Careers Consultants

Coaching is Not Just For Football Teams
By Jo Parfitt

Coaching is not just for football teams. Neither is it confined to people with career dilemmas. According to Linda Mason-Hahn, the resident coach at the Expat Exchange website: 'A coach can help you step out of the chaos, regain control and make conscious decisions about the life you would most like to create.'

A coach can provide strategies for overcoming the obstacles that slow you down, whether you are starting your own business, or need support with transitions, expatriation or repatriation. Mason-Hahn lists the typical scenarios a coach may be asked to help with including: assisting in defining how foreign postings meet your needs and honour your value systems; designing a productive expatriate experience; assessing the benefits and trade-offs to both employer and employee family.

In many expatriate postings counsellors who can help with these issues are hard to find or have impossibly long waiting lists. And, even if counsellors are at hand, you may feel uncomfortable opening your heart face to face with a stranger. One of the beauties of coaching is that it needs no physical contact. Many coaches never meet their clients at all. Sessions take place at an appointed time for about half an hour, over the telephone. International telephone charges are reducing all the time and the cost of this is no longer prohibitive. Many coaches offer additional support by email free of charge but a relationship that is conducted purely by email would not be effective. You can learn from the tone of voice a client uses whether he is enthusiastic or exhausted by a certain aspect of his life.

Yazmin Headley started her training with Coach University two years ago. Just six months later she was earning money, yet she has still not quite finished her studies. Despite being born in Leeds, she spent 16 years of her childhood and much of her adulthood abroad as an expatriate and wanted to work in a field that allowed her to have overseas clients. Now back in Reading, England, Yazmin earns her living, over the telephone, helping clients with a variety of problems.

'I believe that living overseas offers the biggest learning curve you are likely to get,' she says. 'Self-esteem is a big problem for many people, wherever they are living but it becomes more noticeable when you are out of your natural environment.'

According to an article in The Denver Post, 'Coaches are a new breed of counsellors,' yet coaching has perhaps a more positive reputation, asking clients to focus on the future rather than the past.

'The synergy between the coach and client creates momentum,' writes Mason-Hahn at Expat Exchange.

'Wherever you have movement you get friction and that friction will turn to growth,' says Headley. 'There is something about being an expat that makes you grow up. And if you don't grow up you don't survive.'

While being an expatriate is not an issue in itself a big problem, it is the fact that so many other issues become involved that crises arise. Living in a the microsociety of your own immediate family can exacerbate problems. Divorce is prevalent. Career issues become more complicated. Ms Headley finds all of her clients through referrals and finds that she helps equal numbers of men as women, dealing with as many life problems as career issues.

Gail Valenti also works as a coach, and also specialises in expatriates. Most clients hire her to make their transition easier. A multi-mover herself, she was always saddened to see people who who had not adjusted to their new surroundings. Overseas telephone bills can limit coaching possibilities for some people, so Ms Valenti is happy to combine email and telephone sessions to keep costs down.

'I enjoy playing a part in solving problems and teaching people skills for dealing with transition,' she says. 'The support and focus a coach gives is a key ingredient to a successful adjustment.'

Many people are natural coaches, and find themselves drawn to help and inspire other people. Those people who have no formal experience may well discover that coaching could still be a career possibility. The Coach University provides its training by telephone and the internet to students all over the world. Over the last ten years the college has produced more than 3,000 graduates. Anyone who would like a taster of the course can participate in a four hour 1,2,3 Coach! Teleclass free of charge though the complete course, of 200 hours of Teleclasses costs US$3,495.

Meet the Coach at Expat Exchange on http://www.expatexchange.com or contact Linda Mason Hahn direct on expatcoach@aol.com

Find out more about coaching from Yazmin Headley on +44 (0)118 947 9890 or coachyazmin@aol.com.

You can contact Gail Valenti at lgvalenti@aol.com.

Find out more about Coach University