What is coaching and how can it help?
Change is endemic in a legal career in the 21st century. Gone are the days when most people started a career with one firm which then ran smoothly on the same train-tracks through to partnership, equity and retirement. The pressures and the rewards of City life are greater than ever. Even for the select few who make partnership at the firm where they train there are likely to be challenges along the way. Increasingly lawyers are turning to coaches to find ways to meet these.
Coaching is a way for you to get the support and encouragement you need to achieve your full potential and make positive change happen. When blocks, either personal or professional, threaten to slow you down, coaching can help identify ways for you to move past them. Coaching can look beyond the beliefs and habits which hold you back and help you find a new resilience and determination. With long hours often part of life, it become even more important to achieve balance, so that issues that may otherwise be neglected in your personal life do not start to get in the way. And it can also be incredibly helpful to take an honest, objective and refreshingly candid look at how you perform in the office, to identify ways you can lift your performance into the realms of greatness to which you aspire. Perhaps you feel that change is inevitable, whether being made up, moving to a new grade or job, facing a glass ceiling (the “up or out” phenomenon), dealing with a sabbatical, parenthood or flexible working. Perhaps you just know things are not how you would like them to be, but don’t know what’s next.
Whatever the challenge you are facing, coaching offers a confidential and objective space in which you can review the situation and think about how to move forward to where you want to go. It uses reserves we all have but often don’t draw on through not knowing how to tap into them. My understanding of the world in which you work saves time and helps focus because you don’t need to explain to me what it’s like. Previous clients have reported an increased sense of clarity and direction and have commented on how it helped them come unstuck.
Coaching happens in one-hour private one-to-one sessions. It is usually possible to see some progress in one or two sessions, but often more is needed to effect lasting change. Each client and each individual is different, however, so we are not prescriptive about how many sessions you need or how frequently they need to take place.
By offering telephone coaching and face-to-face coaching at your offices I can minimise impact on your working day and help you make effective use of your time. For firms, I can also help with difficult situations such as performance issues, managed exits, lifestyle issues, thereby freeing up valuable partner time and HR resources.