FAQ

What is coaching?

Coaching is a conversation-based approach where a coach and a coachee (also known as a client) partner together to address any challenges that the client faces and is willing to address.

Coaching is based on the assumption that the coachee is resourceful, creative and whole, and most importantly the ultimate expert on their own life. Following this guiding principle, the coach rarely gives any advice during the coaching sessions. Instead, the main role of a coach is to facilitate a process which is flexibly shaped according to the preferences, strengths and needs of each coachee. In the course of the coaching engagement, the client identifies the roots of their challenges and discovers more about their inner resources and how to harness them in order to move forward towards their personal and professional goals.

Often coaches focus on a particular niche where their coaching approach is most effective (e.g. career coaching, executive coaching, health coaching, relationship coaching, productivity coaching, etc.). However, no matter what the topic is, the essentials of the coaching process are the same. And, in my view, one of the biggest strengths of coaching is that it is largely universal and applicable to an extremely broad variety of professional and personal circumstances.

The best way to get a better understanding of coaching is experiencing a session with a skillful coach. This would allow you to witness how the different elements of a coaching conversation enable you to see your situation with new eyes and unlocks your ability to come up with actions that feel adequate, authentic, comfortable and exciting to you. Most coaches offer a free first session. If you get a chance, take up such offers because they are a priceless gift. I am not exaggerating when I say this. Even a single coaching session might prove to be enlightening or life-changing. Coaching's ultimate goal is to transform your life and work, step-by-step, one session at a time. And because of that, every individual session is really meant to have a lasting impact.

To check for yourself whether this can be true and to experience coaching first-hand, I invite you to book a FREE session with me. 

Final remarks: 

• This is my way of briefly explaining what coaching is. For a complete explanation of what coaching is and is not, please visit the International Coaching Federation (ICF) website. 

• It is extremely important to emphasize that coaching is NOT a replacement of therapy. However, coaching can complement therapy in many cases when the client and their trusted mental health professional consider it beneficial. 

• If you identify a need to seek mental-health support and you don't know where to start, this might be a useful resource for English speakers in Germany. Similar resources are available in other world regions and in other languages.

Is coaching something I should try?

• Do you wish something was different in your life? 

• Or at work? 

• Do you feel like you can change it, but you don’t know how to? 

• Or do you know exactly what you need to do, yet you find yourself not acting upon it?

These questions are so broad you probably answered yes to more than one. And, honestly, they don’t really need to be more specific. Coaching can be helpful to anyone who is willing to learn more about themselves, examine their unique circumstances and discover how to thrive in the constantly changing life situations they encounter.

It is impossible to write an explanation which encompasses all the possible scenarios in which coaching can make a lasting impact. But below are a few examples which can hopefully give you a more concrete idea about the very broad spectrum of possible coaching topics:

• Coaching can help those who have some goal in mind and struggle to start or make the cherished progress.

• It is also for those who don’t know what goals to set for the future.

• Coaching is for people who work really hard and achieve a lot but feel like they’re missing out on something else in life.

• It is for anyone who has a feeling that something in their life can be (even) better.

• Coaching can help you find yourself, or redefine yourself in your own eyes.

• It can help you deal with challenging situations or help you thrive even when a lot is changing.

• Coaching can help you build more meaningful, nourishing and successful interactions with those around you.

• But probably most importantly, coaching can help you uncover what your strengths are and how to work best to harness them in any situation.

Just like me, most other coaches offer a session absolutely free of charge before they offer you to commit to any further coaching engagements. Keep in mind that every coach is different and finding the right match for you might take a few tries. If coaching with me sounds like something you want to try, I invite you to book a FREE session with me.  I’d be really happy to give you a flavor of the coaching world and let you get a first impression of my coaching style. You won’t need any special preparation, just curiosity, willingness to be open and look inside within yourself, as well as an hour in a quiet spot with a good internet connection. Just contact me to express your interest, and I’ll get back to you within a couple of working days.

How do coaching sessions work?

The coaching conversation often happens over a series of individual coaching sessions with various length - typically anything between 15 and 90 minutes but most frequently 30 or 60 minutes. 

