We worked through a range of executive coaching, leadership coaching and personal leadership coaching.
I’m a nurse in my 50’s working in Australia in the remote outback at the northern most tip of Western Australia.
Less than 2 years ago I was working in Wellington the capital of New Zealand in a government organisation. I had been working in government for about 8 years or so. I started my coaching relationship with Gai Foskett and we worked through a range of executive coaching, leadership coaching and personal leadership coaching exercises.
Gai introduced me to a number of tools that helped me to better understand myself and how I ticked so I got to look at what my strengths were, what I valued and how I tackled things. I learned a great deal about myself and then we worked through a number of processes. I started looking at my goals and along the way I had some very challenging work issues to deal with. Gai supported me with those and gave me some great tools to help me deal with them.
We worked together for a number of weeks and eventually I worked out that I didn’t really want to be working in government organisation. So I looked at what I wanted to be doing and what I wanted to be doing was going and working in a remote area and dong some very meaningful nursing work and that’s what I am doing now.
Coaching gives you tools to help you with the rest of your life. With personal leadership coaching you’ve got decision making tools, you understand yourself, you understand your values and so you can think, ’right, does this fit with my values. does this fit with what gives me meaning?”
I find that I am much more able to make decisions that are good for me and make me happy and focus on me. It doesn’t mean to say that when you’ve got coaching and you’ve got all these enablers that your life is going to be wonderful and smooth sailing but it does mean that you’ve got tools that you are able to tackle things with. I’ve still had a lot of challenges come my way but I have been able to deal with them and reflect on things and think ‘no, this doesn’t fit with my values, I’m going to move on and find something that works better for me, so I’m feeling very happy and very content and I have a great deal of meaning in my life. Just little things like I’m more fit and 40kgs lighter than when I started coaching, so my life is very, very different and I feel very positive about that.
Faith Roberts