Need? Probably not. But, if you don’t believe you can achieve your goals, or you can’t seem to stick with them, or don’t think you can learn how to get there, or are overwhelmed with stress and can’t even start—or even if you just want to ensure that you do well at the new responsibilities in front of you—then it’s likely that coaching can help you.

Depending on your situation, there are a number of ways that coaching can help:

• If you’re not sure how to accomplish your goals, coaching can help you develop a plan and a path to get there. 
• If you’ve been trying over and over without success, working with a coach can help you get clarity on the beliefs or behavior patterns that are holding you back.
• If you’re doing something new, working with a coach can help you stay on track through the inevitable setbacks.

I’d love to be able to tell you “3 sessions” or “6 months” or “129 consecutive days of practice”. But, the only true answer I can give you is “It depends.” It depends on your goals, your limiting beliefs, and how much you’re willing and able to practice between sessions. But, I can tell you this:

• Every one of our sessions will be focused on your goals and your desired outcome.
• You should walk away from every one of our sessions with at least one new thing to practice in your life, or at least one new perspective on your own experience that you didn’t have before.
• You should be able to see a difference in your life after working with me for just a few months.

First, I’ll ask you a lot of questions about what’s going on. I’ll ask what you want to accomplish, what that means to you, and how you’re feeling about things. I may point out some things; maybe I think you’re messing something, or maybe I think your actions aren’t consistent with your goals. Finally, I’ll probably have some suggestions for things you can do outside of our sessions to improve your mindset.

A Success Mindset is the approach to life that makes you most likely to be successful (whatever your goals are), and consists of the following 5 qualities:

• Self Confidence: If you don’t believe that you can accomplish what you’re trying to do, that makes it harder to try. On the other hand, if you have an over-inflated vision of yourself, you drive people away and choose unrealistic goals.
• Growth Mindset: If you want to be successful but you aren’t yet, you probably need to learn new things and stretch your capabilities. Having a growth mindset means that you believe that you’re capable of learning and growing, and understand what that process is like as you’re going through it.
• Perseverance: Perseverance has two components: willpower, which is the willingness in the moment to do the hard or tedious thing instead of the instant gratification thing, and grit, which is the ability to keep returning to the hard thing over and over for months and years, even in the face of setbacks.
• Stress Management: On the path to any sort of success, there will be stress, and unpleasant emotions, and difficulties. If you’re going to make it, you need to have a way to deal with those.
• Personal Responsibility: It might be true that your situation or background or identity places you at an unfair disadvantage. Regardless, becoming successful is up to you. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Also, it’s your responsibility to choose what goals you want to work towards.

Lots of things! Most of my clients find that they get increased self-confidence, decreased stress, and are more capable of handling whatever life throws at them on any given day. Many of them find that they’re more able to stick with new habits, or better able to handle new positions, or more motivated to keep at their old habits.

Having said that, what you get out of coaching largely depends on what you put into it. If you get a gym membership and then never go, or hire a personal trainer and then don’t take their recommendations, you’re not going to get much out of the experience.