The Day Loans Blog

Outside of the sports industry, most people, particularly in North America, are unfamiliar with coaching as a helping profession. The purpose of this article is to introduce / reinforce what coaching is and the role coaches play in helping people to find more value in their life.

Coaching is defined by its governing organization, the International Coaching Federation (ICF), as, “an ongoing partnership that helps clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives”. Through the process of coaching, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance, and enhance their quality of life.

In each meeting, the client chooses the focus of conversation, while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions. This interaction creates clarity and moves the client into action. Coaching accelerates the client’s progress by providing greater focus and awareness of choice. Coaching concentrates on where clients are today and what they are willing to do to get where they want to be tomorrow.

Phil Jackson coached Michael Jordan to help him to realize his own athletic potential and, thereby, achieve extraordinary results that were consistent with his goals. Phil provided Michael with the edge that allowed him to reach beyond his own limitations. His job was to provide Michael with an outside perspective and keep him focused on his goals. Well, that’s what we coaches do for those who seek a better life in their career, in business, improved health, better relationships, etc. Our task is to point out the things our clients can’t see and offer them ideas on how they can improve their performance. At the same time we are motivating our clients to do their best. We challenge our clients to go beyond where they would normally stop. We help them to tap into their greatness allowing them to share it with the world.

Much of the coach’s efforts are fueled by their belief that individuals are intelligent, gifted, resourceful and possess great levels of integrity and conviction. While clients may initially appear to be clueless about how to get from where they are to where they want to be, effective coaches view them as being the masters and creators of their destiny as opposed to being victims. Oftentimes, they’ve taken the harder road to success instead of just deciding who they want to be or what they want to have and then acting on that decision. My role as a career and life coach, for example, is to help my clients achieve their goals by working smarter not harder.

Through coaching, clients learn how to rid themselves of those things in their life that drain their energy and sabotage their success. My colleague and mentor, Cheri Baumann (www.myprivatecoach.com) describes the process as, “Out with the old, non-effective clutter, and in with new things that you want in your life.” Clients learn more about managing areas of their life like money and time in order to have the things they want to have. Additionally, clients learn to become more in tune with their needs as well as the needs of others. This allows them to broaden their network and influencers in ways that put them in greater alignment with their goals. It’s the client’s agenda, not the coach’s that’s most important at all times.

John P. Carvana is a certified Career and Life Purpose Coach. He owns and operates LPF Consulting (http://www.discoveredpurpose.com) which specializes in working with motivated individuals in career transition and those seeking executive coaching. He is featured as the “#1 Career Coach” with MyPrivateCoach.com (http://www.myprivatecoach.com). He has thirty years of experience as a career service provider. He is a skilled trainer and motivational speaker and has received national awards and recognition for his work with clients.

In recent times the most noticeable public role for Peter Sutherland as chairman of BP PLC was to play host at the company’s yearly meeting. But after a run of oil spills, dangerous accidents and an energy-trading scandal at BP, the 60-year-old one-time rugby player has charged head first into the scrum.

Last year, the Irish politician and prominent banker forced Chief Executive John Browne to publicly commit to his retirement date. After Lord Browne’s surprise decision last month to leave a year and a half earlier than previously planned, Mr. Sutherland must now bolster BP’s image and manage the company’s first executive-suite transition in more than ten years.

Despite a persistent rise in oil prices its shares rose just 4.5 per cent in 2006, in comparison with a 36 per cent rise by Exxon Mobil Corp. and 15 per cent at Royal Dutch Shell PLC. Yesterday, the company announced 4th quarter net income decreased by 22 per cent, in part reflecting lower production and lower natural-gas prices.

BP, meanwhile, faces U.S. criminal probes on multiple fronts — oil spills and corrosion in Alaska; a a refinery explosion in March 2005 which claimed the lives of 15 in Texas; as well as its energy-trading practices, with federal officials alleging BP traders surreptitiously influenced propane markets in 2004. BP refutes this claim and says it is cooperating with investigators on all three inquiries.

Mr. Sutherland’s higher profile also underpins a pattern that goes further than BP: a transition in the boardroom dynamics at many of Europe’s largest publicly traded companies. Nonexecutive directors here have in the past been criticized for leaving too much decision-making in the hands of powerful executives. Now, many firms are moving to strengthen their boards with independent and strong directors.

Up until Shell were shaken by an accounting scandal in 2004, Shell’s British holding company had as its chairman a professor of geology. After the scandal, it got in Jorma Ollila, former chief executive officer of Nokia Corp as chairman. Unilever also appointed an external chairman last month to cap a restructuring at the Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods giant.

The goal of Mr. Sutherland at BP from the beginning has always been to establish a “robust” and independent board structure he said in an interview recently. After stints as Ireland’s attorney general and Europe’s competition czar, Peter Sutherland took over negotiations known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in Geneva in 1993. There, he clinched the Uruguay Round, a pivotal trade agreement that set the stage for today’s World Trade Organization. For a man who has achieved so much it is difficult to forsee where he will find his next challenge.