This is written mostly for the four women who are part of my community coaching program. It will mostly apply to anyone doing coaching with me, and might be helpful to review before a coaching session with others as well!
Pre-work
Before each session take some time to think about a problem or area of your life that you’d like to discuss. The topic should be job related, but can leak into your personal life as well. It shouldn’t be something fact based like “how to fix this bug” but maybe “I have trouble speaking up in meetings” or “my boss doesn’t give me challenging work.” Part of the coaching process includes taking time to understand and clarify the topic so it doesn’t need to be super well defined yet! Personally, I usually think about what’s been my biggest difficulty in the past 2-4 weeks and talk through that.
Other examples:
- difficulty communicating with a particular team member
- struggling with work life balance
- thinking about leaving your company
- having trouble jumping into conversations on Zoom
Session
You have an hour booked with me to learn, grow, and plan for your future. I’ll keep an eye on the time to make sure we don’t go over, but the time is yours. That being said, the timing often works out roughly like this:
- 25 minutes to better understand the problem
- 25 minutes to discuss and plan out a plan of attack
- 10 minutes to review, give feedback, and wrap up the session
We won’t stick to that exactly, but I hope it’s helpful to have an idea of what you’re walking into!
Homework
If all goes well, during our session you’ll come up with a plan to enact over the next month. Where desired, please do the work or make relevant changes to the plan works better for you as needed. Ideally this is an exciting assignment as you work on yourself and your career!
During the session or in an email after, I might suggest some exercises or reading that I believe would be valuable for you. Please dedicate up to an hour a week to these assignments, but don’t let them take away from your main plan for the month.
Of course, not everyone is ready to “do” after just one discussion. Your plan might fall to the bottom of your to do list or feel unapproachable after our session. If this is the case please be honest with me in our next meeting. What held you back? What were you most dreading? Please be thoughtful; “I didn’t have time” is usually not the root reason. If we can approach the situation without shame or judgment we’re more likely to make progress in the next session.