20 Strategies
A Typical Coaching Program
1. Our partnership
Your coach is your partner, mutually committed to achieving your goals. In working together you make real the adage "two heads are better than one".
Our communications are direct, open, candid and supportive. Clarity is essential and the coach will press to make sure we are on th e same page. During the term of coaching, we stay in touch by phone, e-mail, chat, and, of course, face-to-face meetings.
Feedback is essential to maintain alignment of goals and targeted outcomes. Feelings and emotions are part of the partnership, and are defined in ways that strengthen the relationship. Although there are always specific tasks and smart actions to be taken, there is plenty of room for creativity, out-of-the-box ideas and "what if" conversations.
Your coach is a subject matter expert and will share his own experiences, explain the principles of career development, lifestyle objectives, performance and earning power. Your side of the equation, is to make sure that the mutual goals are, in fact, your real goals.
The framework of our work is to value trust, value respect, speak for yourself (avoiding generalities), and value candor.
2. Our Goals
We commit to empowering you to clarify and achieve your goals. We are purpose and goal centered, and will spend enough time to prioritize and, plan the outcomes and time frames you seek. When ready, we put these goals in writing.
In most cases, goals can be multifaceted: career vision, compensation, lifestyle, workstyle and personal development.
Depending on urgency we may separate short-term and long-term goals.
Given practical and market-driven circumstances, you may want to change course, speed and/or direction to achieve our goals.
To sustain momentum and focus, we make all modifications intentionally and under mutual agreement.
3. Coaching style
You can expect candor, feedback and encouragement.
I will consistently ask you to test your assumptions, and push to go further. I know it is possible, with good coaching, to see extraordinary achievements in work and life.
Although not promised, breakthroughs are not uncommon. Challenging mental models, mindset and asumptions based on past experience will unlock your potential and possibilities.
The work world is changing so quickly that you wi;; want to redefine career, job title, security, employment, standard of living and quality of life. We work with you to strengthens your long term future.
4. Our Interactions
Coaching is based on purposeful interactions directed toward your goals.
These will be in person, on the phone, through e-mails and chat and sometimes by video; whatever it takes. I like roleplays, simulations, diagramming (schematics) and tough Q & As.
I use a combination of inquiry: power questions, probing for strengths, discovering holdbacks and understanding your visions of the future, and advocacy: pushing for purpose, teaching, harnessing powerful communications and favoring the future over the past.
I can be assertive to make a point, and persistent if I am unclear. I favor practicality over contemplation and champion smart actions based on strategic thinking.
5. The Structure
Our time will be focused in one-month (four weeks) segments and we will do what it takes, together each month to achieve targeted goals and outcomes.
Following an agreed-upon plan and timetable we will meet for 90 minutes face-to-face either every week or every two weeks, depending on what is to be accomplished. In either plan we will be in touch as often as needed.
Each meeting will be strengthened by preliminary assignments, phone conversations, chats and e-mails. After each session we will set the agenda and actions to be accomplished next.
Our minimum engagement is usually two months (eight weeks).
6. Doing what works
A coach's main job is to keep purpose and goals in mind and stimulate smart actions that move in that direction.
Although we have plenty of processes to support our work, we do not follow a script or a pre-designed blueprint. We start with where we are at the beginning of each segment and decide how to further the action.
You are a one-of-a-kind client and I take you where you are with the intention of helping to move you to where you want to be. In our honest collaboration we discover what it takes to make that happen.
There is plenty of room for emotion, setbacks, mistakes and celebrations. No two clients over the past several decades have ever had exactly the same coaching experience.
There are many steps in a full career or job search and they vary by client and situation, urgency and the marketplace. Our job is to help you choose and prioritize the steps you need to take, and accelerate your path through them.
A Career Hero's Journey scroll here
Introduction
Unless youre an executive, a small business owner, or otherwise enshrined in the elite professional class of Americans, you are probably concerned about the future of your work, your finances, and the quality of your life. If youre not, you should be. The character of the American workplace is changing radically and if you arent prepared, some rough tides could sweep away your career and lifestyle. Human values in mainstream corporations are eroding so quickly and heartlessly that even to have a chance at rewarding work you need to reconsider everything you think you know about careers, companies, jobs, and lifestyle. You may have to break free, reinvent yourself and become as a Career Hero.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published in 1949, is Joseph Campbell's archetypical work of mythic dimensions and extraordinary influence. It is the universal story of each persons quest to emerge from the commonplace by facing challenges, overcoming alien influences, seeking the advice of wizards, and finally becoming self-actualized, proactively valuable and prized by the community.
