What is Coaching?
Coaching is a way to create the life you truly want to live! It will support you to develop your potential and talents, your hopes wishes and dreams as well as to discover more of your authentic self, and work towards real fulfillment.
Coaching is a one-on-one interaction in which your coach works with you in order to help you clarify your thinking, create a clear vision, discover new possibilities and potentialities, set goals and create a strategy for achieving them. Your coach will help you implement your strategy – dealing with the obstacles and helps you through fears and discomforts that often come when making changes, while offering support and encouragement so that you actually achieve what you are after.
Your coach can also work with you on a single, specific issue or goal, such as a creative project, writing a book, finding a new career or moving through a life transition or facing a crisis.
Like sports coaches, a personal coach provides an unbiased outside eye to help you see things more clearly, applies specific techniques, shares learnings from life’s experience and cheers you on. And most of all, the synergy of coaching – the creativity of two minds working together towards your objectives is extremely empowering.
Who works with a coach?
Coaching is for those who want to be proactive in their lives – not just to wait to see what comes, but to actively decide what you want and pursue it and pursue it with passion.
Often people who have a life coach already have good lives and want them to be better in some or in numerous ways. Working with a coach requires readiness and commitment to take charge of what you want and then to go for it. It requires courage to drive through the obstacles to change, then when you become fully engaged and directing your life in such a way , the rewards can be amazing.
Purpose = Direction = Clarity +Focus + Action = Results
Working with a coach can simply improve your life or move it beyond what you ever imagined possible.
What can coaching do for me?
Your coach is there to help and support you in moving your life forward more quickly and effectively than you could by yourself. Coaching can help you:
- Advance in your career
- Make your current job more satisfying
- Change careers
- Heading back to work after raising your children
- Manage your small business or private practice with better focus and structure
- Start and complete a project you’ve been putting off
- Improve your relationships
- Create initiative to prevent and/or cure burnout
- Resolve ongoing negative patterns
- Improve your health and well-being
- Organise your environment more effectively
- Improve your financial situation
- Be more productive
- Have a more balanced and improved quality of life
- Gain new perspectives
- Make your big ideas and dreams possible
- Ground an invention
- Paint that painting
- Have a deeper connection with your spirituality
- Achieve more than you can on your own
- Become more of you than ever thought possible
What does a coach do?
- Help you get a clear vision of how you want your life to be
- Be an objective and attentive listener
- Give you honest and compassionate feedback
- Remind you of your strengths and gifts
- Guide you in acquiring useful life skills and resources
- Remind you of your commitments to your goals should you falter
- Help you progress more quickly toward your dreams than you could by yourself
- Teach you simple techniques for breaking through overwhelming feelings that are hindering you from taking action
- Offer a powerful support system with lots of encouragement and positive feedback
- Customise skills, tools and techniques for your unique needs
One of the intangible benefits of coaching that many people particularly enjoy is having someone there who is totally focused on you and your needs, without running their own agenda. A coach can listen to you like no one has ever listened to you before! For many people, this is very healing and a real confidence-builder.
Coaching specialties include:
Life Coaching
- Whole Life Coaching – achieve fulfilment and balance in all areas of your life
- Inertia – Coaching for when you’re stuck and don’t seem to have the energy or time to be able to achieve goals and ambitions
- Creativity and the Arts – coaching to reawaken your creative direction Career or jump start your career and live the work you love
- Living Creatively with Cancer – an attentive ear and a compassionate heart as you find creative ways through your cancer journey
- Transforming Death – Death is a life transition, prepare creatively for this great adventure as you would any other transition in life
- Spiritual Coaching – add a spiritual perspective to your coaching experience
- Business Coaching
- Executive Coaching– one-on-one support and guidance for your corporate career
- Career Coaching – clarify your direction, understand your career path, plan a transition or start a new direction
Business Coaching
- Executive Coaching– one-on-one support and guidance for your corporate career
- Career Coaching – clarify your direction, understand your career path, plan a transition or start a new direction
- Business Coaching – bespoke programs for organisations
See Coaching Specialities page for more details
How does coaching work?
Coaching is usually provided through biweekly phone or face-to-face sessions, usually 30, 45 or 60 minute duration, depending on your program. The initial Self Discovery Session, in which we discuss your background, concerns and coaching goals, is a two hour session and may be done face-to-face, in person in Carlingford, Sydney Australia or over the phone with prior arrangement. You can also reach your coach by phone or e-mail between sessions to share successes, ask questions or work through rough spots.
