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Coaching FAQs

Frequently asked questions about coaching

Coaching: The essentials

A chemistry meeting is a free, no-commitment opportunity to talk with one of our team and discuss your coaching needs. They’ll explore what it is you’d like to work on and get a feel for your context and goals. You get an excellent opportunity to find out more about them as a professional.

They’ll answer all your questions and give you the information you’ll need to base your coaching decision on. You can book a chemistry meeting by visiting our public coaching calendar here.

While many people find it useful to use coaching sessions to identify, clarify and work towards their goals, not all coaching features goals. And of course, if you come to the table with pre-existing goals, we can work with that too.

Working with a coaching psychologist means moving beyond simple goal-setting. We explore what’s stopped you from achieving your goals in the past, whether your goals are authentically valued, while exploring the role of your thoughts, emotions and behaviour.

The first step is to book a chemistry meeting so you can discuss your needs and ask the practitioner any questions you’d like. In this video, we outline what to look for in an effective coach, and highlight:

  • Qualifications: They should have qualifications in coaching from a reputable training institution.
  • Accreditation: They should old professional coaching accreditation from a recognised body.
  • Transparency: They should be able to explain the approaches they use and how they tailor their approach to each client.
  • Ongoing supervision: They should be working with a senior supervisor on an ongoing basis to ensure they continue to work in a reflective and ethical manner.
  • CPD: They should be engaging in ongoing continuing professional development to sharpen their skills and keep up to date with the latest developments in the science of coaching psychology.

Coaching: Logistics

We typically offer a coaching programme of six, one-hour coaching sessions, scheduled monthly. This makes for a six month opportunity to make the changes that are important to you. There are of course exceptions to this, which we can discuss during your chemistry session.

We typically schedule coaching sessions for one hour. But don’t forget, you’ll be investing time in preparation for these sessions, and then taking time to reflect and try out new things in between.

We actively encourage you to reach out to your coach with questions, updates and requests for clarification. The action you take between your coaching sessions makes all the difference, so we don’t want you to delay action and wait until your next coaching session to ask questions.

The vast majority of our coaching sessions take place via video conference. Depending on your location, we can also schedule face-to-face sessions in your place of work. And of course, we can arrange a mix of the two.

Absolutely. Of course, this will depend on their availability. But we do our utmost to ensure you’re matched with a coach you feel you can work with. You can find out more about each of our coaches by visiting our team profiles page. Feel free to get in touch with them directly with any questions or just book a chemistry meeting with them via our appointments page.

Coaching: About us

You can find out lots more about our coaches by visiting their profiles here.

All our coaches are qualified psychologists, and hold additional coaching qualifications. This means they have accredited post-graduate training and significant industry experience. As members of the British Psychological Society, they are bound by its Code of Ethics and Conduct. You can find out more about what it means to be a chartered psychologist here.

Our experience is varied to say the least! We have worked in organisational contexts as diverse as: airlines, food and beverage conglomerates, local government departments, creative studios, professional services firms, IT start-ups, financial services organisations, marketing and PR agencies and giants in the pharmaceutical sector.

Coaching psychologists bring their understanding of how people think, feel and behave to coaching contexts. This might be coaching for wellbeing, careers coaching, coaching to overcome challenges or to develop new skills.

They build on their domain knowledge of people at work, and use coaching skills to support their clients’ journeys to valued outcomes. An example would be a deep understanding of the origins and causes of stress, its impact on wellbeing and performance, and an evidence-based stress management programme to help a client improve their situation.

As coaching psychologists, we use evidence-based approaches. Simply put, we use the approaches that work. Our coaching is underpinned by Acceptance and Commitment Theory (ACT) which supports wellbeing and performance at work. You can learn more about ACT here.

Coaching topics

We work with a range of work-related topics, and our three primary areas are wellbeing, productivity and effectiveness.

When it comes to wellbeing, there are no one-size fits all solutions. Our approach to to equip our clients with the insights and skills they need to develop and maintain their wellbeing in a way that’s aligned with their values and contributes to a more sustainable working style.

We emphasise an evidence-based approach to support your wellbeing journey. We might work on cultivating healthy habits to improve your general wellbeing. It might be about developing psychological flexibility to better deal with your thoughts and emotions and stress that is so common in the workplace. Or it could be the acquisition of healthy coping strategies, so you can deal with life’s challenges in a more sustainable way.

Check out this blog post to read more about how working with a coaching psychologist can support your wellbeing.

Productivity represents one of of our three core coaching areas. We define productivity as “doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time”. We avoid hustle culture, or any inference that we all need to be doing more! Our approach to productivity coaching is based on healthy and sustainable ways of working and getting our most important things done.

Common productivity topics include dealing with procrastination, effective goal-setting, learning how to overcome barriers to delegation, as well as general planning and organising. In productivity coaching, we often start with the essentials: helping clients get a better feel for how they’re investing their limited time, attention and energy each week, then checking how this aligns with their values and life priorities.

We use the term ‘effectiveness’ instead of ‘soft skills’ – a phrase that we think diminishes their importance in the workplace.

When it comes to effectiveness, our coaching could include a focus on interpersonal relationships, adapting to changing circumstances, transitioning into a new level of seniority, learning how to manage and lead others, boosting confidence and generally getting out of your comfort zone. When we focus on effectiveness at work, we’re looking at the skills that help us leverage our existing technical skills and knowledge. The essential ‘getting along and getting ahead’ tension when we work with other people!

Getting the most from coaching

You’ll get far more from your coaching experience if you engage with it from before your first session and maintain your focus throughout the programme – not seeing it as simply a set of meetings to attend. Successful coaching ends with you taking your key insights and skills and applying them elsewhere in your work and personal contexts.