The story of the hero is everywhere present, in any society or civilization as far back as recorded history. It echoes through all levels, all occupations, all income groups and all workers; many of whom are striving to find its elusive path. Campbell traced the Hero's Journey through the world's myths and religions, from Apollo, Odysseus, Isis and Osiris to the Buddha, David, Christ and Muhammad. In recent times, his work formed the inspiration for George Lucas's Star Wars movies. Today, Luke Skywalkers are all around us, awaiting the call.
My job is to help you see if the journey applies to you and your career, and if so to help you get on with the trip. If this model appeals to you let me know and I will explore how you can make it happen with some coaching.
The Heros Call: A Zone Unknown
My work takes people through a heroic journey, and before the journey begins, I ask them to recognize that they are the protagonists in their own lives. I then engage them in an honest conversationabout negative cycles happening in the mainstream workplace. These are frequently conditions that, once seen,motivate them leave their comfort zone and find new ways to blaze the path to their future.
I know that, lying deep within everyone, obscured by layers of compromise, false beliefs and opinions of others, is a vision of our true selves. An heroic vision. To see it clearly, you must sweep away the blinders of old assumptions and labels, and unlock more of your individuality and independence. Once clarified, with coaching help, this baseline understanding can manifest and transform into a proactive force that encourages you to walk away from work you deem to be heartless and towards a future style of living that motivates and rewards you.
The seven challenges: Overview
A career hero's journey does not involve a midnight trip through a lightning storm or a search for a golden goose in an ogre's castle. Instead, it involves a directed voyage through seven real challenges; accompanied by exercises, questions and stories describing internal and external challenges. According to wizards, a journey of thought and self-knowledge must first precede the pursuit of actual change. The first dragons slain along the way are those of our own self-limitations.
The first challenge asks you to walk away from familiar roles that hold you in place. Being passive and accepting of the status quo may push down stress levels; but if the reader intends to change the direction of his or her future, the role that best fits feels like a trailblazer, adventurer, entrepreneur, explorer. A hero. By learning to stand in this new role, you will see actions and choices that were previously invisible.
In mythology, the first challenge comes when the hero realizes his or her unique strength and power. Joseph Campbell described it as crossing the first threshold. And just as the future King Arthur took the sword from the stone, I will encourage you to reexamine preconceived notions about your own influence in the quality of your life and realize that alternatives can and should be explored and you already have the ability to do so.
The second challenge is a purely inward part of your journey. It is the "rejection of the challenge". You may hesitate because you don't think it can happen. Here is where you seek the knowledge to understand more about yourself, about the nature of your own power. In mythology, it is when the hero collects the weapons, charms and spells that will help to vanquish the enemy.
For my career coaching clients, this process involves the examination of values, beliefs, principles, family, ideals, self-esteem and more. The goal: to assemble your deepest values and strongest inner motivations and to articulate them. These internal forces must be expressed and understood before they can be satisfied. Assessments and exercises help clarify and prioritize your personal values.
The third challenge is for you to forge a personal purpose statement setting out the quest you wish to follow. Before one enters the labyrinth, one must be sure of the destination at the end. Belief in a defined purposeful direction is by itself a call to action, stepping away from heartless work prescribed by others into freedom of choice with meaningful direction and destinations. Most of us, immersed in social conformity, are not schooled in setting a direction for our lives, and like the heroes of mythology, will need courage and commitment to complete the task.
The fourth challenge invites you to break free from the trance of conformity, rejecting deeply embedded assumptions and challenging the media-driven view of life as a series of products and stereotypical roles that are supposed to make people happy.
Joseph Campbell referred to this stage of the hero's journey as "meeting with the temptress". Scholars have also referred to it as the temptation away from the true path. This is where the enemy: conventional conformity- tempts the career hero with worldly goods, attempting to co-opt the quest and end the heroic journey.
Here I encourage you to challenge old ideas and assumptions, break with prepackaged realities, and contrast our culture's celebrated standard of living (having stuff) with the superior value of quality of life (living each day to its fullest). In this challenge, I advise my clients to challenge traditional notions of success and look at what it means to truly prosper, free from heartless work, and trapped with meager earnings.
In the fifth challenge, readers use a variety of capability assessments to translate commonplace skills, job titles, experience and education, the traditional careers vocabulary, into strengths: the ability to produce high-value results, or to pull the sword from the stone. This corresponds to the time in myths when a hero overcomes a great enemy and begins to understand the special nature of his or her power. At the end of this challenge, a hero like you can open channels of communication and potential previously hidden from view.