Each session usually focuses on a topic that the client brings up and would like to address. During the session, the coach and the coachee explore the topic and agree on a desirable outcome, which could be anything from getting clarity on the topic or recognizing the underlying obstacles, to finding their resources to approach the subject and defining actions to solve a particular problem. 

The coaching conversation is a partnership in which the coach asks questions and shares observations which aim to shed light onto the deeply rooted origins of the coachee’s challenges. This new understanding is then used as a natural source to inspire changes and to identify a way forward. More often than not, the main goal of the coaching sessions is for the coachee to leave equipped with new insights, a plan to utilize these insights and motivation to implement it. 

Every coaching session is self-contained, and in principle, even one session can be sufficient to address the coachee’s challenge. However, longer coaching relationships of several sessions have been shown beneficial to create lasting changes in the client’s lives. Having multiple sessions allows the exploration of multiple topics which in turn, increases the probability to encounter and address multiple interlinked challenges the coachee might face. 

Over a longer coaching journey together, the coach and coachee develop a better partnership which allows for more in-depth exploration and leads to more impactful outcomes of the sessions. This is the reason why having an initial conversation with the client is so important for both sides. A first session together provides an opportunity to get a flavor of what it is like to work together and allows the coach to make a suggestion on the duration of the coaching process. 

How did I become a coach?

I discovered coaching in 2021 and almost immediately started an in-depth training to become a life coach. Looking back, I can say that what I needed at that time was to hire a coach and work on my professional challenges as an academic researcher. However, back then I felt like I had too little information on what coaching is and how (and even whether) it works. I was intuitively drawn to it, but before I could trust the process, I had to convince myself that the coaching techniques are effective, well-founded and backed by science.

I am an astrophysicist by training and I have spent the best part of the last decade researching comets and asteroids in the Solar System. In the past years, however, I gradually gave more and more space to my ever-growing interest in understanding human behavior. I started reading, listening and watching more content on self-improvement, hoping to discover applicable strategies to tackle the really intricate challenges I and those around me seem to continually face while navigating our careers and every-day lives.

The deeper I dove into the self-improvement world, however, the more I noticed that there is a huge discrepancy between research-proven techniques and their efficacy in real-life scenarios. A quick search on the internet gives you instant access to overabundant formulas for solving almost any problem you will ever encounter at work or in their personal life. Yet, most people fail to actually put these to practice to see the results. 

I didn’t let myself stay with this disheartening realization for too long, however. Soon after I arrived at the conclusion that a large fraction of the self-help content available is too general and rarely directly applicable, I found out about coaching. I heard from different sources that coaching is what I had been looking for - a versatile tool for customizable and individual solutions for self-improvement. At first I was skeptical. Very skeptical. Many of the acclaimed coaches I had encountered online were some of the exact same people who bombarded you with recipes for success. 

Soon afterwards, though, I was able to change my mind. The biggest shift happened after I joined one of the BeCoach Academy free half-day coaching trainings. I must admit I didn’t do thorough research beforehand. So it was mostly due to luck that I connected with the right people. In hindsight, I feel very lucky that almost immediately after I allowed my curiosity for coaching to grow, I met trainers who embody, practice and teach the genuine coaching mindset. After that first event, I was determined to begin training as a coach and eventually to become a certified coach myself.

My coaching training has allowed me to understand the reasoning behind every element of the coaching process and to master integrating every key component to create an impactful session. In the past months, I have also familiarized myself with the research literature backing up the various coaching techniques through research on their effects, as well as their foundations in psychology and neuroscience. As part of my development as a coach, I've also had countless opportunities to experience the coaching process as a coachee, and to notice its profound effects on getting to know myself and how I can navigate my life more consciously.

After going through the steep curve of this learning journey, I can now say with confidence that I am convinced the coaching process is efficient, ethical and rooted in science. I feel familiar with coaching’s strengths and limitations, and I feel comfortable recommending it as an approach. Now that I’ve discovered coaching and I've become a coach, I feel like I am in a possession of a precious tool that can change other people’s lives. This was something I had often missed as a scientist and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with as many people as possible.