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What Is Coaching? What is Coaching? Coaching is an interactive, collaborative process between an individual and/or a couple and a professional trained to help you identify important goals, set priorities, and develop a plan of action to help make your wishes come true. A coach can facilitate, encourage, mentor and provide guidance. A coach can help you identify areas of strength and those which have been a challenge, and help you to bridge the two. Coaching brings about behavioral change through both an intellectual and emotional understanding of what has interfered with your progress so far. A coach will not impose their goals on you. Rather, they will help you to focus on who you are, where you are, where you want to go, and how to identify and overcome any obstacles that have been in your way. You and your coach are a team with one common goal – making a fulfilling life a reality. A coach will also direct you as needed to the right resources, including professionals with expertise in other needed areas, e.g. financial, legal, health & fitness Coaching can take place in person or over the telephone. Frequently email is used as a helpful adjunct to the process Coaching is not a static, prescribed program, but rather an evolving process geared to your specific needs and goals. Coaching is not therapy. It is not designed to help you address deep-seated emotional problems that are interfering with your functioning. However, a coach will be able to direct you to the appropriate resource, should this be necessary. Additionally, while a coach will not offer financial, legal, or medical advice, the coaching process can help you identify when advice in these areas may be helpful, direct you to the appropriate professionals and help to integrate the advice and information you receive into your overall plan. In that sense, you coach can function as a “general contractor” of your life plan. C. What is Retirement Coaching? Retirement Coaching brings the skills and process of coaching to the specific issues faced by people who are planning for or are already in retirement. Through the coaching process, pre-retirees and retirees can be helped to replace some of the functions that work provided, i.e. socialization, status, self-esteem, a sense of purpose and life meaning, structure of time, etc. in ways that fit with their unique personality, lifestyle, skills and talents, values, financial status, etc. The retirement coaching process can help people work through decisions about relocation, shifting roles in spousal relationships, making decisions about balancing work and leisure, starting new careers, finding satisfying volunteer work, etc. The coaching process is an opportunity to work with someone whose only goal is to help you find out what you want and help you to achieve it. D. Why Would I Work With A Retirement Coach? Retirement is one of life’s most challenging transitions. It can impact almost every facet of one’s life in ways often difficult to predict. Many people, once retired from the job/career that shaped their day and their identity, find themselves floundering. After a honeymoon period, they find that without daily structure, a sense of purpose, and something to look forward to, they experience an emptiness that is hard to fill. Many studies find that both mental and physical health can suffer in the early post-retirement years. While many people do just fine at shaping a satisfying post-career life for themselves, a substantial number have reported that non-financial pre-retirement planning would have hastened their adjustment and led to greater fulfillment in this next phase of life. The coaching process, specific and time limited, can both speed up and enhance this transition.
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