“In addition to training, you need a broad spectrum of life experiences to provide coaching help. Having lived a life that includes second, third and fourth acts, I believe I have that broad base. After more than four decades of financial and career consulting, I wanted to learn more, to get deeper with my clients. Consulting addresses one challenge at a time — buying a home, dealing with a business partner, changing careers. But coaching looks at your entire life. It affects your core wiring, thereby giving you a view of the big picture.” — Stephen Pollan
What Is Coaching? How Is It Different From Consulting?
While consulting points out the best road to take to solve a current problem, coaching helps you draw a roadmap to follow for the rest of your life. Coaching is about you: where you are in your life, where you want to go and how you're going to get there. Your coach doesn't tell you what to do or give you advice. Your coach questions, prompts and guides. The result is an indelible evolution of your life.
Stephen has focused his professional coaching practice on what he calls Transitional Coaching.
What Exactly Is Transitional Coaching?
Over the years, Stephen has discovered that some of the greatest challenges his clients faced weren't their own, but rather those of their grown children and aging parents. How do you help your child who just graduated from college and has hit a brick wall? How do you help your parents, who have just retired or discover the nest is empty and are wondering what to do next?
These are examples of involuntary transitions, life-changes your children and parents face that are outside of their control. To overcome these obstacles, Stephen has incorporated the wisdom gained from helping hundreds of clients with his study of the best practices of life coaching.
Stephen's transitional coaching will help your children and parents reset their internal compass to adapt to life's changes. It will help them remove their fear of the future. And it will help them realize the hidden gifts and opportunities that involuntary transitions, difficult as they are, can offer.
Stephen's Approach To Transitional Coaching
As a coach, Stephen will cover the entire circle of your child or parent's life — career, professional relationships, personal relationships, family, health and finance. He'll inspire them through a step-by-step thinking process to help them realize their dreams. His premise is that they — and only they — can decide what goals are satisfying and achievable.
Stephen's methodology adds an accelerant: He'll point out the small signposts to look for to speed the process along. He may give them work assignments to meet the goals they've chosen: suggest they read certain books, study certain situations, or interview certain people. Sessions may be in person, by phone or a combination of the two.
Stephen will honor the fact that it's their life, and they are in charge. He'll be unconditionally non-judgmental. He won't look for the "why" of their choices, because that's a psychotherapist's domain. Stephen believes that your child or parent already has the answers within them. What Stephen does is help in the "mining" process.