Got a question?

Click on the questions below to jump to the relevant answer. If you can’t find what you're looking for, please do not hesitate to get in touch. In particular, if you are looking to find out more about coaching for colleagues or members of your organisation or team, you may find it helpful for us to speak.

• Is coaching for me?

• Why should I pay for a coach when I can speak with friends and family?

• How is coaching different from mentoring, consulting and counselling?

• How can coaching help?

• How can coaching benefit my business or my team?

• Why is an external coach a better investment for my organisation or team than coaching my colleagues myself?

• How many coaching sessions will I need?

• What will I need to do in advance/along the way?

• What should I expect from my coach?

• Is coaching confidential?

• How much does coaching cost?

• Can I find out more before committing?
  
  
  

Coaching is for people who want to move forward and/or make a change in their lives. It is founded on the fundamental principles that:

• it is the client who has the “answers” and who is the expert in his or her own life and situation; and

• the role of the coach is to draw those answers out through open questioning and appropriate challenging designed to keep the client motivated and committed to moving forward.

Coaching is not about making suggestions or providing advice. It is not about fixing something that has gone wrong. It is all about looking to the future.

A coach is not a mentor, consultant or counsellor. In coaching, the agenda belongs to the client and the client takes responsibility for following through on any actions identified, albeit with appropriate support from the coach along the way.

If you wish to move forward and/or make a change, and are therefore:

• prepared to be challenged;

• willing to remain open-minded; and

• determined to succeed, then coaching may well be for you.

Do please feel free to get in contact to discuss how I may be able to help.

Friends and family members can be an invaluable source of support and advice. However, it can be difficult to speak entirely freely with them for fear either of being judged or of the repercussions. Friends and family members will almost always, despite their best intentions and efforts, bring with them their own underlying agendas and perceptions – and advice, welcome or otherwise, which may or may not be right for you.

Speaking with a coach carries no such baggage. It provides you with an immensely liberating opportunity to discuss issues freely and entirely without fear of judgement or repercussion. It frees you up, therefore, to explore options and say things out loud that you would never dream of saying to those around you for fear of how they may react – for fear, for example, of being laughed at, branded unrealistic or thought less of. Some of the very best ideas come out of being able to speak without inhibition.

Having been lucky enough to have been coached on a number of occasions now, I can testify to just how positive and energising an experience it can be. When else do you get time to focus properly and exclusively on yourself, your development and your future, with the undivided attention of a neutral, yet challenging, sounding board, who only has your best interests at heart?

Mentoring is for people who are seeking direction or advice from someone with experience and knowledge in the same area.

Consulting is for people who are looking for problems to be diagnosed and solutions recommended (and like mentoring, therefore, requires experience and knowledge of the client’s field).

Counselling is for people who are looking for help in coping with significant levels of distress that they are experiencing and which is impacting on their everyday life.

All of the above require the professionals involved to be able to:

• build rapport with clients to enable clients to feel as if they may speak freely;

• listen effectively and pick up on the true meaning of what is being said – including what may not be being said; and

• ask appropriate questions in order to bring about greater understanding and awareness.

In these respects, coaching is no different and coaches must be able to do the same. However, coaching can be differentiated from mentoring, consulting and counselling because of its focus on:

• the future;

• goal setting;

• taking action; and

• empowering clients to determine their own way forward.

Coaching is for those who have a desire to move forward and/or make a change in their lives but is founded on the fundamental principles that:

• it is the client who has the “answers” and who is the expert in his or her own life and situation; and

• the role of the coach is to draw those answers out through open questioning and appropriate challenging designed to raise the client’s awareness and keep the client motivated and committed to moving forward.

“Coaching assists a client to bridge the gap between where they are now, to where they would like to be far more effectively than if they worked alone.” - The Coaching Academy

In other words, coaching can help you to identify where you would like to go (your goal or objective) and then make the journey there more structured and manageable and, as a result, improve your chances of success.

If you would like to achieve something, but are perhaps struggling to do so (for example, because you don’t know where to start or because there are various things in the way) and would like some support, coaching may well be for you. Do please get in touch if you would like to discuss how I may be able to help you.

Whether it is for you personally or for others, coaching is a positive experience designed to get the most out of people. It can therefore have a significant and very real impact upon engagement, productivity and, ultimately, profitability levels.

Specifically, coaching can help with:

• Leadership skills, including:

  • delegation;

  • work allocation; and

  • team management;

• Time management and prioritisation;

• Self-awareness, managing anxiety and resilience;

• Inter-personal skills and managing relationships;

• Boundary and workload management;

• Role transitioning and stepping up into leadership;

• Career progression and options;

• Promotion processes;

• Career crossroads and dilemmas; and

• Confidence and self-esteem issues

If you think that you and/or members of your business or team may benefit from coaching, do please get in touch.

