The Unstuck Lawyer®
for when one of those days is every day
What does coaching for lawyers do?
Coaching takes you from where you are now to where you want to be, more quickly and more easily than doing it alone. It is a structured, confidential partnership focused on your goals, drawing on coaching, psychology, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and more, to help you make lasting and sustainable change.
HOW IT WORKS – Think of it as a personal trainer for your mind
A personal trainer builds a plan around your starting point and your goals, teaches and improves your technique, keeps you motivated and accountable, and gets you results faster than you would manage alone. Coaching does the same for the way you think and work.
Coaching does the same for the way you think and work. Making the change you want. Teaching skills, helping improve habits, sustaining motivation, and achieving faster and more sustainable changes.
My role is not to tell you what to do (that fits into mentoring). It is to help you learn and develop your skills, shift the thinking that drives your behaviour and habits, and create the internal change that produces the external results you are after. We work with the mindset and psychology, rather than pretending it is not there, because most of what we do is shaped by deeper beliefs about who we are, what we are capable of, and how we should respond when pressure hits. Address those, and change becomes far more achievable and permanent.
IN PRACTICE – What coaching looks like for lawyers
Every client’s aims are different. For some it is making a change to leadership or how they use their time. For others, it is a regular sounding board and support to stay action-focused. It can also be preparing for a new role, a promotion, or launching a firm.
In practice, the lawyers I work with often use coaching to protect time for the non-client work that keeps slipping, to move their prioritised work higher up the agenda, lead and manage teams and hold difficult conversations well, quieten a strong inner critic, perfectionism, or imposter feelings, reducing the strength of internal pressure, feel more comfortable charging clients, navigate conflict and knee-jerk reactions differently, and find ways to slow down so to enjoy more of life, inside and outside the firm.
WHO IS IT FOR – Why would a capable lawyer want coaching?
Most of my clients are accomplished in their field and driven. However, they want a change. There might a part of their working life that is not quite working, a skill they want to strengthen, a decision they keep circling, or a worry or frustration they have carried for a while and no longer want to put up with. Sometimes it is simply a sense that things could feel better than they do.
You could likely work it all out alone. But that often takes far longer, with a lot more trial and error, and it is easy to end up circling the same problem. Coaching shortens the path.
Coaching does not mean anything is wrong with you. It is exactly why so many capable leaders, top athletes and performers, keep a coach in their corner. Not to be fixed, but to think more clearly, get unstuck, and move forward faster than they would alone.
COACHING OR OTHER SUPPORT
How coaching compares to mentoring, training, and counselling
What are the different types of coaching?
The label, leadership, executive, business, or life, often matters less than the coach’s experience and approach. True coaching, in its purest sense, is non-advisory. A trained coach uses skills to help you reach your own solutions rather than telling you what to do. That does not mean they do not share skills and knowledge to support progress. Someone who reviews your strategy and gives you answers is often identified as an advisor, mentor, or consultant. Although many use the word coach in their work title. Many people prefer a coach with real experience in their field.
How is coaching different from training?
Training is generic by design, built to cover everyone, and tends to be one-off. Coaching is specific to you. Whilst both can mean you implement a new skill or apply a different approach, Coaching allows you to reflect on what worked, what did not, and then go on to test and adjust. This is what creates a greater chance of skill implementation and lasting change. Training is often tried once and, if it does not immediately work, quietly forgotten, because keeping it going alone is hard.
What about mentoring?
Mentoring and consultancy include guidance and advice. Pure coaching does not. In my work with lawyers I blend pure coaching, skills, and shared wisdom where it helps. It depends on what will best allow you to achieve the desired change or your goal.
Is coaching the same as counselling?
No. Counselling tends to focus more on the past, and significant events, to make changes. Coaching focuses more on the future and where you want to be. However, as your past informs your thinking, habits, and behaviours, it is useful at times to explore, but we do not dwell there.
Wondering if coaching is right for you?
The simplest way to find out is a relaxed, no-pressure conversation. If it is a good fit, wonderful. If not, I will say so.
Not quite ready? You can also sign up to my Newsletter for ideas on how to run a firm for you, rather than feel like it is running you.
Ready for different? Get in touch, and we can explore whether coaching with me is right for you.