What do you want to get out of coaching?

This is the question I always start with: at the beginning of the collaboration, and in every coaching session.

Even though it is not always such an easy question.

After all, what DO you want?

I regularly get a reply along these lines: "I don't actually know what I want... but I do know that I don't want THIS!" and then they explain how their life currently is. Everything that is working against them today or drives them nuts, everything that discourages them o renders them unable to see any improvement… These are the thing they no longer want.

Good.

Then we'll start there.

Because coaching is about change. Even if you don't quite know what you do want yet. That is precisely why coaching can be so wonderfully helpful: to discover what it is you truly yearn for. Discovering how and who you really are and want to be.

As soon as you and your coach decide to work together, your coach will ask you what you want to achieve with the coaching (if this has not been discussed before). Even if this was discussed before, it still makes sense to reiterate it – as sometimes it has become more nuanced, but mainly, because it’s so crucial in the coaching.

So even if you don't have your answer of what you want clear, start with what you do know. You know what you don't want anymore. So go ahead and talk about that, and make sure you give your coach the mandate to guide you in exploring what you do want. Go and explore what the change you are looking for is, and what is bocking it.

Because this is how you evolve from the first vague silhouettes to a crystal-clear image of what you want. And that’s something you can work with.

Psst: It may take some time to reach that clear image, and it may happen very fast. But each session will bring you a little closer, set something in motion each time, and you will notice the change you were looking for start to materialize.