I had a Skype supervision session today with a Fusion Therapeutic Coach. I do quite a bit of supervision via Skype these days as diploma delegates come from all over the country and some from abroad too. For me, it’s a real privilege to observe careers evolve and confidence grow over many years.
I always start supervision sessions with the important question ‘how are you?’
As life coaches and mindfulness trainers, we need to be authentic and able to walk the talk. How can we encourage our clients to ‘live their best lives’ if we are not working towards that ourselves?
Encouragingly, my supervisee today described herself as ‘living the dream.’
But it wasn’t always so. Five years ago, she nearly didn’t attend the diploma at all. With outstanding health test results and confidence issues at work, she phoned just 24 hours before the course to voice her concerns that she would not be in the right frame of mind to come along.
Having listened to what was going on, I felt the diploma would present a great opportunity for her to step outside her life for a while and take some time and space for herself. She had already booked into a pretty canal-side B and B for the 5 days of the course. ‘Perhaps this is something you can be doing while you wait for those other difficulties to resolve’ I said, and the decision was made.
She describes that decision as ‘a life changer.’
How different things are now. These days she is self employed as a Fusion therapeutic coach-trainer with a work/life balance that is enviable. She stays close to the 5 session manual and finds it consistently works well, charging £125 for the first session of 1.5 hours and £95 for subsequent 1 hour sessions. Five to seven clients represents her perfect work load as she also leads monthly ‘happiness recipe’ workshops; quite an achievement for someone who used to get flustered if she had to speak at a meeting.
Although the five session format works well to resolve problems and refocus on the preferred future, she finds that many clients want to maintain an ongoing coach-client relationship, so she has just signed up for the next Mindfulness Based Mind Management training day.
I spent most of last year writing this latest Fusion product and, when I did so, imagined it in a group setting. Once written, however, it became clear it would work well on a one-to-one basis as it embeds the Fusion mind management tips, tools and techniques with core mindfulness exercises such as mindful eating, loving kindness and a ‘just a minute’ breathing space.
Comments