A Research Paper By Andreea Nedelcu, Life Coach, SPAIN
What Coaching Can Bring to One’s Life
Objectives and Goals
This paper is based on a Research Study of 20 participants, found in various stages of their personal journeys and exposed to Coaching for the first time in their lives.
The purpose of this Coaching study was to identify current expectations about what coaching can bring to one’s life, experiment with pure coaching sessions on any life-related topic, and identify conclusions and takeaways from individuals never exposed to coaching before.
Target Audience
I have created and proposed to my network a Pro-bono experience for 20 people who were interested in playing the role of partnering clients by my side.
These were females, in their 35-45’s, coming mainly from a corporate background and driven by a great curiosity regarding the true meaning of coaching. We are faced with an online boom in coaching promotion and they felt secure to give it a try with someone they knew and trusted.
Their main areas of interest, where they sensed the highest amount of challenges to be resolved were:
- moving the Time resource by their side so that they could focus more on what is important
- a better understanding of themselves and the surrounding world, already part of
- a process of personal development various actions, decisions, or changes that they see as beneficial for their overall well-being but difficult to implement
Structure
Each partnering client benefited from 5 hours (5 sessions of 1 hour each), in the following breakdown:
- Discovery session – based on the initial survey the client filled out and submitted before the session; this session was meant to clarify the client’s understanding of coaching, discover the client’s expectations from the program, explain in more detail the coaching specifics, and answer any question from the client.
- Pure coaching session – on client’s real-life challenges
- Pure coaching session – on client’s real-life challenges
- Pure coaching session – on client’s real-life challenges
- Feedback session – based on the final survey the client filled out and submitted before the session; this session was meant to detail the client’s feedback, conclusions versus expectations, and takeaways for both the client and coach.
My Area of Interest
Throughout my experience with ICA, I wondered how anybody knew that coaching might transform their lives for the better, the same way it happened to me.
How do you wake up one day and start searching for coaches, similar to knowing that working out increases your chances for a healthier body and mind?
What makes somebody skip the bottle of wine when they want to plan something serious in their lives and understand there is another journey necessary to take in order to achieve that goal?
What will tell you that it’s not necessarily psychotherapy to reach out to when you need support with an important area in your life that seems to be going in circles for some time?
While with my peer coaches, these questions were answered from a place of knowledge and deep understanding, I felt the need to reach out to “normal people” and give them the chance to answer the same questions from a place of self-experience and testing.
Hence the Coaching Experience Offering involved 100 hours in total, distributed across 3 months (Mar-May 2023), and represented an invaluable source of insights, and a better understanding of my clients and their perspectives on life and coaching.
Main Highlights
The questions in the Final survey plus the Feedback session provided me with great insights into my areas of interest and clarified the most important and amazing takeaways my clients gained in this coaching experience.
Final Survey Questions:
- How would you describe the impact of this coaching experience on you?
- How would you best describe a coach? Pick one or more options:
- partner
- supporter
- lighthouse
- solid rock
- challenger
- other…
- What was the main breakthrough experienced during our sessions together?
- What was it that took you out of your comfort zone in the session?
- What is your biggest challenge now?
- How would your life look like once this challenge is overcome?
- When was the last time you felt really excited about the future?
- Pick one or more statements that best resonate with you.
- Confidence never comes before taking action (Brene Brown)
- Always act in alignment with the person you want to be (Brene Brown)
- Vulnerability is an act of courage (Brene Brown)
- Successful people always take responsibility for their choices and actions (Mel Robbins) A powerful mind is what makes the difference, as anything else is just an illusion (Ryan Mathie)
- It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean (Tony Robbins)
- What are your desires for the future?
- A final note to the coach…
Study Results
Coaching Impact
The main 3 categories identified by my pro-bono clients are actually the same categories that I can testify I felt as a coaching client myself.
Clarity & Peace
Before the coaching session, our struggles, obstacles, and even goals are perceived from a place of confusion and frustration, the light at the end of the tunnel being a concept difficult to embrace at that moment.
