What is Developmental Coaching?
Please indulge me for a moment while I explain how I got to developmental coaching…My career began in financial advice, where I quickly realised my true passion lay in the relationships I was building (rather than the numbers!). As I connected with clients on a deeper level, I recognised the immense value of understanding their goals and aspirations. This guided me towards the world of recruitment, where I continued to build relationships and came to understand that a coaching and consulting approach transformed my interactions with clients and candidates. Success was not just about filling roles; it was building solid relationships, where I became a trusted partner.
I then moved into HR and Talent Management. Here, I delved deeper into the world of coaching, recognising its potential to help other people. My manager at the time was a coach and referred me onto a coach training course which started with a foundation in Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). NLP helped me personally to realise it was possible to control my thoughts. I was overthinking everything before I stumbled across NLP, to the point where I was rarely in the present but always worrying about what had already happened or what was going to happen.
Developmental coaching specifically resonated with me because it goes beyond traditional coaching techniques. It's not just about fixing a problem or achieving a specific goal; it's about transforming the way a person functions, sees the world, and interacts with it. For me personally, through the coaching I have done, I am much more present and aware of resourceful and unresourceful thought patterns. I worry less and have more head space meaning I am not as stressed and even my physical body has benefitted. Rather than holding tension in my shoulders, clenching my jaw and causing headaches because of this, I now have less muscle tension and a much clearer head - and all from coaching!
Developmental coaching encompasses awareness building, accessing new perspectives, developing new capabilities, and embodying these changes. I transformed how my body and my mind operated through coaching and am passionate about being able to facilitate a similar experience for my clients, enabling them to approach life with a new sense of clarity, resilience, and empowerment.
These are some of the steps I take with my clients in order to facilitate sustained and effective change in them:
Awareness Building: First and foremost, I bring awareness to how a client currently operates, perceives, and responds to situations. It's about understanding their existing map of the world and uncovering patterns that might be limiting their growth.
Accessing New Perspectives: Once awareness is established, the next step is to open up new ways of seeing, thinking, feeling and operating. This involves introducing clients to fresh perspectives and options that were previously unseen.
Developing New Capabilities: With different awareness and perspectives, I work with clients on developing new capabilities that will support how they now want to show up in the world given what they have learnt about themselves. These capabilities are the tools they need to function differently and achieve new results.
Embodiment of Changes: The final step is not just about knowing the changes they need to make; it's about living and breathing them. I support my clients in fully integrating these shifts so they can sustain lasting change.
The adoption of developmental coaching as the cornerstone of my coaching approach reflects my belief in the immense potential for growth and transformation that lies within all of us. I am committed to helping clients navigate challenges and change the way they think, respond and react to the world around them, in the same way coaching has helped me.