[This User’s Guide to Coaching series explains everything you need to know to successfully engage and work with a coach—a life coach, a creativity coach, an executive coach, any sort of coach. It accompanies Dr. Maisel’s latest book, The Coach’s Way, described as “the finest resource available for anyone who wants to develop or enrich their coaching abilities.” Grab your copy now!]
Before your first session, you coach may ask for some basic information from you. He may ask questions like, “What are your hopes for the coaching?”, “Do you have certain goals in mind that you want to accomplish?”, “Can you tell me a little bit about your current circumstances?’, or similar questions. This “ask” may come in the form of a questionnaire, a website form, an email with a number of questions, or delivered in some other way.
Here is the email that I send out when a new creativity coaching client signs up:
Hello, [new client’s name]:
Great to be working with you! If you would, I’d love it if you’d answer the following three questions to get me oriented.
- Can you start by describing your situation a little? What sort of art do you do, what’s been your history with art-making and art-selling, what ups and downs have you experienced, and so on? Please write as little or as much as you like—but enough to give me a starting picture of “where you’re at and where you’ve been.”
- What are your biggest challenges right now, either internal or external, with respect to your creative life?
- What would you like to accomplish over the next few months with respect to your creative life? Do you maybe have some “minimum goals” and also some “Wow, that would be great!” goals?
I look forward to getting your responses. Take as long as you like but try not to labor too long over this <smile>. And, of course, add anything you think is relevant that these three questions don’t get at.
Best,
Eric
P.S. If you would, please let me know that you received this email. Thanks!
This email garners me a lot of valuable information and allows us to launch right into the coaching during our first session. Sometimes a client will reply with a lot of information and sometimes with only a little, but even just a little allows us to start the coaching in gear.
If your coach doesn’t ask for any information beforehand, you might want to supply some on your own initiative. Providing your coach with some basic information and a heads’-up as to what’s on your mind is a good idea and helps organize and ground the first session. You can simply send your new coach an email with a subject line like “What’s on my mind” and share a few thoughts about where you’re at, where you’d like to go, and what you suspect might get in the way of you getting there.
If you send your information too close to your first session, your coach may not have an adequate amount of time, or really any time, to give it the attention it deserves. Sometimes a new client will send me his or her reply to my three questions two minutes before we meet. Of course, all I can do is glance! But I would still prefer that glance to having no information in hand at all.
Information is a good thing. Let your coach know what’s on your mind even before you have your first session together, whether your coach asks for that information or whether you provide it on your own initiative.
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“The Coach’s Way is possibly the finest resource available for anyone who wants to develop or enrich their coaching abilities. This new book is designed to give coaches the confidence and structure in their practice that will generate real results for their clients. Any- one who makes a living in the coaching arena will benefit from Dr. Maisel’s tremendous experience and training as a therapist, coach, and human. I’m so glad to have this book as a guide for my own coaching work and will recommend it to many others in the helping professions.”— Jacob Nordby, author of The Creative Cure: How Finding and Freeing Your Inner Artist Can Heal Your Life
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Read Part One Here: The Coach’s Way: User’s Guide to Coaching
Read Part Two Here: Can You Tolerate the Truth?
Read Part Three Here: Can I Collaborate?
Read Part Four Here: Picking a Kind of Helper
Read Part Five Here: Picking Your Coach
Read Part Six Here: Don’t Worry If Your Worldviews Differ
Read Part Seven Here: Check Your Expectations
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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