people with purpose

Why life coaching?

People with Purpose aims to provide life coaches to partner with people in a thought-provoking, values-centered, future-oriented, creative process that inspires people to maximize their potential.  A coach’s responsibility is to discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve, encourage client self-discovery, elicit client-generated solutions and strategies, and hold the client responsible and accountable.  This process will help the client create a vision, discover their own resources, and dramatically improve their outlook on life while unlocking their potential.  

Coaches believe people are okay as they are, always make the best choice they can at the time, and already have all the resources within them to achieve what they want.  Coaches know every behavior has a positive intention and change is inevitable.

Research proves coaching creates positive change, while uniquely allowing a person to take charge of their own life.  Coaching will help people break through the barriers faced during reentry.  For example, after coaching people will be more prepared for employment.  An International Coach Federation (ICF) study found coaching improves work performance by seventy-percent as well as improved soft skills needed for work such as time management, team effectiveness, self-confidence, and communication. Increasing these soft work skills will increase the likelihood of people not only finding jobs, but starting careers and result in a reduction in recidivism.  

Patricia Brennan, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Emory University, will track and study our success demonstrating how coaching can reduce the rate of recidivism.  

How is life coaching distinct from other service professions?

Professional coaching focuses on setting goals, creating outcomes and managing personal change.  Sometimes it’s helpful to understand coaching by distinguishing it from other personal or organizational support professions.

• Therapy: Therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or in relationships.  The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past that hamper an individual's emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with the present in more emotionally healthy ways.  Coaching, on the other hand, supports personal and professional growth based on self-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes.  These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is future focused. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one's work or personal life.  The emphases in a coaching relationship are on action, accountability, and follow through.
• Mentoring: A mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance based on his or her own experience.  Mentoring may include advising, counseling and coaching.  The coaching process does not include advising or counseling, and focuses instead on individuals or groups setting and reaching their own objectives.
• Consulting: Individuals or organizations retain consultants for their expertise.  While consulting approaches vary widely, the assumption is the consultant will diagnose problems and prescribe and, sometimes, implement solutions.  With coaching, the assumption is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.
• Training: Training programs are based on objectives set out by the trainer or instructor.  Though objectives are clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the individual or team being coached, with guidance provided by the coach. Training also assumes a linear learning path that coincides with an established curriculum.  Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum.
• Athletic Development: Though sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different from sports coaching.  The athletic coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behavior of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge.  Professional coaches possess these qualities, but their experience and knowledge of the individual or team determines the direction.  Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development, does not focus on behaviors that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.