Getting the Most From Coaching: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Is something holding you back from doing your best work and creating the career you deserve? Coaching is a fantastic tool for achieving your goals and helping you thrive. I love working closely with HR professionals to help you feel unstuck and navigate the challenges you’re facing. 

As a Coach, my job is to support you to unlock new insights and get greater awareness about yourself as you identify challenges and test out new solutions. So that you can work through the change you’re looking for, with total clarity and confidence. 

If you’ve never had coaching or worked with me closely before, you might be feeling a little uncertainty about the unknown. So I wrote this blog to help you understand what to expect and how you can best prepare – so that you can get the very best from your coaching sessions.

Coaching is a structured conversation using powerful questions that are designed to help you unravel your thinking and develop solutions, yourself. When you show yourself the compassion you deserve and have the space to come up with the ideas yourself, you’re far more likely to buy into them and take action than if you have someone telling you what to do. 

It’s rarely about giving advice. You are the one in the driving seat and I’m just here to support you to find a solution to whatever it is that’s challenging you in your career.  I thought I’d share just a few of the most common desired changes I work on with clients:

• Being more strategic at work
• Building confidence
• Handling a difficult situation in your role
• Starting a new leadership role
• Transitioning into a new role
• Feeling more fulfilled in your career

As I also specialise in career coaching, there are times when I might suggest sharing some practical advice, such as improving your interview skills, your LinkedIn profile, or your CV. Because in those instances, a more hands-on approach is going to be more helpful than asking you questions.

I’m always happy to adapt my approach when you need more direct guidance during our sessions. While coaching is our foundation, I can readily shift to mentoring (giving advice) whenever that better serves your needs. I’ve gathered many practical resources and frameworks that could help you tackle specific challenges – like becoming more strategic at work, which I know many of my coaching clients can find challenging. I’d be glad to share helpful tools, such as strategy frameworks when they could support your progress.

One of the best ways to prepare for your coaching sessions is to think about what topic, challenge, area, or goal you’d like to focus on before you come to the session. 

You may have signed up for coaching to get help with a particular challenge. But as time passes and the coaching progresses, you might find you need support with something slightly different. Perhaps things at work have changed, or a sudden crisis has appeared, and you’d like to focus on how to resolve it. That change of focus is, of course, totally fine. 

If you aren’t sure what you’d like us to focus on in the session, below are a selection of questions you can read through and ask yourself before the session. Hopefully, one of them will help reveal a useful topic for us to explore together in the session. Here they are:

• What are you feeling stuck about? 
• What’s challenging you at work right now?
• What goals are you excited about achieving?
• What is getting in the way of your happiness or your success at work?
• What is worrying you at the moment?
• What strengths would you like to develop further?
• What opportunities do you see for growth in your current role? 
• What successes have you had recently that you’d like to build on? 
• What feedback have you received that you’d like to explore or act upon? 
• What new skills or knowledge are you interested in developing?

If you don’t have time to give the focus of the session much thought, don’t worry. I can help you figure this out at the beginning of our time together.

Finally, it can be so helpful to schedule some buffer time before your coaching session to get into the right headspace and mindset.  You might like to try this one minute meditation by Headspace to detach yourself from all the busyness of the earlier part of your day. Then you can reflect on what’s been happening ahead of this session. 

I’ll always start our coaching sessions by checking in on how you’re feeling and what you’d like to focus on. If you’re having a series of coaching sessions, I’ll also ask how things have been since we last met. From there, we’ll have a structured conversation where I’ll ask questions to help you explore your thoughts, broaden your perspective, and develop solutions that feel right for you.

Throughout our time together, we’ll focus on what matters most to you. I’ll give you space to think deeply and unravel your ideas, asking thoughtful questions rather than jumping in with advice. Most people find they come up with their best insights when they have time to process their thoughts fully.

Between sessions, you might find it helpful to reflect on:

• What action did you take since the last session?
• What successes and challenges have you had since then?
• What would you like to get out of or focus on in your next session?

To get the most from each session, find a quiet, private space where our online session won’t be disturbed. This might sound obvious, but eliminating distractions like phone or email notifications can help make sure your thinking doesn’t get derailed right when you’re in deep thought. It can also be really valuable to have a dedicated notebook for your coaching sessions, so that you can track your progress over time and easily refer back to key points and ideas.

By the end of your session, you will have gained new insights or awareness and hopefully feel excited about testing out some new ideas. If you’re having a series of coaching sessions, you’ll have the chance to explore how your ideas worked in practice in your next session. This allows us to celebrate successes, work through any challenges that come up, and you can decide if you’d like to tweak your approach or focus on something completely different.

Just like before the session, adding a little buffer time afterwards to reflect, process the discussion, and plan your next steps while everything is still fresh in your mind is helpful. Even just spending ten minutes on this can make a massive difference in helping you make real progress from your coaching experience.

Throughout our work together, I encourage you to share feedback about what you personally find helpful or if there’s anything you’d like us to adjust. My natural style is to challenge gently with empathy and friendliness, but some clients prefer a faster pace or a more direct, challenging approach. You’re in the driving seat, and the coaching is for you – so sharing your preferences helps me support you in the way that works best for you.

If you’re reading this because you’ve booked coaching with me, I’m really looking forward to working with you and supporting you in your growth. Whether you’re thinking about confidence, handling tricky work situations, or figuring out how to thrive in your role, coaching can be such a powerful tool for development. If you haven’t booked yet but are considering it and have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’m always happy to help.