A coaching style of leadership can be extremely beneficial. However, if there is to be formal coaching and the coaching is to be its most effective, it is important that those who are being coached feel able to speak freely during sessions, without any fear of being judged, without repercussion and without feeling that the coach may have an agenda of his or her own or, worse still, not respect confidentiality.

Even if you genuinely feel your colleagues will be able to speak to you without inhibition, it does not necessarily follow that that is, in fact, the case. They may perceive things differently and feel rather uncomfortable at the prospect of being coached by you, particularly if you are their boss and have influence over the direction that their career will take. If that is so, their ability to think and explore different scenarios and options freely during coaching sessions is likely to be inhibited which, in turn, will limit the effectiveness of the coaching and the progress that can be made. This may do more harm than good, despite your best intentions.

As an external coach, I come with no such baggage and no hidden agenda. I am entirely impartial and am merely driven by the desire to help those who I am coaching, whatever your objectives may be.

Do please get in touch if you would like to discuss this further.

The simple, if rather unhelpful, answer is “It depends.”. Some objectives take longer to achieve than others.

Making a real change or achieving an ambitious goal can be challenging and take time, and it is generally best, therefore, to commit to a specific number of sessions at the outset (often 3 to 6, depending on the nature of the coaching that you are seeking), with scope to add more sessions if you would like to in due course. The coaching process and relationship can often take a good 2 or 3 sessions to “bed in” and for real progress to be possible.

The sessions are then spread out over a number of weeks or months in order to allow you sufficient time to take any actions that you have identified and make progress between sessions.

With most things in life, preparation is crucial to success. Coaching is no different.

You are encouraged, therefore, prior to each session, to think about what you would like to achieve out of the session and, if relevant, about what you have achieved since the last session. I may ask you to provide details and other information prior to the session in order to make the best use of the time that you and I have together.

I would also encourage you to make sure that you attend each session in the right frame of mind and with both a willingness to be open-minded and an ability to engage fully in the session without distraction. Ultimately, the success of a session (and, going forward, of you taking the steps identified during the session) is always going to be dependent upon your commitment to the process.

You will likely find it helpful to have a pen and paper to hand to make notes during sessions and, crucially, to make a record of the steps that you will take following them. Having a written record may help to elevate the steps beyond being merely aspirational and to cement your resolve to take them.

Coaching is a partnership and the coach/client relationship is an equal one based on openness, trust and confidence. Should you wish to be coached by me, you can expect me to:

• be a positive influence;

• listen to you (both to what you say and to what you don’t say) and engage with you without judging you;

• ask you questions that will make you think - questions that may probe and challenge your perceptions of both yourself and your situation, and that may require you to “think outside the box”;

• manage the coaching process whilst respecting the fact that the agenda is yours;

• respect your privacy and maintain confidentiality (save in exceptional circumstances) - please see my Client Privacy Policy;

• act in accordance with The Coaching Academy’s Code of Conduct; and

• ultimately, help you during each coaching session to come up with a clear, structured plan of action that you are motivated and able to implement, and that will move you closer to achieving your goal.

Coaches cannot guarantee results. I can assure you, however, of my good intentions and my commitment to being open, transparent and honest with you. If you are able to enter into the process with the same intentions and commitment, then the foundations are there for a really productive, positive coaching relationship, and I will very much look forward to working with you.

Clients must feel able to speak freely during sessions if coaching is to be at its most effective. I regard confidentiality, therefore, as crucial to the coaching process, and confidence will only generally be breached without your agreement in extreme circumstances (such as where there is an intention either to cause harm to oneself or to another, or to commit another criminal offence). Please also see my Client Privacy Policy.

No two people are the same, and neither are their coaching needs. My fees are dependant, therefore, upon the nature of the coaching and the number of sessions that you would like, and also on whether you are a corporate or a private client.

Making a real change or achieving an ambitious goal can be challenging and take time. It is important to commit, therefore, to a number of sessions at the outset; although you are generally free to cancel our Coaching Agreement at any time if you wish, subject to any relevant notice requirements (in the case of a private client, generally, the provision in writing of one session’s notice).

It is important to me that I am as open and transparent with you at the outset as possible about how I work. For more details at this stage, therefore, please feel free to get in touch.

Do please let me know if you think that you may like to work with me, and we can arrange a time to discuss your specific needs and how I may be able to help you. We can then agree the best way forward.

Of course. You can drop me a line at ed@edheatoncoaching.com or by giving me a call on +44(0)7879 645603.