The VantageShift Way
People often ask me about the commitment required for coaching. In coaching, commitment is a two-way street. There's the commitment that you make to your coaching process and the commitment your coach makes to you to partner with you for success.
The Client's Commitment
First, let's look at the commitment that the client makes to coaching. A coach expects their clients to show up for coaching sessions; share openly; be honest about your ideas, thoughts, opinions, and feelings; and to make their own decisions about changes to their thinking and behavior and about any actions they want to take.
Showing up means both being there physically or virtually and being present. Coaching sessions are your time to concentrate on yourself. Put aside your other activities, turn off your phone, focus on the conversation.
Share openly with your coach in response to questions about your values, beliefs, and motivations. It's important for your coach to understand what makes you tick and why. There's no judgement, just understanding. And understanding will lead to breakthrough conversations.
Honesty regarding your ideas, thoughts, opinions, and feelings is another key commitment in coaching. Clients who are frank about what they're thinking and feeling find their coaching sessions lead to greater understanding of themselves, their environments, and others with whom they interact. It's also important to be honest with yourself about what, if any, actions you want to and are able to take between sessions.
Decision-making is entirely with the client in coaching. If you decide to make any modifications to your thinking or behavior, that decision is a commitment to yourself. Any actions you decide to take are also a commitment to yourself. Your coach can be an accountability partner, but they will not assign you tasks or make decisions for you.
The Coach's Commitment
As a client, you can expect your coach to commit to showing up for sessions with you, to listen deeply and thoughtfully to what you share, to ask compelling questions that help you to gain insights into your thoughts and ideas, and to share feedback when they find a pattern or contradiction emerging.
Showing up as a coach also means both being there physically or virtually and being present. Your coach will be in deep listening mode and that means they will put aside their other activities, turn off their phone, focus on you.
Your coach commits to listening to you differently than most of us listen during normal talks. Coaches listen to the words, but they also listen to tone, cadence, and volume. They listen for the emotions behind those words and think about the deeper meaning. They observe body language and how it changes with what the client is sharing. They stay in the moment with their client.
The deep listening by your coach helps them to ask just the right questions at the right time for you. Coaching is instrumental in helping you to gain new perspectives and increase your self-awareness. The coach's questions are designed to help you learn about yourself and how you relate to others and your environment. Deep listening by your coach leads to the questions that encourage you to think and reflect.
While a coach spends most of the coaching conversation listening, the coach also commits to providing feedback. Coaching feedback isn't advice, and it isn't shared with the expectation that you must act on it. It's shared as an offering, and you can choose to act on it or not. Most clients find, though, that feedback offered when a coach notices a pattern or contradiction is delicious food for thought. The feedback can help you to assess your progress towards your goals and think about taking action.
The Contract
Coaches usually require clients to sign a contract. The contract is mainly used to elucidate the exact terms of the engagement such as frequency of sessions, whether the coach will be available between sessions, the term of engagement, and fees. It is also the place in which coaches often clarify precisely what coaching is and isn't and contains provisions for confidentiality and other legal matters.
VantageShift Flexibility
With VantageShift, you have choices with respect to how often you meet with your coach, whether you want the sessions to be at a preset cadence or more flexibly scheduled, whether you want your coach to be available for quick calls between sessions or offline for emails and texts and the length of your engagement. Your VantageShift coaching contract also provides a quick and easy way for you to terminate the engagement if you choose to prior to the end of the term and allows you to reschedule a session to another open time on your coach's calendar.
At VantageShift, the focus is on your goals and your learning style. Your VantageShift coach commits to co-creating the optimal coaching process for you.
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