Self Discovery
I remember a discussion I had around 2 years ago with a person with an increased level of awareness, who when hearing that I enrolled in a coaching school to change careers told me: “Well this is just the official story you tell yourself and whomever else wants to listen to you, but the real reason you reached out to coaching is that you felt it’s time to understand yourself and the world better”. I have to admit I felt bothered by his remark and actually started a proving cycle in my thought trail as to what makes his opinion unjustified and that I actually know and understand myself very deeply. And boy, how far from reality I was!
For my study clients, the conclusion was that coaching should be part of our lives like sleep, job, and any other activity that fulfills our needs. They were taken by surprise to be able to reconnect to their real self and acknowledged this experience as a door opened to a further process of personal development.
How many of us had a previous practice of introspection? We were not helped here by our cultures or educational system, for the lucky ones it represented a process of individual research, probably in a very challenging period of their lives. The study clients really felt the positive effect of this “push to introspection”, as they phrased it.
Solutions Within Us
A very refreshing and comforting conclusion was that our solutions are to be found within us. And that brought such relief to my clients because they felt more powerful and trustful when the control was in their own hands. They understood that because we are so uniquely different individuals, our solutions would be crafted in detail to our personal needs and visions. They left the session feeling so empowered to start applying solutions they themselves were able to identify. Much less hesitation and what-ifs.
Coach Definition
The majority of 75% perceived the coach as a Partner, Lighthouse, and Challenger, feeling comfortable in a space of trust, support, and acceptance. When the self-belief was shaking, the coach’s belief in their own capabilities, strength, and potential was seen as similar to a Lighthouse, ready to guide and shine the light on what might be out of sight for the client.
Clients’ Breakthroughs
- Awareness and understanding of our sources of struggle make things more manageable.
- Importance of changing old patterns and having a plan to do that.
- Power of our words and language
- Increased focus when I get clarity on what’s holding me back.
- Anything is possible, once the intention is set in that direction and the action plan defined. Our reactions to external factors are just the tip of the iceberg, the real issues lie deeper below the surface.
- If I am fine with myself, everything will be fine.
- We are the sum of our previous experiences, which can turn into obstacles when we are not aware of them.
Comfort Zone Lost When…
- Questions were asked and only the client could provide the answer
- Invited to introspection
- Showing vulnerability and honesty to self
- Faced with the desire to overcome the status quo
- Discussing challenges openly without being judged
- Becoming self-aware
- Acknowledging fear and limiting beliefs
- Wondering if to trust the method and the coach
Biggest Challenges Post Coaching Experience
| Commitment and Action | – be able to implement the plans and stick to their success – change old patterns and stay on track, without derailing – turn dreams into reality |
| Stories vs. Real Triggers | – be able to see below the surface and tackle the real root causes |
| Healing | – heal past pains and be aware when they turn into current obstacles or saboteurs |
| Acceptance | – accept things as they are, show more acceptance towards self and others, as each of us is on our own life journey |
| Digestion | – absorb all new revelations and awareness and find the time to process everything |
Coaching Remains a Life Journey
We all want to be happy and feel successful in our life journey.
There is nothing more important to us than the internal equilibrium and peace we long to feel regarding anything that we consider important and meaningful.
Looking at the feedback received from my clients, I was able to identify resonating themes that derived from their Thank-you notes:
- Coaching offers an incredible space to discover our true selves, a version of ourselves that we might have not dared to embrace before.
- Coaching plays the role of a key opener for our hearts and minds, a deeply intimate gift for ourselves that turns into a valuable investment in our personal growth.
- Coaching also represents a tool for inside analysis, once we find out about its existence we place it on a very important shelf in our life toolkit.
- Coaching is a space, a space for guidance, support, trust, and confidence, a space for feeling complete and whole, appreciated, heard, and seen for our core self.
- Coaching acts as a booster for embracing new perspectives, fresh starts, and empowerment to follow our dreams.
At the end of this Study, I could not feel more grateful for the immense knowledge and deeply personal insights I have gained throughout this period.
Now I know and feel I am in a better place to identify my niche, my clients’ profiles, and the messages I want to convey about my coaching practice.
For me Coaching remains a life Journey, full of deep connections and impact, empowering like no motivational external speech, and powerfully fulfilling.
My takeaway is to offer people the chance to experience coaching so that they can feel its power. To be able to understand the value it can bring to their lives and well-being.
And by the way, coaching and wine do not exclude each other, I just wanted to make this clear!