There is no standard program and the length of time you stay with your coach is decided by mutual agreement. Change takes time, so an initial six to twelve-month commitment is encouraged and many people stay with their coach for a number of years.
We also offer short-term, focused coaching to help you achieve a specific goal, such as clarifying your career, completing a project, creating an art work, a writing project, or making an important life decision.
For more information visit Coaching Programs page.
Coaching is usually provided through biweekly phone or face-to-face sessions, usually 30, 45 or 60 minute duration, depending on your program. The initial Self Discovery Session, in which we discuss your background, concerns and coaching goals, is a two hour session and may be done face-to-face, in person in Carlingford, Sydney Australia or over the phone with prior arrangement. You can also reach your coach by phone or e-mail between sessions to share successes, ask questions or work through rough spots.
There is no standard program and the length of time you stay with your coach is decided by mutual agreement. Change takes time, so an initial six to twelve-month commitment is encouraged and many people stay with their coach for a number of years.
We also offer short-term, focused coaching to help you achieve a specific goal, such as clarifying your career, completing a project, creating an art work, a writing project, or making an important life decision.
For more information visit Coaching Programs page.
Do I have to be in Sydney to work with you?
No. A lot of coaching is done over the phone, so I can coach you from anyplace you have a phone connection or s computer connection via Skype and where you have a sense of comfort, focus and privacy. If you are in the Sydney area, we have the additional option of meeting in person. Sometimes clients do their first session in person and then switch to the phone. How we work can be agreed during our initial session.
What happens in a coaching session?
Coaching is customised for each individual. Each session will be a little different, based on your needs at that time. In general, your coach will listen to where you are and where you want to go, ask questions to clarify or get further information, give you feedback, brainstorm ideas and challenge you, offer encouragement and validation for your successes, support you in finding the learning in your failures and mistakes, and help you see the bigger picture.
Your coach may also make requests or give assignments, suggest a course of action or ask you to come up with one. At the end of each session, you’ll agree to some action steps that we feel will most effectively move you toward your goals at that time.
Why should I hire a coach? Can’t I do it myself?
Coaching empowers you to go beyond what you could do by yourself. You may feel you should be able to accomplish your goals on your own, but often, people get tripped up by their own limiting beliefs about what’s possible for them, or simply overwhelmed by all that life demands. As a result, even though they may know what to do, they don’t take action.
A coach helps you to see past your own thought process and beliefs to get more clarity and see new possibilities. A coach helps you achieve more in less time by helping you plan a strategy and giving you unconditional support and encouragement. A coach helps you come up with achievable action steps that will bring you closer to your goals.
Coaching is an investment that you make in yourself and in living the life you truly want to live. It can move you toward your hopes, wishes, dreams and goals more quickly. It may even save you money in the long run, and it surely will save time and wear-and-tear of struggling through the process by yourself.
How does coaching differ from therapy?
While emotional issues may come up in the course of coaching – and you do learn more about and develop yourself in the process – coaching primarily focuses on helping you achieve specific goals through taking action and developing constructive behaviours, rather than on healing psychological issues. Coaching focuses more on the present and future than the past. It is about generating possibilities and moving through any blocks or obstacles, rather than healing deep-seated emotional issues and traumas.
While Suzanne McGillivray has training in psychotherapy, she uses her experience and understanding to better assist you in your process and will be coach and not therapist. Coaching and therapy can be mutually supportive, and some people work simultaneously with a coach and a therapist, or use coaching as the next step after therapy.
Suzanne offers self development services and programs, please see The Quest page.
What is the cost of coaching?
Coaching rates vary considerably from coach to coach and in the type of coaching received. Keep in mind that you get what you pay for. An experienced coach will cost more than a beginner, but you’ll get faster and deeper results. For an overview of our programs and rates, go to the Coaching Programs page.
About Mentoring
What is a Mentor?
A Mentor is a trusted counsellor, a guide or wise advisor, an individual, usually older, but always more experienced, who helps and guides another individual’s development. A Mentor has a sincere interest in someone else’s growth.
What is Mentoring?
Mentoring is an ongoing relationship where there is a commitment to growth from both the Mentor and the Mentee. Mentoring is a journey that two people travel together. It is a power free, two-way mutually beneficial learning situation where the Mentor provides advice, shares knowledge and experiences, and teaches using a low pressure, self-discovery approach.
