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A General Manager requested coaching assistance to help him prepare a 30 min. speech to a large crowd. The client had made the initial preparation, but have difficulty to put things together. Through a process of coaching questions, cognitively, the client was satisfied with the overall logic and flow, relationship of the few key points.

This coach did a role-play i.e. with me, the coach, as the audience-representative and got the coachee to spell out what assumptions he made of the typical audience for his speech and key messages. More clarity was elicited and underlying assumptions challenged.

Overall, the client was able to exercise his cognitive intelligence to put the whole structure together for a coherent speech relevant to the audience.

Then the client showed some anxiety on how to put the many slides together and worried about forgetfulness of some fine points during speech, and he did not like to use memory aids like cards or footnote. He mentioned he often had such anxiety in the past during preparation, although the outcome of the speech was good – with good compliments from audience. But he can’t help to have nervousness and anxiety on all sorts of things before the event.

Another session is arranged on the application of his emotional intelligence to reduce the state of anxiety and worry.

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A manager was upset and felt depressed. He related several problems he faced : not gaining higher management support on his ideas, received low performance rating recently, management bias against him …He felt de-motivated....

Compared with last year, it was different experience. He felt great then, high energy and enthusiasm in his work, He was more motivated.

There were external changes between the above two periods : new boss, different scope of work,

Today motivation level is far less than previous. The client was made to focus on the common factors that gave rise to the stated motivation level, before and now.

The coach helped the manager to scan through a good spectrum of his life to focus on the positive factors that brought about the attained motivation level. The manager began to pay more attention to the many achievements he made, which he took for granted.

In this process, motivation level was raised and new ideas generated to take personal action immediately.

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A senior executive felt bombarded with tons of useless, counter-productive paperwork. He felt stressed.

While the coach helped him to raise his consciousness of his body sensation and reaction to the stress, the feedback given was that he could not get in touch with the sensation, nor can be remember vividly the scenes that gave rise to the stress. He could not remember the past events : positive or negative experiences or the details, or rather, he buried the emotion so that he could move on with his hectic life, more rationally and objectively, he thought.

Lately he has some health issues.

As he explored what happen and what did not happen as he continues to use such strategy : to ignore and bury any arising emotions in order to handle his day to day life, (work and family), he discovered a few things.

a) He could maintain his momentum to cope with the never ending work demands.

b) A mixed feeling of facing routine of life Vs activities-filled life.

c) He creates more and more diversified activities (not necessary work related) to get himself busy, e.g. finance, investment, social work etc.

d) He may face a wall of “nothing to do” during retirement as there is no more ever demanding work activities.

e) He may not know exactly what he really wants in life.

The above gives rise to more coaching in the future.

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A coachee-client is not happy with the current situation and feels rather frustrated and depressed. She seeks a new direction in life and expresses that as her expected outcome from the one-hour coaching conversation.

She has some vague ideas of the new direction in life, but rather narrowly focused. This coach helps her to expand to larger chunk with more rooms for exploration and brainstorming.

She manages to come out with more possibilities, options, choices …., in areas whereby she can have her own sphere of control and influence.

Much Solution Focus and Positive thinking are used, to help her to stay focused on the positive attributes and positive scenarios creation, though often she tends to drift into zones of negativism; obstacles, difficulties.

Much positive energy is elicited with obvious excitement and smiles in her face.

Towards the end of the session, she was asked:

“How satisfied are you with this coaching session?”

“Very satisfied.”

“In a scale of 0 to 10, what is your satisfaction level, 10 being most satisfied.”

She thinks for quite a while and her expression changes to a more serious mood, and says “6 out of 10”

“Then what are the things we could address that can bring your satisfaction level to 7,8,9 or even 10?”

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A client is disturbed by some very unkind comments, made known to a number of staff, by the boss. She felt tremendous pressure from the un-reasonable demand and expectation from the management. She is thinking quitting. There is similar pattern created in the past, with change in employers several times.

She feels at a loss on her direction in life and wonders what should be her direction and whether the current job suits her or not. She has moved several times with different nature of jobs.

When attention is directed to what she really wants in life, she speaks with high energy, passion and enthusiasm. The goals expressed are far fetched; the end state described has no connection with the current – her frustrating work, not so stimulating family and social life.

In a scale of 0 to 10, she assesses her current state as reaching 5 in relation to her goals. She goes on listing all the positive attributes and successes that bring her to the score of 5.

Her suggestions / ideas to move from 5 to 6, are again mixed up with her end state, her goals – vague and divorced from the present.

This is a typical problem for many people, vague idea of the future state or vision, a big chuck of things, but cannot break down to smaller chucks for action to be taken daily, and immediately.

She is coached to formulate action plan for the next day – making creative ideas out of the seemingly hopeless, frustrating work, interaction and relationship with people, as possibly building foundation towards her goals.

Making connection between the grand vision (future goals) and the minute daily tasks – how to accomplish the journey of a 100 miles by taking the first step of 1 foot right in front.