Change happens, and we all understand it is inevitable. But sometimes it is big, or unexpected, or both. We may need help sorting through what the change means to us, how we can work through the change and come out thriving on the other side of it. Sometimes what it takes is someone to help bring perspective to the change, and to help bring options to the surface for consideration. That’s where transition coaching comes in.
Change is not linear – it is cyclical. As adults, we have come to believe that the goal of life is to attain, acquire, and get results – that we are on a progressive quest for success and happiness. In reality, life is a flow, where we move through periods of stability and instability, through calm and chaos. We move through a cycle of renewal with distinct phases and characteristics. Our work helps people manage these transitions by providing structure to help them understand this cycle, understand their position within it and using proven methods and tools to guide them in building a plan for their next phase. Our work centers largely in three areas.
Strengthening Self-Identity
A key to smoother transitions is self-awareness. From childhood on, we have accumulated a host of “inside voices”, what we like to refer to as our “inner board of directors”, which have great influence over the way we see things and the way we respond to situations in life. Understanding these forces is an important part of knowing who we are and how we want to move forward in the world. We do this by focusing on the “whole person”, bringing a number of factors such as core values, age/stage, interpersonal systems and relationships, life patterns, etc. into a cohesive picture that allows a client to define a new way forward.
Non-Financial Aspects Of Retirement
No matter how well prepared one is financially, contemplating retirement is still a big decision. It is one of the most impactful transitions we will go through in our adult lives. Some look forward to it with anticipation while others can’t imaging life without working. For those who have a positive feeling about retirement, there may still be hesitation regarding how they will manage their new found “free time”. It is the “third chapter” of our adult life and one that deserves to be meaningful and rewarding. Coaching can provide excellent support in building a vision and plan for moving into this chapter.
Career Change
Sometimes it seems that although life is good, work isn’t. We spend about half of our waking hours at work, getting to work and preparing to go to work so it is important that our work resonates with us. Our approach to career change coaching is to provide a framework for our clients to understand their cycle of job satisfaction, their passions and strengths for work and any obstacles that may appear when they contemplate job change. There is a need to understand our inner board of directors in this work. Often our “learned strengths” differ greatly from our “innate talents”, and it is the latter that lead to job satisfaction. By discovering these talents as well as what keeps us from deploying them more often we can redefine what gets us out of bed in the morning.
Leading Essentially 