I am going to share with you the story of one of my clients and her coaching. You’ll actually be on the journey as I coach her and we’ll see where she goes and how she progresses. Be sure to come back often or you’ll miss the story!
The Set Up:
At the end of a keynote speech I did for a medical association, Gayle came up to me and told me how much the talk had impacted her and that she might like to hire me to coach her. I gave her my business card and told her my assistant would contact her to set up a ten-minute phone chat so we could speak and confirm that coaching was a fit for her.
She agreed. My assistant set this call up for 2 days after the conference. I called Gayle and we spoke about what was going well in her life and the areas that she wanted to improve. These included her medical practice which she was struggling to make money in due to managed care and her desire to practice alternative medicine and her being fed up with paperwork and not enough time to fully be with her patients. She also talked about her love of the patients. The other area she wanted to work on was to find a way to spend more time with her husband. She was newly married, deeply in love, yet felt she didn’t spend enough time with her husband and the time they did spend together she felt distracted by her thoughts of her business.
We agreed coaching was a great fit for her and decided to work together for a minimum of eight months, as I have an 8 month coaching program to create work and life focus. We decided to have our first session a week later, so I could have her fill out some forms and paperwork to help me know her better, prior to our first coaching session.
My assistant contacted her to get her eight months of coaching sessions scheduled and she sent her some forms to fill out and return. These forms help me to see client goals, understand more about the background of the client and learn about what is working in the client’s life and work and what is not quite right yet, from the client’s vantage point.
I reviewed the forms today and her first session is tomorrow. What I have found prior to our first telephone coaching session is that Gayle comes from a close-knit family and has 2 younger brothers and an older sister. Her Mom passed away 5 years ago and her Dad has dementia, yet is still able to live on his own, with a full-time caregiver. She feels great love for all her family and is very close to her Dad and visits him often and takes him to her home on many weekends.
Gayle grew up in a wealthy family and always wanted to be a doctor. She loved medical school and worked hard studying throughout high school and her college years, and made no time for friends or boyfriends. She later worked in the local hospital and the hours were late, the pay was poor and she made the decision to go into private practice.
She located the “ideal” building to rent office space and was fortunate that the practice filled quickly and easily. Before managed care hit her business hard, these past 5 years or so, she loved her work, her patients and was very excited about her life and work. Once her business became mostly managed care and Medicare, she found the paperwork a drag, the reimbursement system making it a struggle to pay her office staff, and the time spent caring for patients way down.
Over the past 5 years she has studied in 3 countries learning many alternative types of medicine and healing and feels she wasn’t to blend this in her practice and also wants to figure out how to make money so she can stay in the business doing the work she loves.
While on vacation to Africa on a photo-safari, she met a man who lived only 30 miles from her home in Maryland. They enjoyed the safari and each other for 13 days and when they returned home, he moved in with her within a week. He sold his home and married her within 3 months time. He was 12 years older than her and had retired as he sold his medical practice to a large health care system a year before the safari and now did consulting to pharmaceutical companies. According to Gayle, they had a “story-book” marriage and she was in love with him and wanted to spend more of her time with him and he felt the exact same way. He did give her advise about her business, which she welcomed. They shared many hobbies, traveled together and loved to be together.
It is time, later today for her first coaching session… come back tomorrow and I’ll share that with you!
Terri Levine, founder and CEO,
http://www.coachinstitute.com
http://www.terrilevine.com
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