Introduction: The First Session

Going into my first session with my new coach, I was fairly well prepared by the organization I was working with. They had me complete a questionnaire that helped me gather my thoughts about my goals, what was going well, what was not going well, and how I would know I was receiving value from coaching. This gave my coach and me a solid foundation to start our work.

My goals at that time were not particularly exciting. Because I was feeling unenthusiastic about my work, I wanted to develop a long-term strategy to leverage my paycheck into some passive streams of income so I could retire as soon as possible. I also wanted to rekindle some excitement in my career -- or at least not dread going to work. Wow, there is a reason to get out bed in the morning. My final goal was to tap into intrinsic motivation so I could move through my life with a sense of purpose.

As I waited for the call that would start my adventure in coaching, I was a bundle of conflicting emotions. I was excited at the possibility of making progress and busting free from my current life. I was nervous about whether my coach would like me. Heck, I was nervous that I might not like my coach. Rounding out my emotional conflict was fear. What if I spent all that money and coaching didn’t work?

When the call finally came, I discovered that I had won the coaching lottery. Steve and I seemed to be a great match. He had a solid background not only in coaching, but in working with clients needing therapy to overcome addictions and other serious challenges. For some reason, knowing that he had a broad range of prior experience helping people change was important to me. We were able to get down to business right away.

For the next thirty minutes or so, we talked about mastery and how that concept could change my approach to life, how to prepare for future sessions, and my homework. There was always going to be homework.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea of more thing to work into my hectic schedule. If growth was going to occur, though, I knew it would require some kind of change. For the next session, I needed to listen to the first half of a time management program and to do some work around mastery. I will touch on both of those in a future post.

The final part of my session was to identify one key thing I could take away from the call. This was such an important part of the whole process. It forced me to be more active in my coaching, by listening and incorporating some of what I was learning immediately. I had to understand what I was hearing, and take notes so I could remember what we had discussed. Coaching was not going to be a passive exercise in buying a teacher.

We scheduled the next call. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Yet I had a sense of excitement. There was change on the horizon. Change was exactly what I needed.