Successful individuals use coaching and mentorship to help them unlock their potential. Not all
coaches are created equal, and that's why we work with the top five percent
of coaches at idemics. Welcome to Coaches you need brought to you by Ideamics.
Welcome to Coaches to Know. These are coaching shorts by Idea Emix Radio.
This is a brief podcast designed to demystify coaching and help you our audience,
understand what coaching is and how it can help you. I'm your host,
Jamie, and today I'm here with coach David and we're going to be
talking about coaching for life transitions. Coach David has nine years of coaching experience.
He has a background in corporate marketing, entrepreneurship, and new and humanitarian
work. And his clients are typically thirty five to sixty five and they've they
normally have identified that something in their life is not working for them and they
want something different. So welcome Coach David, and thank you for joining us
today. Good to be here. Thank you. I appreciate your time and
I hope to communicate what seems like a very obvious topic, life transitions.
We all know what they are, But I hope to sort of drill down
to help people understand today when coaching for through a life transition may be beneficial
for them. So first, let's start by defining what do we mean by
life transitions? Sure, so, most of the people I work with are
people who have identified something going on in their work or their life that just
they have a sense that things are not as satisfy, fine, or as
meaningful or as in balance as they would like their life to be. And
transitions can can come about in many, many different ways. And maybe that
somebody within a job has just lost their ability to grow, or they may
have new leadership that isn't working for them, the company may be changing any
kind of thing like that might lead somebody within a work position to say it's
time for me to make a change. But often, especially when people are
well into their lives and I you said, my clients are thirty five to
sixty five, I sort of define that broadly, as you know, those
middle years where you have a lot of living and work behind you and a
lot of living and work ahead of you. And you know, given how
long we work these days, you know, most people reach points where suddenly
what they thought was right for them is no longer the right fit. And
the challenge when people are in moments like that is it life is super crazy
and intense, especially in those years, and it can be difficult to find
the space, the time, the energy to move into a transition. And
that's often where coaching can be very helpful. But yeah, I mean very
simply. You know, people move into transitions when they're in moments where they
are looking to move towards more of the things that they want or away from
things in their life that they don't want. Thank you for that sort of
definition so that we can be on the same page about what's being discussed today.
There's a lot of interesting nuggets and what you just said help us understand,
David. Are there typically do people have a trigger moment that it's it's
this is working for me, this is working for me, and then suddenly
it's not or is that realization? How does it normally come? Is it
slow? Is it best? Does it depend? It's a great question when
I when I do intake conversations with people, one of the things I'm always
interested in is what what is the trigger moment? I would say that generally
when people are ready to make a change. It has been a slow burn
of things that have been happening that that that without necessarily even recognizing it,
are leading them to be less less content or less less happy with what's going
on. But usually there is a trigger moment. It maybe something something external
like a new boss you know, or like a notable failure, or maybe
a notable success where things suddenly change. And it may be you know,
it may be something internal that happens either a very strong emotional moment. But
usually there is something that happens to somebody in a moment where they decide they
can look back and realize that things have been happening that have been pointing in
the direction of a change. But I rarely meet with somebody who, if
I ask, can't point to the thing that happened that got them into a
moment of thinking, I'm ready for a change and I want I need to
figure out how to make that change. That's very interesting, I always think,
though, even when there is some level of trigger right which generates a
self awareness, there is a gap between awareness and action, and coaching through
life transitions in this way is a way to close that gap between I understand
that I'm happy, or that I need something different, whether it's from my
career, from my life, and I know that I want to get to
something different, but I can't always know what that different thing is that I
want and or how to get there. And I look at life transition coaching
as a way to help clients process through how to get there. And if
you could speak a little bit about how you help your clients get from I
know I need something different to getting something different. Sure, yeah, I
mean typically the moment of recognition is not the moment people delve into work.
A lot of times, I mean I have had I can't tell you how
many people have reached out to explore coaching because they've had that trigger moment and
then decide they're not really ready, get very scared about again. It's you
know, it's a commitment of energy, it's a commitment of time, it's
a commitment of money. But so often after being with that that concern and
having it come up again, people will come back to coaching. You know.
When I'm speaking with somebody who's identified a desire for a transition, what
I want to do is help them get as clear as they can be about
both why they want to change and what they're hoping to change and move towards.
And that's that's really what the discovery process in coaching is all about when
working with people, and I'm you know, what I'll reveal here, Jamie,
is really my approach to helping people get clear on the readiness that they
have for moving into coaching work. I focus with people on three different areas
when they're thinking about transitions, and the first one is really the thing that
you're talking about here, which is what I broadly call focus. And in
the workaround focus, we're trying to get as clear as we can around what
the things are that we are looking to have more of in our life.
Whether that's balanced, whether that's more money, whether it's a different group of
people to be working with, whether it's a higher level of impact. There
are many different things that make up, you know, a life and make
up if it's a professional realm, what makes for a good work environment.
But in those moments where somebody has said I'm ready for a change, I'm
ready. I feel like a transition is coming. The first order of business
is getting some formula of like what better looks like, And that's what I
call focus. The work of getting getting focused is looking at a few different
things. One, you want to look back at your work history, or
you know, if it's not work related. Most of my clients are coming
in with professional transition desires to begin with. But you want to look at
the your history to see what kind of things in your work history have been
peak moments, what kinds of things have elevated you, what kind of things
pull your energy down, and how you've made decisions going from one thing to
the next, and how those decisions have worked out for you. That's the
looking backwards. In terms of looking forward, you know, this is where
one's interest, one's values, one's experience that it become really important, and
that is you know, some of that stuff is structured work. But the
goal of all of this examination is to try to help somebody get to a
point where they can identify some vision of focus from moving forward. One of
my favorite phrases is where we focus is where we go. And without some
willingness to put at least an initial stake in the ground of what we think
we're transitioning towards, it's very hard to even move into that. And maybe
I'll stop there. That's that's the first work I do with people to kind
of get them ready to move forward and to sort of tap into the energy
that makes the idea of a transition exciting, because when somebody can start to
articulate that, there becomes much more momentum about moving into the work. That's
that's very interesting. It's it's I think of it as a tea up process.
I really like what you said too. Where we focus is where we
go, which I think is quite key and you know a strong theme and
what coaching is, it's helping people with forward looking to be forward looking,
to draw that life vision or a vision for your career or whatever it is,
and move towards it. So it's all about moving forward, which which
I think is very powerful full experience for people. Yeah, one of the
things that you said is you talked about I mean the process of examination.
I imagine it's the length of that is unique for everyone. But how long
does that normally take for people to get here on a vision? Yeah,
it can be surprisingly quick. Typically, I will start by asking people a
bunch of how people write about a bunch of questions that are allowed them to
reflect on their their their past, allow them to reflect on their identity,
their strengths, their challenges, so that very quickly they're they're exploring the terrain
that they find themselves in. And then we move into some straightforward exercises around
uh, you know, starting to break out what it is that really matters
to people. And the thing is, when somebody is identified, it's time
for a change. The answers to what they want more of or less of
are usually pretty easy for people to figure out, and in thinking about it
and stepping into that work, it's really it becomes pretty easy for someone to
realize what they've been very excited about and what it is that's holding them,
you know, holding them down, draining them. And I would say,
you know, usually within you know, three or four sessions, we begin
to get clearer on on a focus to define the transition moving forward. That
that focus can shift and change and does as we move into the actual work
of exploration, but it gives us a great place to start. So it
sounds like the process is quite iterative in a way. You can focus,
but then as you continue your work may adjust, may change, And once
you've defined the focus, where do you go next with your clients? Typically
the next place we go is to what I broadly will call story. And
this is this is one of the most important parts of moving into a transition
because we all, we all, all of us carry our story in one
way or another. And the reality is we can all tell our story in
many, many different ways. I could tell you about my thirty year career
prior to becoming a coach, and you would swear that I have led the
most interesting life of anyone you've ever met. And I could tell you the
story focused on all the challenges I've faced and you would be like, wow,
I don't know how you made it through that. And so when we're
making transitions, you know, with some kind of defined focus, the next
order of business is to figure out how we tell a story that connects the
journey we've been on to that place we're trying to get to. And there's
that story needs to be told in a lot of places. It's told in
very structured places like our resume or bio or LinkedIn profile. You know where
there are. You know, there are tricks of the trade that are important
to understand, but I find in making change, the most important thing is
how we understand and feel and embody our story and how we can confidently tell
it to other people so that they can do what we want them to do,
which is help us move towards that transition. But this is such a
huge part of transition work is being able to see yourself and see your story
in the place that you're trying to get to. I often will say that,
you know, a goal is a place that we come from. You
know, we think of a goal as a place we're going to, But
really, in making transition, we as much as possible, we want to
be embodying that person who has already made the change. We want to be
living that and then we're moving into it. It makes moving into it so
much easier, and crafting a story in your own words helps you become that
change. Yeah, we then have a thing to be living into and it's
you know, the trick to that is finding the story that really resonates.
You know, it's not about making up a story. It's about choosing the
story that we want to tell about where we are and where we're trying to
go. For people, I would say people like myself who are very literal
and factual based, I've always found, you know, stretching and living that
who I want to be has been a challenge in my life for sure,
because it feels dishonest in a way, but it is a part of the
process. And going back to what you said, where we focus is where
we go, and so if you focus on being what you want to be,
then you will go there and you will be there absolutely. I mean,
it's really interesting. I was an entrepreneur for ten years. I created
a travel publication and it was an incredible journey. It was It was ten
of the most thrilling years of my life. It had ended with a very
fortunate sale of the business. But during those ten years, there were many
moments where all I focused on was concerns about money or concerns about staffing,
and lost my focus on the excitement of running a travel business or doing my
own thing. And so in every day and in every moment, we get
to choose where we put our focus. So, you know, I totally
get your comment about you. None of us want to feel like we're putting
on an act. But the reality is, you know, there are so
many different ways to tell our story, and it's really important to be thoughtful
about that as because we we want to inspire others with our story and with
our desires. That's that's really the selling part of making a transition. Yeah,
yeah, no, totally agree, totally agree. Um, we are
sort of running close to time, if not over time. But I just
want you to touch upon the third step happens when people work, when clients
work with you. Yeah, as it's what I was referring to. I
broadly call the third step after focus and story social, and that is bringing
your story into the world. We don't make transitions by ourselves because we don't
live in a universe of just ourselves. So when we tell our story,
we're typically trying to do three things. We're trying to get better at telling
our story, and that happens when we get to see it reflected and see
what other people are reacting to. We learn in the process, especially if
you're looking for a new job or something else, you're using your story to
find out more about the realm of the person you're talking to, and we
expand our network. So moving our story into the world is really where the
rubber meets the road and making change. It's the most exciting thing. It's
a lot easier for an extrovert, which I am and for some introverts.
But this is why the practice of telling our story is so important. And
before you know what, we're living into it and the transitions that we're hoping
to make are where where we're focusing and what we end up manifesting. And
I see this happen over and over. I'm that positive note. Coach David,
I want to thank you for your time today, thank you for walking
us through coaching through life transition, and maybe we should have you back to
do something on entrepreneurship at another time. I'd love that. Thank you so
much, Take care, Thanks for listening. Please subscribe wherever you listen and
leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www dot vidmx dot com.
Special thanks to our producer Martin Maluski and singer songwriter Doug Allen.