What Matters to You, Matters to Me

“When all is said and done relationships are what matter most to me; Relationships based on trust and mutual respect and that is what I bring to and expect from my coaching experiences”.

Coaching enables me to watch people grow and push themselves to achieve goals and targets they may not have thought possible.  As my coaching approach evolves I find greater satisfaction in helping clients uncover realisations or breakthroughs about their own behaviours and beliefs that prevent them from moving forward.

My coaching is designed to help you understand what you want in life and support you to move toward your ideal life. I build long term sustainable relationships not merely as a ‘life coach’ but as a ‘coach for life’, offering you the comfort of knowing you can return to me throughout your life when you need assistance to reach the next step.

My approach is flexible and largely dictated by your needs as to the ‘next steps’ in the process. Working with both business leaders and individuals looking to challenge themselves, I have always believed that growth comes in ‘waves’, and I have observed this over and over with my clients… they make big gains and then plateau for a while almost as though they are conserving energy for the next wave of growth.

Some of the beliefs that underpin my approach include:

1. All change comes from within
2. All experiences are sent to teach us what we are ready to learn – it is critical that we extract that learning from our experiences
3. We create our own lives
   1. Beliefs create out thoughts; Thoughts Create feelings; Feelings Create behaviours; Behaviours create results = Therefore, Beliefs create results….

One of my core talents is to help uncover, question and reframe the stories people tell themselves about who they are and why they behave in the way they do.  The stories we tell ourselves can shape, limit and define our way of being and I find my clients make great progress when we can deconstruct, compassionately challenge and then re-construct these beliefs about ourselves. Almost all of the behaviours my clients are wanting to change, whether relating to business or personal matters, arise from carefully constructed stories designed to protect them in some way.  These strategies for self-protection rarely work on a long term basis and in fact get in the way of us reaching all that we are capable of.

To achieve this my role relies heavily on listening to you with the purpose of identifying your stories and any patterns that have arisen as a result of these stories. Other components of the process flow on from this including:

1. Identifying unhelpful patterns and habits that prevent us from reaching our goals
2. Analysing and correcting self-talk to support our direction
3. Identifying underlying beliefs and emotions (along with their triggers) that may have tripped us up to date
4. Re-constructing the beliefs and setting accountability measures to keep us on track

My preference is to design programs to suit each client.  I have a base range of materials and strategies that I work with but I feel that it is important to make my program fit the client rather than make the client fit my program.  What works for some does not work for others and I am flexible in all aspects of my coaching and very persistent!

What matters is that this coaching helps you clarify what you want for yourself or your business (or both) and we formulate a plan to achieve that.

My strengths as a coach are my intuition and ability to read people and their stories in a way that enables me to ask questions and make observations that identify the root cause of the issue. My ability to establish trust and rapport with my clients enables them to feel comfortable quickly and I have often been told by clients after only one or two sessions that they feel they have known me for over 20 years.

The effort I place on my coaching is high, I am particular about ensuring the client needs are met but without creating a relationship of dependency.  I will often tell my clients about the techniques I am using when appropriate and encourage them to self-coach when the next opportunity arises.

My values underpin how I operate. They are Respect, Openness, Acceptance and Choice.  My goal is to ensure that you feel safe with me so that you can be vulnerable and work through any business or personal issue knowing that I am on your team.

The Next Step:

The First step in any potential client relationship is to identify their needs and commitment to the process. I ask all of my potential clients to complete a Preliminary Questionnaire which will enable you to identify your reasons for considering a coach.

You can download the questionnaire here and take some time to consider what you hope to achieve from working with me. Once complete you can email it to me at helen@helenabbott.com and we determine the next step from there.

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