The Role of a Mentor
The role of the Mentor is to provide insight, and to guide and advise you in your development to reach your highest potential. Mentors typically assume the role of the wise adviser based on their own personal/professional experience and may act as a mentor on long or a short term basis. Through experience a Mentor can help fast track a Mentee’s learning, provide valuable insights, and support you to avoid the pitfalls and manage challenges.
- Serves as a role model
- Provide guidance not direction
- Develop options with the Mentee
- Provides support, encouragement, and positive perspectives
- Serves as a resource person and confidant when problems occur
- Collaborate in the problem solving process
- Question positively
- Listen actively and positively
- Give feedback that is clear, constructive and confidence-building
- Act as a sounding board
- Challenge when required
- Gives feedback on observed behaviour and reported performance
- Recommends ways to develop specific skills, effective behaviour and how to function in their environment
- Review future professional needs
- Acts as a source of information regarding career development techniques in general; assists the individual in their through career of life
- Meets with the Mentee at agreed upon intervals for feedback and planning
- Agrees to a no-fault conclusion of the mentoring relationship when (for any reason) the time is right
- Mentoring can also help you to achieve particular business outcomes. Or perhaps you are looking for a mentor to support someone in your organisation?
What does a Mentor Do?
How Does Mentoring Differ From Coaching?
A Mentor guides you based on their own experience. A mentor is usually older and wiser; they have “been there and done that” and you can benefit from their previous experience. A coach, is not necessarily a subject matter expert, but is expert in the process of coaching; asking the right questions and challenging you to achieve your highest potential.
Mentoring is a power free, two-way mutually beneficial relationship. Mentors are facilitators and teachers allowing the protégé to discover their own direction.
“She let me struggle so I could learn.”
“Never provided solutions—always asking questions to surface my own thinking and let me find my own solutions.”
A coach has a set agenda to reinforce or change skills and behaviours in line with defined goals. A coach has an objective or goals for each discussion.
The coach also has an implied or actual level of authority by nature of their position, ultimately they can insist on compliance. A mentor’s influence is proportionate to the perceive value they can bring to the relationship. It is a power free relationship based on mutual respect and value for both mentor and mentee.
Book a free 30 minute session to discuss mentoring needs
Mentoring & Coaching Programs
Introductory Session
We begin with a free half-hour Introductory Session in which we will discuss your needs and determine which program would be the right one for you. Our Mentoring and Coaching is customised to suit your specific personal needs.
Mentoring Programs
Mentoring program is mutually agreed once having determined that mentoring is for you. This is an ongoing relationship and the specifics of how, when, where and what will be decided during the introductory session.
Coaching Programs
Monthly Ongoing Coaching
Ongoing coaching to help you define goals in all areas of your life, create strategies and implement them — all with the support of a coach to help you achieve clarity, set your direction and to support, challenge and encourage you along the way. The initial Self Discovery Session lasts 2 hours. We would then meet twice a month with options of – two 30-minute per sessions month; two 45-minute sessions per month, or two 60-minute sessions per month.
We will then implement your program by phone or face to face sessions, which ever best suits your needs. After 3 months will renew on a month-to-month basis, it is recommended that you prepare to commit a minimum of 6 to 12 months for this program in order to see substantial results. Many clients fid it valuable to maintain their coaching for several years.
6 Week Kick Start Program
This high impact program consist of 2 weekly one hour sessions for 6 weeks. That’s 12 sessions in a 6 week period. We will initially review all areas of your life, see the interrelation of all areas, make choices for your life and then create an appropriate plan – goals, strategies for the long term and immediate actions. This is intensive overview is a kick start for recreating the you, you want to be, so that you may live the life you want to live. It can then be followed by a less intensive program to work on the longer term goals.
Career Exploration
Short-term, focused coaching to discover a new career, a career challenge, a new job etc. For this program a minimum of 4 hours is needed over a 2 month period.
Feeling Stuck – Problem-Solving Session
Work with your coach to explore an opportunity or get clarity on a particular decision, issue or goal with which you feel stuck. Scheduled by the hour.
Half-hour Introductory Session
A number of half-hour phone session are offered so that you may try get a taste of coaching, get acquainted and answer some of your questions and to see how we might work together.
