Facing a complex web of challenges?

Here is how to use them to your advantage

You face not one challenge but many different ones: big, small, urgent, less urgent, private, work-related – often all at the same time. You can use this myriad web of challenges that you face every day to your advantage. The trick? Choose one challenge and work towards a solution, step by step.

By solving that one challenge, you will start on a journey. A journey where you will gain a lot in the process: knowledge about yourself and others, valuable experience and self-confidence. More often than not, solving one challenge will also make other challenges easier to tackle because you have the momentum, mindset and experience to make progress.

Trial and error, therapy, coaching?

Many people have come to this realization all by themselves through trial and error. This is a lonely and often frustrating path. It does not have to be that way. Coaching can help you on this journey. Before we get into how coaching can help you face and overcome challenges, let me start by quickly explaining what coaching is and what it is not. It is not therapy. Here, we will define therapy as a long-term process in which a licensed healthcare professional such as a psychologist or psychiatrist works with a client to diagnose and to focus on past traumas and issues to change self-destructive habits, repair and improve relationships and work through painful emotions.

What about Coaching?

Coaching is a shorter process that is thought-provoking and creative, inspiring the client to identify and maximize their personal and professional potential. It is a partnership between a coach and client where clients gain clarity on what they want to achieve, what success looks like for them and making clear plans toward removing barriers to that success as well as creating new paths to reaching their goals.

Experience with Coaching

Coaching has helped my clients improve work performance, build trusting relationships with colleagues and stakeholders as well as make advances in their careers. Clients have improved work performance by focusing on the things that make the most impact for them personally and align with their values rather than being dictated by other people’s agendas. They have improved relationships at work in such a way that they and the people they work with enjoy the benefits of smoother communication, less destructive conflict and clearer expectations.

Clients have also been able to secure higher job positions because of increased confidence as well as formulating a clear career path based on what they are good at, love doing and fit with their core values. Also, the individuals and groups that I work with have been able to create a better balance between work and other parts of their lives that energize them and are important to them such as spending more time on their family and friends or contributing to society through volunteer work.

What makes Coaching effective

The most important elements that make coaching effective are – in my experience: