Wondering if it is the right time for you for coaching?

Hi. As part of my second year of coach training at Cambridge I am offering a six-hour coaching program to five beneficiaries at no cost. Donations to your chosen social cause are welcome in return, as a token of appreciation. Are you ready to start coaching? Do you know someone else looking for a coach? Read along for more details.

Are you coaching-ready?

You are ready if:

• You have a personal, professional, or business goal and feel like you could achieve it more efficiently.
• You have real issues/challenges/opportunities for us to work with. This is not about making me a favor when there may not be a real focus.
• You start the coaching process on the basis that you are creative and capable of changing and developing in the directions required for solving your challenges and reaching your objectives, and you wish to learn new ways of observing, interpreting, communicating, thinking, and doing things. Also, you understand that you are the person who knows best the specific details of your life and work, thus, being the most competent person to discover the solutions and take the decisions that suit you best. (1)

You’re?not?ready if:

• You expect to or believe that you’ll easily receive ideas and recommendations. Coaching is not training nor consulting. Instead, you’re expected to engage mentally, emotionally, and practically in the coaching process. (2)
• You’re looking to find excuses and blame, vent, or build unfounded dreams. In coaching we focus on viable solutions and on creating and executing an action plan (with reflective analysis) in more efficient ways than before. (3)
• You focus on the past and need interpretations of what happened back then to come to terms with it. In coaching we focus on the present and future and use the past as a topic of interest and discussion only if it offers information for understanding the obstacles and the resources for current and future actions. You focus on conserving the current ways of perception, thinking, and acting. You expect your convictions, knowledge, opinions, habits, conveniences to be protected. In coaching they might be questioned (feel “threatened”) because the priority is on your inner development and change. Thus, coaching is different than a psychotherapy or counselling service, which focuses on the past and prioritises protection, so there might be a conflict in using both at the same time. (4)

I am ready!

I am a novice coach with only 30 hours of practice under my belt but here's why you can trust me:

• Mentorship – I am inspired, coached and mentored by Elisabeta Stanciulescu, a former sociologist and university professor turned coach with whom I’ve been working closely since 2018 through her yearly coaching programs?and with whom I am on a long-term, committed journey of collaborating towards mastery in coaching.
• Coaching studies – I completed a year of undergraduate studies for the Certificate in Coaching at the University of Cambridge in 2022 and I am taking forward evidence-based coaching practice with one more year of studies for the Diploma in Coaching at the same institution. This year I will be focusing on practicing the EI COACH model as presented by Stephen Neale, Lisa Spencer-Arnell, and Liz Wilson in the book “Emotional intelligence coaching: Improving performance for leaders, coaches and the individual”, and I will be adding elements from adult-learning theories and from different psychological approaches such as cognitive-behavioral, person-centered, Gestalt, positive-psychology, and neurobehavioral modelling.
• Reflective practice –After each session I spend time to reflect on the session and my coaching so that I draw learnings from it, which I then apply in future sessions, aiming to achieve the?purpose of coaching. I take coaching supervision from the Association of Coaching, my coach-mentor, and my peers of fellow students, and I adhere by the?Global Code of Ethics.

You can be sure that everything discussed in the sessions will be completely confidential and we will sign a contract which captures much of what is mentioned above and more. To give credits where credits are due, points (1), (2), (3), (4) are ideas adapted from my coach-mentor's contract with her approval. In fact, my contract is developed based on hers and you can find Elisabeta's contracts in Romanian here, if interested.

Do you consider that coaching might be beneficial at this point in your life? Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn or at [email protected] and don't hesitate to share this offer with someone else you think might find it useful.

Later edit: Thanks to everyone sharing and reacting to this post! It helped to connect with people outside my LinkedIn connections as well. I have found my coaching allies for this new program. Many thanks again!