faqs
What is coaching?
Professional coaching is a client-centric collaboration, where the relationship is focused on the client’s goals and supports their vision.
The coach provides a safe, confidential, and non-judgemental environment. They help the client gain clarity, increase vision, connect with strong personal motivation, and overcome self-limiting thoughts. The coach helps the client choose goals and steps that suit their unique nature and experiences and discover their own abilities and resources.
Starting with an initial meeting, where the issues confronting the client are discussed and the scope of coaching is established, some early priorities and desired outcomes are established. This may include setting some short- and longer-term goals, and being accountable to someone increases the likelihood of action and sticking to these goals.
Meetings may take place regularly or on an as-needed basis, depending on the particular situation.
Positive psychology coaching focuses on the client’s personal strengths and resources, and on helping to further build their capabilities so clients can manage and sustain their wellbeing after coaching has finished. Goals are aligned with a client’s strengths and values and are those the client feels they authentically own.
What is positive psychology?
Positive psychology is the science of what makes people, groups and institutions thrive. The field evolved out of philosophy and humanistic psychology, with Abraham Maslow calling for a positive psychology in 1954. However, it wasn’t until the late 90’s that psychologists Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi successfully advocated for positive psychology as an academic field, to shift psychology’s predominant focus on disorder and dysfunction to ultimately a more wholistic focus.
Positive psychology includes the study of happiness (hedonia) and positive emotions, as well as meaning (eudaimonia).
Positive psychology is not the same as positive thinking. Both positive and negative qualities can lead to greater wellbeing and thriving. For example, boredom can lead to creativity, sadness to caring about others, while optimism can be misplaced. Additionally, the Negativity bias, grounded in our evolution, means we notice negative experiences more readily than positive ones. By intentionally shifting this focus when appropriate, we can start to change our brain’s wiring and be more able to face difficulties and discover opportunities.
A core part of positive psychology is a focus on strengths – which can mean using strengths more, using them less, and being flexible in the contexts in which they are best used.
The VIA survey is based on cross-cultural research that identifies 24 universal character strengths that we have in different measure. Strengths include creativity, bravery, love, humour, humility, social intelligence, teamwork, spirituality and self-regulation. You can take the free survey here: http://www.viacharacter.org/
The Strengths Profile also identifies core strengths as well as unrealised strengths, learned behaviours and weaknesses: https://www.strengthsprofile.com/en-gb
Strengths can also be identified through qualitative approaches.
My practice is informed by research in areas such as meaning and purpose; strengths; flow; creativity; wisdom; psychological flexibility; mindfulness; compassion; hope; motivation, and the influence of social, cultural, and institutional factors on work-life challenges and opportunities.