Jo's story

How well has coaching met your expectations from when we started working together and in what specific ways have you found the way we are working together helpful?

I did some research on other coaches before we started and had an introductory session with someone else before we started.  Although the alternatives were impressive in many ways, they had quite a specific and obvious target that they wanted me to communicate from the offset.  I would have gladly communicated this but I found it more useful that we progressed in a more organic way, relating each session to feelings I'd been experiencing between sessions.  The other coach advocated a specific model for each coaching session, which even if you had, it wasn't so apparent and felt more like we were co/constructing the direction of travel. 

I felt that I trusted whatever you noticed in me, because it didn't seem as if there was any sense that you wanted a particular outcome, or were expecting me to behave in a certain way.  As such, I felt I could describe all thoughts that I was uncomfortable with.  We tended to work towards a resolution of sorts, and at times these were quite concrete and others more about my thought process.  I appreciated the chance to summarise these and so to be clear in what I thought my actions should be.  There were decisions that I made (and followed through with) that I am pretty sure I would have struggled to arrive at without the help of this clarity.  

I also appreciated the balance of discussion.  At moments I would speak at length without knowing exactly what might be important and what wasn't.  I enjoyed the fact that you remembered what was going on in my life and could relate your thoughts back to previous things that had been mentioned in sessions.  When you spoke, it was because you had something that you thought could help me and you would mix your knowledge of a really wide variety of behaviour patterns and theory with your own experiences in life and as a coach.  It really helped, and I never felt like I was getting advice, but hearing a perspective on my own words and thoughts.  

I said initially that the one of the reasons I chose to work with you was because of your experience and I think that proved to be really important.  When we spoke, you would refer to work and theory in a very immediate way that would probably be impossible had you not seen those kinds of examples before.  

I think you had a great judgement for what supplementary ideas or exercises to send me.  When you asked me to write about my experiences, I did so and sometimes I didn't get the chance.  It was always helpful and interesting, but the sessions didn't hinge on my completion of them.   

What changes has coaching enabled you to make and what has it helped you to achieve?

I was at a crossroads in my life where I felt it was impossible to move forward with the next steps of my relationship and my career.  Speaking to you helped me to identify the causes of that reticence, to acknowledge it, and to move forward with an authenticity to my own feelings.  Since we started working together: I have moved to a new country; started a new job, which I'm highly energised by; completed an MSc from Oxford; and begun a new relationship, in which I'm extremely happy.    

How has coaching helped you in managing the changes taking place in your life?

There have been a lot!  At each point we discussed how I was feeling in relation to what was important to me - this tended to be the relationships I had with those closest to me.  With this in mind, we never fixated on any one change in my life.  What mattered more were the patterns of my behaviour and how I was growing increasingly able to manage them.  It is fair to say that the positive changes in my life happened as a by-product of this and were never the sole focus in and of themselves. 

What has been the impact on your relationships?

My friends and family have benefited from me engaging in this process because I am healthier now than I was before and I feel more agency to help others and to take control of my own decisions within relationships.   

Can you highlight one or two critical moments which were particularly significant?

I think there was a moment when we realised that I was trying reason things out in my life that just couldn't be worked out by thinking alone, but through open-ended, vulnerable conversation with my partner.  Once this became clear, I needed someone to help me understand why this wasn't resolving the conflict and help me to make sense of how to keep moving forward once the avenue for this discussion was closed.

There was also another moment where I was feeling quite fearful once I began to take steps to change my situation.  I was temporarily the subject of anger from work and from my partner.  I could easily have lost my way over that time if I didn't have a confidant who could help me clarify my thoughts.     

What could we have done differently to be even more effective?

This is a difficult one, because it really relates to the frequency of our talks.  I found that they were more effective when they took place closer together, but the irony was that I also needed enough stuff to have changed or happened between the sessions to make them worthwhile.  If it had been a really long time, it must not be easy to recall immediately everything that was going on in my life, so I would imagine a database of some kind must be useful - especially as you probably have lots of clients.  I'm sure you have something like this, but in any case, the use of it must be more necessary the longer the time between sessions.  It's a hard one, because I also appreciated the flexibility we had about the frequency of our sessions and there were a few emergency conversations in there too!