What is coaching?

Coaching is one of these overused words which mean different things to different people. I’m referring to professional coaching which adheres to the ethical standards set by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).

Essentially, a coach is a thinking partner who works in partnership with the client to help them gain clarity on a goal, what needs to be done to achieve it and what may get in the way of doing so. The client empowers themselves through an increasing self awareness.

How does coaching differ from counselling, mentoring or consulting?

Carol Kauffman distinguishes coaching from counselling in a most poetic manner: “In therapy, you follow the trail of tears to find where people need healing. In coaching, you follow the trail of dreams”.

Counselling, mentoring and consulting share a key difference with coaching in that the professional hired is expected to actively solve the client’s problem. There is an assumption that these professionals have access to more resources than the client. This isn’t the case in coaching, where the fundamental assumption is that the client already has all the resources they need to attain their desired goal. The coach therefore tends not to offer advice or solutions.

What type of coach am I?

Edna Murdoch noted several years ago that '“who you are is how you coach”.
Quite simply, I am a holistic coach who focusses on the whole person (rather than a specific problem) through the filter of adaptability. I believe that the more adaptable a person or a business, the more equipped they will be to respond well to change, opportunities, challenges and adversity.

I have invested the time to unlearn the informal coaching knowledge I had acquired over the years, and retrain with Transcend International, Authentic Education, Positive Intelligence and AQai.
I am an accredited adaptability coach and have secured the Professional Coaching Certification (PCC), delivered by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) within my company’s first year of operation.
This means that I am able to support people on the entire spectrum of coaching, from performance focus all the way to deep transformational coaching, and that my skills have been assessed through rigorous quality standards.

How do I work?

I operate at the intersect of coaching, programme management, design thinking and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) to co-create a structured, highly personalised programme that meets your needs.

We may start with an Adaptability Quotient (AQ) assessment, should this be required.

We adopt a weekly or fortnightly cadence to ensure you work towards a tangible result, with clarity and at pace.

Sessions are conversation based and conducted on a 1:1 basis, either remotely or face to face in HK, in English, French and Frenglish.

I work best with people who are willing to:

• invest in their own development – financially, emotionally and timewise

• engage in open conversations and self reflection

• create and maintain momentum by adopting a weekly or fortnightly cadence, spanning 10 sessions of 60’ each

• be creative and bold in driving their action plan

• introduce sustainable changes in harmony with their bigger picture

This means that adaptability coaching isn’t for everyone, which is perfectly understandable. We are not always at a stage where we can take on the exciting, yet demanding reality of a transformation programme.