Coaching
What’s important is that you should only seek Coaching when you are prepared to take responsibility for your life. That is for every facet of your life – absolutely everything!! All Coaches, Counsellor or anybody else who is in the profession, is not there to take responsibility for you. You have had a part in creating where you are right now in your life and you need to own that part and resolve what no longer serves a purpose for you. Should you not want to do this, then we are not the people to work with you and please don’t contact us for assistance. We only wish to work with people who want to make important, long-lasting improvements to themselves and to the way they operate in the world.
We fully understand and appreciate that you may not know what or how to fix you and your life, however, we can help you with this as we teach you how to fix whatever is needed for yourself and we give you the relevant tools to do this for you in the future. This we are prepared to do, but we cannot do the work you are meant to do for your personal growth, for you. This is your job and you have to do this for yourself.
In view of this, we never take appointments for a client from anyone other than the client themselves. Why? By the client contacting us directly, they are indicating that they are willing to take personal responsibility for themselves and their lives.
Life Coaching is a lot more than Goal Seeking
The coaching process should go beyond the standard of goal setting to diminish roadblocks and accelerate results. This kind of coaching is not what we do. Every person who is in a position of authority, be it in a small, medium or large business and who is a Head of a department, etc. brings with them their own personality and it influences their unit directly. Many businesses fail, particularly small ones, not because of the business but because of the unresolved issues in the personality running it.
Coaching should be structured so that it expands your capacity to take wholesome balanced action. Life coaching is about empowering you so that you can help yourself get past the blocks, issues, excuses, etc. and break out of old patterns and by doing so you have the confidence and motivation to move forward. A fully empowered business owner or manager knows the benefit of empowering his staff. When he has empowered staff his job is much easier, everything flows and it becomes a fun place to be.
Let’s ask the important question - Is Life Coaching for me?
We work with people who want to make important, long-lasting improvements to the way they operate in the world. Find out if coaching is really for you and more importantly if this is the way you want to go.
Should you be considering some changes in your personal life, career or business, we guarantee that working with a Life Coach or Counsellor, will make a huge difference for you.
In coaching, we will always focus on what is most important to you and find the most natural and effortless way to make the breakthroughs you wish to achieve. If it is belief systems that you wish to change or whether it be issues or blockages that are holding you back in some way and that you want to release. We will quickly help you get clear on the best outcome for you, create a plan together, develop priorities and then begin to close the gap.
Along the way I would like to help you discover your unique gifts and talents, what you're most passionate about, what the strengths are that contribute most to your success and what holds you back the most. I will help you overcome and master the things that hold you back. We also teach you how to take control of your life and how to use your personal power to your advantage. One of the major issues with many is their inability to put boundaries in place. We have a foolproof method of teaching you how to do that and to be very effective at it. Once you have these things under your belt, you will never look back.
By stepping back and viewing each situation long enough to answer some of these questions, we can better align your strengths and passions to your relationships, career, vocation and/or business model that will help you get much better and more meaningful results. That is what good coaching is all about.
More on Life Coaching
Coaching is also about setting up a confidential, trusting and supportive relationship that you direct. Working together weekly with your Life Coach will help you move forward faster and you will go far further than you might imagine right now. It is also very convenient and affordable.
Making meaningful change in your life takes time, commitment and support. Whether you want a more rewarding relationship, better health, an exciting career, more business success, or more satisfaction with meaning and balance in your life, coaching can provide you with the structure and motivation to really accomplish some amazing things. It is really difficult to put into words the synergy and benefits that come from working with a Life Coach. The best way to find out what coaching can do for you is to actually try it!
Benefits of working with a Life Coach
We are about helping people create a great life. Through coaching, you are provided with support, knowledge, accountability and acknowledgement so you can fulfil your intentions to live a healthier life in all the facets that it means to you. You will be taken through and clear all obstacles that stand in the way of your success.
Teamwork between You and the Coach
Coaching Issues
Many clients turn to their coach for help on solving personal issues, disease issues, 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 coaches on the following issues:
• Personal: 70%
• Business: 70%
• Career: 65%
• Relationships/Family: 65%
• Physical/Wellness/Disease: 60%
• Spiritual: 51%
• Time management: 50%
• Goal-setting: 45%
• Financial: 37%
• Creativity: 33%
• Other: 5%
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:
• Self-awareness: 68%
• Self-confidence: 64%
• More internal peace: 63%
• Better relationship with partner, with family, with Boss and with Co-workers: 63%
• Leading to better management effectiveness: 63%
• Self-discovery: 62%
• Boundary setting on self and others: 62%
• Ability to express their feelings with confidence and effectiveness: 62%
• Anger management: 62%
• Setting better goals: 62%
• More balanced life: 60%
• Lower stress levels: 57%
• Better children family relationship(s): 55%
• Improvement in quality of life: 55%
• Empowered employees: 41%
• Enhanced communication skills: 39%
• Project completion: 36%
• Health or fitness improvement: 35%
• Increased energy: 32%
• More fun: 32%
• More income: 25%
• Stopped a bad habit: 25%
• Change in career: 24%
• More free time: 22%
• Increased profitability of business: 17%
• Other: 16%
• Started a new business: 16%
• Business turn around: 9%
• Change in residential location: 5%
Value of the Coaching Investment
A landslide of 98% of coaching clients said their investment in a coach was well worth the money spent. A mere 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 study 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 firm’s 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 may 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 to 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 built 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 / counselling, Mary got to understand the emotional source of her diabetes and the impact it was having on her life, not only physically but also in 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, she 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 and acknowledgement she always secretly wanted.
