The Power of Team

Coaching is really about being a member of a powerful team. Most of us know that when you are a part of committed partnership or a high performing team you can create miracles. That’s what coaching is. Coaching can be used by anyone in any strata of society for any area of one’s life: work, play, health, relationships. You name it, there’s a coach for that. We hold you accountable, while looking at your whole life.

Coaching relationships create a structure that keep you conscious and accountable to yourself and your goals. There’s a wonderful story about a man who goes to a lamppost on a weekly basis for a year and talks to the lamppost about everything that is going on in his life. The lamppost doesn’t talk, obviously, but it is there, as a listening ear, rain or shine. The man finds value in having this weekly chat where he can vent, troubleshoot and be listened to without judgement. At the end of that year, the man finds that by showing up on a regular basis and living the examined life, he has transformed. Showing up at the lamppost proves to be invaluable. Trained, professional coaches are like that lamppost but with exponentially more value.

We are there on a weekly basis as a listening ear, but we also have the gift of cognition and speech to reflect where you are, leading you to look where you may not have looked before. We are the lamp post, the mirror, the cheerleader, the strategist and the committed partner that you need to catapult you to your best life.

Coaching often improves the speed of getting to where you want to go. Rather than waiting seven years for your company to realize your worth, coaches can give you the support you need to ask for that promotion now. That baby weight that has lingered long enough to see your baby graduate from high school can be kissed goodbye once you engage a health and wellbeing coach. That dream relationship that you have been waiting to arrive on your doorstep while you eat bon bons and stalk others’ social media pages alone on a Saturday night? Your coach will get you out there and practicing something new.

We co-create new realities through asking questions and letting you discover the answers. Through skilled conversations you and your coach are able to create new practices and shifts in perspective to set you on the road to success in any area of your life.

Professional coaches aren’t afraid to go there with you to the dark side and get intimate with your shadow self. They know that the messiness of your life can be cleaned up and that no one is “too far gone”. They see the greatness in you even if you don’t see it in yourself. They are there to hold a space for your inner power, while together you discover what’s in the way and devise a plan to move it aside. Whatever objection you have (“I don’t have the money”. “I don’t have the time”. “I don’t have the support of my boss, my spouse, my parents”.) coaches partner with you and get you through to the other side where you are accomplishing the impossible dream.

CEOs and executives have known the power of coaching for years. According to CNN.com, “Once used to bolster troubled staffers, coaching now is part of the standard leadership development training for elite executives and talented up-and-comers at IBM, Motorola, J.P Morgan, Chase and Hewlett Packard. These companies are discreetly giving their best prospects what star athletes have long had: a trusted adviser to help reach their goals”.

According to the Harvard Business Review, “86% of companies say they use coaching to sharpen skills of individuals who have been identified as future organizational leaders”.

The magic of coaching is teamwork. There is power when two or more people work together to achieve a goal. Two is better than one. More thoughts, more experiences, more perspectives, more velocity, more support, more action. What could be better than that?

Here is the game changer: there is a whole community of professional coaches out there ready and available to open the door to your greatness. The Bermuda Coaching Network makes it easy to find quality coaches who can launch you to the next level.

Welcome to the Bermuda Coaching Network. Watch this space for more information on the power of coaching and how it can make your life better and better. You are worth it.

Jessica Lightbourne is a professional coach and Chairman of the Bermuda Coaching Network. For more information, call (441) 734-7344 or email BDAcoaching@gmail.com