Why We Team Coach
It has been nearly ten years since we first started coaching together, and what an incredible ten years it has been! Every day, we keep learning how to be the coaches we truly want to be and best serve our clients.
From our first day coaching together, we’ve believed that coaching is a team approach to gaining understanding and solving problems.
We are a team with our clients, and the two of us are a team together!
Throughout the last decade, there are two questions we have been asked more than any others:
Are you willing to coach separately?
Why do you coach together?
These are two great questions! We haven’t seen anyone else offer team coaching, so it’s easy to understand why people would be curious about our chosen method.
The answer to the first question is simple: no, we do not coach separately. To expand on that answer, let’s move on to the second question.
We coach together because we have found that the level of service and care we desire to give our clients cannot be achieved by coaching separately. We have carefully developed our coaching method and designed each of our roles to utilize our individual strengths. After trying and testing out many different coaching formats based on all the different trainings we have taken and continue to take, we learned that we serve our clients best when we do not overlap our roles or multitask our duties.
For instance, as we coached together, it was apparent that of the two of us, facilitating comes most naturally to Annette. Session facilitator is an important job as Annette must set the tone for each session and make sure everything flows smoothly. She is also responsible for keeping each session focused and on track by asking questions and helping us get the greatest understanding of our client’s needs.
To compliment Annette’s facilitation, Ada’s role is to study our client’s body language, watch for changes in breathing patterns, and find the common thread in what our client is sharing by giving them the attention to detail they deserve. By devoting her energy to all of this, Ada can deeply understand our client’s situation and thought processes, so we can provide the tools and guidance necessary to help our client. If Ada had to do all she does and facilitate the meeting, she could not provide the most accurate insight possible.
Our individual roles and responsibilities are based on our strengths, and one role is not better or more valuable than the other. Our roles reflect our personalities. We would be doing a disservice to ourselves and our clients if we were to try to be something different than who we are.
It’s been a wonderful ten years together of learning and meeting so many amazing, thoughtful, kind, and courageous clients. We have truly grown to love coaching, how we coach, and everyone we’ve had the opportunity to coach.
The most important thing we’ve learned, however, is that it is a privilege to be a coach.
Annette and Ada