The bottom line of our work was that Mary was offered more responsibilities and she was soon offered a more senior position on condition that her health did not suffer. Mary’s diabetes had by now all but gone, she was enjoying herself more and her team was also being recognized more regularly. She even developed a serious relationship with someone and this was something she thought was totally impossible. Her circle of friends continued to grow too.
An exercise program and encouragement of engaging in outside of work activities was also achieved. Mary got involved in dancing and the theatre. She was able to significantly reduce her stress levels, which in turn impacted further on her diabetes and she could drop her medication down to very low levels. Mary 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 too!
How to Choose a Coach
Talk to several coaches and find one you have a rapport with. Does the coach listen well? Do you feel they clearly understand what you wish to achieve through the coaching? Choose wisely and don’t make it long term. You should be able to move on fairly quickly and not take years to do so.
Choose a life coach that has sufficient experience. How long have they been coaching? Do they do it on a full time or part time basis? And when you are looking for specific help on various career or business agendas, make sure your coach has the relevant business background in order to assist you sufficiently. If the Coach’s background does not suit you, then continue your search until you find one that does.
Choose a coach that fully understands and knows how to work with emotional intelligence. Our belief systems are the core issue to work with and these are make or break issues that propel you or hold you back. Working with someone where this is an academic exercise or does not fully understand it, would be doing you and the coach a disservice. Simply put, don’t do it! After all it is your life, your business career and you are entitled to get the best for you!
As a profession, coaching is quite young but it's growing quickly. As the demand for coaching grows so do the coaches. In fact the whole profession is undergoing huge change right now because more and more people are finding significant value from working with a coach.
However, in any fast growing profession there are challenges. One challenge professional coaching faces is the large number of people jumping on the bandwagon and calling themselves coaches without formal training or relevant experience.
So to ensure you are amongst the 98% of all coaching clients who are completely satisfied with their coaching.
Remember that the best-qualified people are often not at the top of the pile. There are thousands of highly qualified people who are in the lower ranks both in this country and around the world. The Industry is littered with people who are academically qualified but they cannot always apply it due to a lack of emotional intelligence within themselves. Qualifications help, but are not everything. You need to find a coach who is a good all-rounder. Find one who can help you best and propel you forward as you deserve nothing less!
Also have potential coaches spell out what services they deliver and what the total cost of those services will be. What sort of commitment does the coach ask for? Some coaches ask for a commitment over a period of time with a lump sum payment up front. In our practice we suggest that the prospective client commit to work with us for 3 months and there are no contracts or lump sum payments required. You pay per session.
The Coaching Process
Together we create a plan with specific steps to improve your emotional health in measurable ways. Through our coaching you are provided with a supportive, knowledgeable and accountable environment, that promotes your personal empowerment in order for you to fulfil all your intentions of living a better, healthier, flowing, fun filled life. We have many Client Success Stories.
Different Coaching Strokes for different Folks! Below are additional areas for coaching that you can read. Please click on them to take you to the relevant page.
Individual life coaching
Business and / or Entrepreneurial Coaching
Independent Professional & Individuals
Executive and Leadership
We are Not Meant To Do It All By Ourselves!
We as a human race have the advantage that there are many who have travelled the road before us. Why re-invent the wheel. We can use what has already been proven to work well. Find out how by using a life coach. Making meaningful changes in your live can be tough when you try to do it all by yourself. We have all had dreams, intentions and resolutions that never appear to amount to anything. Many a dream would have evolved and come to fruition if we had consistent, independent support. Our best intentions are often overtaken by the many stresses and strains of daily life circumstances. We all seem to be blind and most resistant to the changes that would most benefit us! We therefore suggest that you work with a coach for professional support; insight and accountability and one who can help you make lasting breakthroughs. That is why so many are working with coaches!
Also see the article regarding the subconscious mind and belief systems on our website.
