Professional Development Cyclist and University Student
This client rode for the Development Squad of a major Professional Cycling Team, and was also an engineering student at university.
At this stage in life, athletes have a lot of big decisions ahead of them regarding their sport and their future career. For this client, figuring out a process for making those decisions was more valuable than addressing a single decision. The intention of coaching is always to equip the client with the tools they need, rather than to provide specific solutions, so this topic was a good fit for the coaching approach.
Primary Focus of Coaching
Develop a decision-making process
Identify an individualized process that he could use now and in the future.
Coaching Tools Used
- Cartesian Questions
- viaStrengths free assessment of character strengths
- Barrett Personal Values Assessment
- Shifting time perspective (past/present/future)
Client Feedback
What progress did you make towards your goal(s) in this coaching engagement?
“My goal was to create a decision making process to bring with me later in life to apply to some difficult life decisions. By the end of the coaching sessions we had created the process.”
Progress: Improving time management skills
“Work done identifying my strengths was insightful and very accurate. With a goal of utilizing my time more efficiently, one of my action planning tools was to focus on objectives of a meeting – to make sure each meeting has a purpose and an action item. I am putting this into practice with every meeting.”
Progress: Creative problem solving
“Knowing the one of my strengths is relating to people, I find myself empowered to speak with all kinds of people including the media. I had to give an impromptu “good luck” speech, and found it came naturally to me.”
What was the most valuable thing you learned?
“The most valuable thing I learned would be the decision making framework I came out of the coaching sessions with. It is structured to my style of decision making which makes it easy to use and makes me more inclined to utilize it.”
What did you appreciate most about the coach?
“What I appreciated most about Andrea was her professionalism and how easy she was to talk to. She always provides thoughtful insights and comments.”
How did the coaching process work for you?
“Andrea and I discussed the goal of our coaching sessions before beginning walking through possible decision processes and seeing which clicked for me. From there we explored that process before moving on. Once we found what I valued in the decision making process it was easy to create a structure around it.”
Overall satisfaction with the coaching experience
“5/5”
How would you describe coaching?
“A structured, foreword-thinking conversation to achieve a pre determined goal.”