In our adult life, we are never really wearing one hat, or only ever facing or doing life in one dimension. We live, work, love, play, grow.

As a woman, I am a wife, daughter, sister, friend, leader, writer, coach, business woman. I am both strong and vulnerable. I am strategic and I am overwhelmed.

Many of you reading this will share similar roles too. As a male professional you may be husband, brother, son, CEO, sportsman, clever, and yet battling with insecurity. 

The point is we each live our lives in a variety of ways and purposes and even as a “multidisciplinary” individual if I can use that term. 

The way I run my home will be different from how I show up for clients or how I am socially or when playing with my nieces and nephews. Each takes a slightly different approach or discipline. To demonstrate what I mean, here are two hypothetical client examples they are made up, but they are also very real scenarios

Let’s take Anita.

Anita is living with her long-term partner of 23 years, they have two teenage children. Anita is also HR Business Partner in a large organisation. Anita loves her family and loves her job.

She is a high performer, but has realised that she does get stressed, she wants to be a more present mum to their teenagers at a critical time in their growth and education and she wants to feel more confident since she has been diagnosed with a chronic condition that does not impact her generally, but it does occasionally and has knocked her confidence, especially with her partner, which sometimes causes underlying stress that Anita never shares. Anita is finding that she cannot work as fast paced as she used to, and she is considering her future career, whether she should aim for a promotion or she should consider a more “family/Life friendly” career. Anita always carried a dream of running her own business but is unsure as she wants to be financially secure for her family.

So, does Anita need an Executive coach, A Life coach, A Finance coach, A Confidence coach, A Parenting coach, Stress/Health Coach or even a Business Start-up Coach?

Let’s look at Aaron

Aaron is 28 years and graduate from a top university and highly career driven. He is single but wants to meet someone and ideally get married around 30-31 years old. The pandemic hit his career move hard and now he is back on track. He is working in a leadership role he loves, but is struggling with communication and leading others, and often goes quiet in meetings. He has received feedback on this and now realises he needs to make improvements. Aaron also carries inner conflict between traditional and liberal thinking. This is mainly influenced by his parents who both have opposing views, and the culture he grew up in. Aaron feels he needs to follow his father and grandfather’s legacy. But seems to have lost his identity along the way. He needs to find who he is. Aaron is an introvert and struggles to communicate confidently in certain circles. Aaron wants to be successful and wants to be happily married. Aaron also realises he needs to expand his personal/social life.

So, does Aaron need a Leadership coach, a Life coach, a Dating or Relationship coach, or a Confidence coach?

In order to give my clients a more complete coaching service I have considered the following

  • My experience in work and in life and direct experience of those I have coached
  • The questions I ask that connect, challenge, expand, broaden, ignite and inspire
  • My skill to Train and Mentor as appropriate, and my qualifications and learning 
  • Tools I have gained from my CPD -continuous personal development and models and frameworks I have learned
  • What my clients say they want/don’t want when they initially come to me and thereafter
  • What factors; goals, challenges are at play and how they are intrinsically meshed or connected.

Whilst I do believe in having an area of expertise and niching in our core message, when delivering a world class coaching service, I have found that I can offer someone like Anita and Aaron multi-faceted and diverse coaching that works for them and their objectives.

Anita would benefit from a blended coaching approach as performance, life, stress, and maybe even developing coaching skills for her teenagers. Anita would also perhaps benefit from a session to map out a 3-5-year plan for work and finances, and perhaps one of her action points would be to speak to an independent financial advisor depending on the specifics. Anita and I would work on designing her life with more balance and build her confidence up as well as having a ‘think tank’ time on the business idea.

With Aaron I would do leadership and life coaching and include some resources on dating and then turn the findings into a coaching conversation and action points. To improve Aaron’s communication, we would do a blend of coaching and some training to ensure he has learned skills as well as applied them. We would work together on designing his vision and happiness and help him to discover who he really is and also bring in practical elements like saving for his future.

For both, there would be more in the coaching plan and conversations than is shared above, the key aspect is delivering a bespoke yet proven blended coaching program to the client. 

Our whole life is never lived in one occupation so I believe coaching should not always be delivered in one function. At times it makes sense to work with one niche for a particular and specific objective, for example one of my clients wanted to publish a book whilst I can get her started being a published Author myself, it served her better to seek out a coach specifically for that, once we had achieved other objectives. But for the most a blended coaching approach is just as, if not more powerful and also brings significant ROI.

The Redesign Coach

Neelam

Delivering World Class Coaching | Creator of The Redesign Method