Getting a life
Each of us has a life purpose! It is not just about work, work, and work, business, business, and business or push, push and push. We are supposed to have fun and be successful, enjoy life and work with the greater things that life has to offer. Yes, work is important but is supposed to be done as an expression of who we are and not to be a slave to it! Our work must include some form of creativity that will bring fun and passion into it. Our work will then be an expression of the deepest part of us and not for us to just be there for our paycheck. What also helps a lot is for us to develop an Attitude of Gratitude. It makes a world of difference on how we view and experience life!
Your Life Purpose – Everyone has one and you must find yours!
One of the common themes I see in people that come for coaching is a desire to explore what they are truly meant to do with their life. Most of us have a sense that there is a better, more meaningful way to live our lives, but somehow we can't seem to find it by ourselves. We carry on doing what is required of us, but yet this nagging sense that “there must be something more" returns.
This search for a greater sense of life's purpose, underlies many client questions, such as:
How can my career or work be more fulfilling?
How can I find more meaning in my life?
How can I find out what will make me feel that I am living the life I am meant to?
Helping someone discover their life purpose, or helping them choose the most meaningful path forward, is one of my favourite things I do as a coach. Of course the best thing for all of them is to realize is that they are all supposed to grow and develop while they are here. When they do this, they find that life is easier, more fun, money matters improve and life flows much better with greater abundance and better friendships. Couple that with this below and magic happens! When they get this, they fly and I don’t see them again.
To find the best path forward ... you must first look back
To find your purpose or the most meaningful course for your life, start by looking back at those special activities and/or experiences that gave you a heightened sense of being alive. The peak moments of your life, when you felt like you were making a difference, where you felt like a winner or had the experience that time either disappeared or flew by quickly, always point to your underlying talents/values. For example: some of my peak moments involve special moments when I helped someone, developed an idea into a business or travelled to some remote and beautiful places. These stories reveal that some of my "core" (most important) talents/values are: making a difference, creativity, adventure and being out and about in nature. Now these are just a few of my core talents/values, but when we have a conversation about the important moments of my life, these and my other values would come up time and time again. In other words, one or more of my core values were always present in the most important moments. You can now see why it is absolutely necessary for you to discover your own life purpose in order for you to enjoy your life and be the happiest that you can be! We can’t wait to experience you in this!
Living a more fulfilling life starts with knowing yourself and your talents
Here is a simple yet powerful truth. A more fulfilling life is simply a life where you more fully honour your talents. In other words, a life that is more in line with what is most important to you. For example, if I have no ability to create or make a difference, or be out in nature, (i.e. or cannot regularly enjoy my core talents) then I feel very much off my path. I have a deep sense that something is wrong or missing.
In contrast to the above, when my life is more fully aligned with my core talents, then I have more creativity, am able to make a difference and frequently enjoy moments out in nature. I also feel more fully aligned and alive and have a sense that I am right where I am meant to be and that my life is unfolding exactly as it should.
Your Core Talents point to your Purpose
When you know your Core Talents and use them to guide your decision making, you can expect your fulfilment to increase, dramatically. It is just that simple! However, you should know that the nature of fulfilment is that an abundance of one talent area does not make up for deficiency in other areas. In my example: if I had a career full of creativity a part of me would feel content. But if this was obtained at the expense of making a difference or routinely being out in nature, I would have an underlying sense that something was missing. Saying it another way: to experience very high levels of fulfilment you must ensure all your core talents are being honoured. It is all about knowing who you are, where you are going and how to best get there.
Now when you talk about someone's Life Purpose, you can get into a long and unproductive debate about what that truly means. Here we will simply define it as the state of knowing that you are fully expressed and feeling that you are living the life you are meant to live. It is knowing who you are and where you are going, that you know how to best get there. For most people it boils down to the way they make a difference in the world, feel connected to their higher power, others, and to live their lives fully every day.
How Coaching can help
Discovering your core talents and living a purposeful, meaningful life, is one of the greatest adventures you can embark on. Coaching can really help. In fact I am quite sure that we are all designed to need the interaction of others, to help us get where we need to go.
Coaching is the perfect place to work through these important matters and we would love to talk to you about it. We don't claim to have all the answers and that is not what coaching is about. However, when you are ready to make some positive changes in your life and you choose to work with one of us, we will be dedicated to help you get the results you wish for and find the answers that add the most value to your life.
Why Life Coaching
Individual life coaching
Business & Entrepreneurial Coaching
Executive & Leadership Coaching
Coaching for Professionals
Fees and Policies
By far the largest number of our clients is overseas. The wildly fluctuating currencies are playing havoc with the fee structure. These get adjusted from time to time. Please email me for the latest fee structure.
Our policy is fair, if you don’t like what we offer after the first session there will be no charge for that session. No questions asked!