Coaching
Why coaching?
Feeling stuck in your career? Going in circles without making progress? Struggling to move your projects forward or achieve your goals despite your best efforts? Whether you're feeling tired, bored, stressed, or simply directionless, it might be time to consider working with a coach.
Your frustration is completely understandable. You’ve set goals and pursued them with the best strategies you know, yet the results just aren’t materializing—whether it’s not shedding those extra pounds, facing inexplicable project delays, or feeling scattered in your efforts. Just as you would hire a coach or trainer for sports like gym workouts, golf, or swimming, or for developing technical skills like chess, programming, or accounting, getting a coach for your personal and professional aspirations is not just a sensible choice; it’s becoming essential. A coach can provide the guidance, clarity, and support you need to break through obstacles and achieve the success you’re aiming for.
As Atul Gawande put it:
“How do professionals get better at what they do? How do they get great?”
Atul Gawande, TED, 2017
https://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_want_to_get_great_at_something_get_a_coach?language=en.
What do I get by engaging a coach?
Human beings shape their own reality by assigning different values, meanings, and purposes to things. This is why people often have varying perspectives on the same subject. However, sometimes our interpretations and perceptions can be dysfunctional, contradictory, or counterproductive to our broader life goals. For example, you might desire a promotion but dread the additional time commitment it requires. This can lead to feeling stuck, with repetitive thoughts and actions that hinder progress, or taking ineffective or half-hearted steps forward.
This situation can manifest in various aspects of life—whether in your career (should you consider a new role?), academic pursuits (how to achieve better grades or develop more effective learning strategies), or personal life (marriage, childcare, health goals). Engaging with a professionally trained executive coach can help you identify what’s truly not working in your situation, gain deeper insights into your motivations and internal conflicts, and develop healthier, more functional approaches to your challenges. Through coaching interventions, you can build sustainable action plans that drive you toward achieving your desired results with clarity and vigor.
What is the role of a coach?
Different coaches have different styles and personalities, but overall, they play a few key roles in helping individuals develop breakthrough in their lives:
Mirror – We each have our own personalities, preference, and value systems. These however also create unique blind spots for us. A well-trained coach is like a mirror that can help you develop better awareness into your habits, thinking and actions by reflecting in a non-judgmental and objective manner.
Key – Everyone has potential and talent, but not everyone knows how to unlock and maximise them. A coach can help you gain better insights and help you tap into your true strength by unlocking them with ease. Much like a sports coach, an executive coach works with you actively in your ‘game’ in giving you feedback, new vantage points and helping you practice in a more dynamic manner.
Compass – Modern living come with a glorious selection of choices and options to fulfil an immensely wide ranging life styles and aspirations. Increasingly society is shifting from multiple choice to matrix of choices, where we are not only choosing from a few options, each choice is basically a combination of choices (consider your phone data plan, gym memberships or insurance coverage). Our choices also impact each other in far reaching and compounding ways (Taking on a new job could mean moving to a whole different country and new potential partners) Such overwhelming and bewildering options can be difficult for individuals to remain objective and steadfast (Should I take a new risk or remain in the current comfort zone that is not very rewarding?) While a coach would not tell you what you should do or chose, a professional coach can help you develop a better sense of direction and synchronicity by acting as a compass that guides you on to your overarching goal or ultimate destination.
Accelerator – Once you’ve establish a goal and direction, reaching it should be as simple as putting one foot in front of the other, right? Not always the case. Each of us are dodged by different internal challenges: self-doubt, procrastination, bad habits etc. Your coach can help you gain precious clarity on your true purpose and expectations, leveraging your most effective strategies and eliminate unhelpful ones, and anchoring you onto a streamlined direction thus accelerating your progression.