When preparing for your first coaching session, consider the following points, to ensure you get maximum value and the best start possible.

1 – Clarify the logistics and practicalities: Ensure you have a link for the video call, or the address at which your session will take place. Don’t assume anything! Test your technology if coaching is to take place online, and ensure you have privacy for your call.

2 – Clarify your coaching focus: Think about what you want to get from coaching and make some notes to reflect this. You may have some very specific goals, or more of a general sense of movement and growth. Think about how you’ll share this with your coach and work with them to bring an actionable focus to your coaching.

3 – Make a list of any and all questions you have about the coaching process. Don’t worry, there are no silly questions – especially if this is your first time working with a professional coach.

4 – Block out some time in advance of, and after, the scheduled session. This will enable you to bring maximum focus to the session, and not worry about dashing to it, or thinking about your next meeting right after. As a result, you’ll also have some valuable preparation time before the session, and time to reflect immediately afterwards.

One of the most important factors that contributes to coaching success is maintaining your focus on your development between coaching sessions. Think of it like a work project. A project has a goal you’re working towards, dedicated time set aside to work on it, and specific tasks that move it forward. Coaching benefits from the same three ingredients: clarity on where you want to get to, time dedicated to the work, and action taken in between sessions. Progress, in coaching as in any project, doesn’t happen spontaneously.

Here are four practical habits that build all three into your routine.

1. Protect time for it

Time is one of our most finite resources, and it evaporates fast when things get busy. The trick is to treat your coaching time as seriously as you would a project deadline. Block out time immediately after each session to sit with your notes – what the conversation focused on, what you agreed to do, what it meant for you. That’s a far better use of the next twenty minutes than diving straight into the next task.

Beyond that, look for slices of time across the weeks between sessions where you can practise what you’ve learned, try out new skills, or work through any reflective exercises you’ve agreed with your coach. Put them in your calendar. A calendar is really just a record of the commitments you’re making – to yourself and to others – and the commitment you make from a coaching session is to yourself, not to your coach. Scheduling it makes it far less likely to fall off your radar.

2. Capture your questions as they arise

Questions often surface after a session ends, once you’ve had a moment to sit with your notes and think about what comes next – questions that simply didn’t occur to you while you were mid-conversation.

Write them down. Then either raise them straightaway or make a firm note to follow up with your coach soon. Don’t let them wait until the last minute before your next session, and don’t let them wait until the next session. If a missing answer is holding up your progress, that question deserves attention now, not later.

3. Take action, little and often

This is where the real movement happens. It’s impossible to list every action a coachee might take, but common examples include reading up on a relevant topic, or practising a new thinking skill – noticing your thoughts, thinking about your thinking, learning to step back from thoughts that feel intrusive or uncomfortable.

Understanding an idea in conversation is one thing. Putting it into practice is another entirely. That’s the gap between “I can see how that would help” and “I’ve tried it, felt the friction, and can also see the benefit.”

The mantra worth holding onto here is ‘little and often’. Practising a new thinking skill, habit, or productivity method in small, regular doses beats saving it all for a burst of “homework” the night before your next session. Little and often doesn’t disrupt your day, and it gives you room to notice the impact, adjust as you go, and treat the whole thing like an experiment until you find what actually works for you.

4. Reflect – properly

This deserves to stand apart from action, even though it is itself a form of action. Reflection is thinking about what you’ve learned, how it felt to explore these topics, and what impact your new habits are having on you and the people around you.

Keeping some form of coaching journal is one of the most valuable things a coachee can do. It lets you track how you’re thinking and feeling, how consistently you’re putting things into practice, and what you’re learning about yourself along the way – and it gives you a far more reliable record of your journey than memory alone will offer six months down the line.

Taking the time to reflect also forces you to slow down and mark, in writing, what mattered: what was important to you, what you’ve been doing, and what you might want to raise with your coach next time.

Coaching is a time-limited activity, so it’s important to prepare for the end of your programme. In this video, we look at the importance of maintaining your gains (e.g. self-awareness, new skills and attitudes) and then looking at ways to generalise them into other areas of your life.

Coaching versus other approaches

These are both activities that can support growth and development. But they differ in some very important ways. Most mentors work in the same industry as their mentee and/or have extensive industry experience. They are more senior than their mentee and actively share their professional experience to provide guidance.

Coaches don’t need to have worked in the same industry as their coachees and don’t guide their career decisions. In fact, using themselves as a benchmark or an example is only really appropriate in some quite specific contexts. An effective coach could be at an earlier stage in their career than their coachee and they don’t have a sole focus on career development and advancement.

Coaching and therapy overlap in a number of ways. It requires years of training to be a chartered psychologist – whether it’s coaching, counselling or clinical in focus. Coaches and therapists need to be registered with a professional body and engage in continuing professional development and professional supervision.

These activities differ more significantly in terms of their focus. Therapy may assist someone dealing with a significant life event (e.g. bereavement, relationship breakdown etc) or where their mental health is having a significant impact on their everyday activities (e.g. depression, anxiety etc).

Coaching psychologists are also concerned with the wellbeing of their coachees, but tend to work with individuals whose everyday life isn’t made significantly more difficult by a mental health condition. We explore some of the key differences in this episode of our podcast.

If we didn’t coach people whose mental health wasn’t perfect, we’d never have any clients! What’s key is that we’re clear on the focus of the coaching. Coaching could focus on someone’s career journey, while they worked with a therapist on their anxiety.

That said, this is a lot of work for one person to do – so we’re always mindful of the benefits of waiting until therapy has come to a natural conclusion before starting a coaching relationship.

There are no ‘one size fits all’ solutions here, so please feel free to get in touch with your questions about this topic and we can discuss whether coaching is a suitable activity for you at this point in time.