The sixth challenge is about turning ideas into action and overcoming the internal and external resistance to making things happen. Fear is a natural response to change, and it stops people cold. Avoidance and denial slip in to protect against rejection and risk.
Small courageous actions are the best remedy, because they grow larger with practice, especially if a reader is open to coaching and feedback. Positive reinforcement and feedback is essential for a true Career Hero. At the end of this challenge, you will have begun the great and heroic task of making your life and career work for you. People who succeed at this stage will have begun to experience the joy that comes from changing ones own reality.
Extraordinary performance is the seventh challenge: it is about keeping oneself in trim, producing exceptional results in any undertaking or value chain. It is where the hero truly becomes, in Campbell's terminology, the master of two worlds.
Here is where you set your own terms as a producer, whether in conventional work environments, consulting, or starting your own business. High performance, innovation and vision always make a mark and will keep your worth fresh and valuable. Performance is not simply an issue of know how; it is the ability to harness a combination of factors that keep people in a leadership role in whatever they undertake. Having a good coach on your side will help you maintain extraordinary performance in whatever you take on.
The Conclusion of the Journey
The conclusion of the career hero's journey reaffirms the benefits of being in charge of your work and your life and considering them to be united. Those who complete this journey will find themselves richer with the rewards of freedom, happiness, passion, and meaning. At their core they will discover the joys of self-direction, discovery and honoring their most deeply held values and beliefs.
Copyright 2009 Tom Jackson
With full acknowledgement to Joseph Campbell
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The quality of life scroll here
Ask yourself some questions:
• How close is your life to the way you want it to be? Consider Americas founding values: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On a scale of 1 to 5 whats your score today?
• What categories would you use to design your own scale?
• Are you driven by a culture of conventionality, or do you have your own distinctions?
• What are your assumptions about money? How much more is enough to produce a quality life?
• What ways of being do you value most day-to-day, week to week or year to year?
• How do you define success?
• To what degree do others define the quality of your life?
Examine the difference between the standard of living and the quality of life
The standard of living tends to be based on what you have, the "stuff" to put it bluntly. Not that stuff is bad, and acknowledging it includes health insurance and investments, it is a balance sheet of sorts. You have it or you dont.
The quality of life, on the other hand, is the experience of living life. It includes your feelings, your relationships, your personal interests and commitments. Living mostly happens in present time: today, tonight, now. Even though the quality of your life is influenced by your standard of living, it is not dependent on it; and in many cases too much emphasis on standard of living can dilute ones quality of life.
Your work; your career and your job are spaces where the quality of your life and your standard of living interact. "Work itself" the direct mind/body task oriented actions is where they merge. Inside the work itself are your personal strengths, motivations and sense of ownership; also your potential connection to the needs of others; the community, the population and the planet. When you integrate your self into your work your rewards range from material, sensory and thoughtful to intangible - deeper meaning- and unique - it is you doing it. Real work is where you connect yourself physically, mentally and responsibly to where you live.
Your coach is committed to your whole self and to the balances you want. He will discuss them, lay out various pieces as options, and ask you to get other input: family, friends, mentors. Your coach could become a mentor or help you find one.
And then there is the money itself. Money is important. You deserve to be paid above average for above-average work. You will look for work models that generously reward and compensate employees.
Your coach will help you draft an earning plan, and learn salary negotiation and how to upgrade your marketability. Your coach will invite you to lay out a learning plan since skills and knowledge are translatable into hard currency.
A spirit of nonconformity is an important ally in furthering your journey in the pursuit of happiness. It is an attitude of questioning and rethinking you will acquire as you continue to challenge your assumptions, beliefs and roles.
For example, you might rethink the assumption that working harder will bring more success and consider if working better and smarter will bring you a higher quality life.
Maybe neither is true for you, but taking a nonconformist viewpoint allows you to consider the alternatives as a starting point.
Nonconformists move in and out of many cultures and roles and choose those that strengthen their valued purpose. They are driven by the maxim: the best is yet to come. Just showing up as an iconoclast or maverick is not the point. Your coach will help build the qualities of nonconformity that will find doorways that others miss.
If Tom Jackson is your coach, you have a man rich with the experience of working successfully in several careers; including being a U.S. Navy test pilot, a world-class sailor in a rebuilt wooden yacht, a computer pioneer, an author, a career development expert, entrepreneur and world-class consultant. His clients have ranged from hourly workers to managers to executives and all diversities within. You will be challenged to rethink your self image.
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1. Our Partnership
3. Coaching Style
6. Doing What Works
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