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More
examples of breakthrough coaching . . .
Beth Gives
Herself Permission to Reconsider Old Loves
Janice Tries on a
Thought Experiment to Identify What Keeps Her From
Leaving the Firm
Bill Can't Get
Motivated to Meet His Goal -- Studying for his
Ph.D.
Rita Gets
Help Very Different From What She Expected
Coaching with
Intuition
Afterword - Applause for Clients
Rita Gets Help Very
Different From What She Expected
Rita had an urgent problem. She, in her sixties,
and her husband, a few decades older, had just shelled
out $6000 for an ecommerce package. Having
reviewed our extensive backgrounds as Internet
entrepreneurs, she wanted coaching on starting an
Internet business with this package she'd bought. She
was extremely determined, very much wanted the promised
financial independence, and was very coachable.
She was ready to sign a six-month coaching
contract. But we asked to see the details of the
package she'd bought. Among other things, it allowed her
to set up ecommerce tools on six websites.
Six? What are you going to do with six
websites? She admitted that she was
impulsive. She didn't know. It had sounded
good during the all-day seminar . . .
We looked into the package
some more. It seemed to us that it offered more
features than she really needed to run a business for
herself, and those features that she did need, she could
get much more cheaply (one "feature," given a gussied-up
name by the company, was actually a free tool already
offered by another company). Suspecting a scam on
this elderly couple, who were living on social security,
we suggested she start her Internet business coaching by
getting out of this bad deal. This is where our
breakthrough coaching began.
We helped her craft a
strong termination letter to the company that had sold
her the package (and one to her daughter, a lawyer).
As her daughter took over, we provided her with a
business plan template, against which to vet the several
ideas she had swirling about. She hadn't yet gone
through the exercise of determining whether there was a
market for (buyers for) the things she wanted to sell,
and how she'd draw them to her site, among other things.
Absolutely fundamental things to know before you embark
on investing time or money in a new business. And
then we began to work with her on her desire to create a
business online, from home, where she could care for her
husband.
Afterword -- Applause for
Clients
Above, in
a nutshell, are examples, neither completely typical
nor wholly unusual, of the power of
coaching. And notice
that the power is not due solely to the coach.
Look at the ferocity of Beth, finding time between the
two jobs she's working, at a clip of 80 hours per week,
to explore her thoughts and feelings about who she is
and where she's going.
Or revisit Janice, who had the acute emotional intelligence to pause and probe a
feeling she had at the end of a hypothetical.
By seeking to get out of her contract, Rita was willing to implicitly concede
she'd made a big mistake -- and that alone allowed her to start to undo it.
A coach wants to stand up and applaud this sort of bravery. And this is
what makes coaching so richly fulfilling, watching human beings at their finest,
striving to grow and deepen themselves. It's the most beautiful thing we
know.
Go to Coaching with
Intuition.
Look into life coaching.
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career coaches?
Get your own personal
coach.
Return to the first of the recent breakthrough
coaching conversations, Beth Gives
Herself Permission to Reconsider Old Loves
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