadership, grew to a stage where, she was spending most of her time empowering and raising the development of her team. She also became more confident socially and was now achieving the recognition, acknowledgement she always secretly wanted.

The bottom line of our work was that Mary was offered more responsibilities and was soon offered a more senior position on condition that her health did not suffer. Mary’s diabetes had by now all but gone. Mary was enjoying herself far more, and her team was being recognized more regularly. She even developed a serious relationship – something she thought was totally impossible. Her circle of friends grew as well.

An exercise program and encouragement of engaging in outside of work activities was done. Mary got involved in dancing and the theatre. Mary was able to significantly reduce her stress level, this impacted further on her diabetes and she had to drop her medication down to very low levels. And she also developed a habit of scheduling in "perspective" or quiet time to keep the big picture in focus. She found these two additions to her weekly routine to be very rewarding.
About our coaching work, Mary said.
"I am so glad that I was referred to you. Overcoming my diabetes and perspective on the world has changed my life. I found that our times together were sooo special, it was like visiting a special friend. Thank you for your wisdom and insight and Michael and I are both very happy. It was a life changing event.  Thank you again."
If this can happen for Mary, it can happen for you.

If you are seriously considering working with a coach, please feel free to call me, I would love to talk with you, give you a free coaching demonstration, and then you can decide if there is value for you in coaching.

You can reach me at peter@iempowerself.com or call
27 11 478 2633 or on cell 27 82 855 4793 

My web site contains lots of information that may be of assistance to you, feel free to browse around. You will find it here http://www.iempowerself.com/index.html

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All the best

Peter