Courage Coaching
Find Your Authenticity to Step Up to the Next Level

Authenticity | What is coaching? | A coach asks |
Need a coach? | Be in Sandra's Next Book  

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result."
—Rita Mae Brown, Author

"To live on purpose means to not live by accident. One way to start the process of discovery is to simply ask yourself: 'What is my purpose here on this earth, and what will I do with my life?' The answers to these questions provide insight and help you discover your heart's desire…Learning is the catalyst for maintaining focus on your purpose."
—COURAGE: The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman Reclaiming the Forgotten Virtue

"Uncertainty is an inevitable condition throughout life. While we would like to get up each day to face this perpetual unknown with courage, all too often, we feel dis-couraged. Discouragement saps our energy and resolve. Maybe that's why the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, "Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."

Accepting the impossibility of knowing the future, of predicting an outcome, requires enormous courage. Yet, rarely do our parents, much less society, prepare us how to confront this elusive predicament by teaching us about the virtue of courage.

While courage is generally defined as facing and dealing with danger or difficulty, for me, the essence of courage is a spiritual energy from the heart that in defining moments motivates a person to take action. In other words, it's when a situation requires you to "step up" and display the authentic you, and you do!"
—Excerpt "With Courage, Your Passion Cannot Be Doused" by Sandra Ford Walston

Coming From Authenticity
When you are authentic you are coming from your heart and spirit. Courage is the catalyst. The origin of the word courage is Old French corage, meaning "heart and spirit." When you apply courage to your purpose you are being from your heart and spirit—you are the embodiment of authenticity—being authentic takes courage. Courage Coaching connects purpose with heart. The coaching experience enlarges the portal to your heart's purpose.

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What is coaching?
Being a coach is no different than being a music teacher or workshop presenter; it merely focuses in a more complete way. Coaching is life planning; it is a journey driven by passion. The coach is someone who partners with the client to be a vision builder and value shaper. A coach is someone who holds you accountable for the design of your life, helping you make sure you really do live up to your potential. A coach does not tell you what to do. The coach asks questions to help you find your own unlocked solutions. A coach:

• Empowers us to transform who we are and reinvent ourselves by how our frames of reference, thinking and behavior produce unintended consequences.
• Encourages us to surface and question the way we have framed points of view about ourselves, others, or our circumstances, with the idea of creating a fundamental shift, such as how we view conflict or being assertive.
• Guides us to take effective action (Peter Drucker calls it "making strengths productive").
• Helps us determine what we really want to do-our personal "calling."

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A Coach asks: "What kind of work/life represents your passion?" Then the coach:

• Leads people to live in "breakthrough thinking"—visible changes in human behavior.
• Designs goals to get us out of the intent that keep them in there existing skill-set (instead of being able to think, plan and act from what will produce a breakthrough).
• Creates a vision based on a new future. Breakthrough goals are the key to the coaching relationship.
• Understands the process of dialogue, where dialogue is a conversation in which there is a free flow of meaning in a group and diverse views and perspectives are encouraged.
• Understands distinctions in communication styles. Incorporates the five linguistic speech acts.
• Integrates assessment tools to appreciate "what makes you tick," how to "manage-up" in the workplace, how to listen better, or to move through change.
• Accentuates the strengths to "step up to the next level" (a coach does not focus or deal with psychological therapy or emotional pathologies like a therapist).

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Do you need Courage Coaching?
People who recognize the need for a coach have:

• An expansive willingness to explore who they are and learn about their desires.
• A commitment to greater authenticity and purpose in career/personal life. o An interest to better honor long-term goals and priorities.
• A desire to construct a career design, marketing plan, and execution strategies to accomplish them.
• An interest in applying assessment tools to establish clearer distinctions about what they want versus what they don't want.
• A longing to be the creator of solutions during transition periods.
• A calling to partner with a proactive coach.

Consider these coaching questions to use at home or at work:

• What is your biggest gift to this organization?
• How do you develop trust with others?
• What is your vision? Have you communicated it?
• How do you feel about unpredictability?
• How do you build a plan?
• What disappoints you?
• How do you define success for yourself?
• How do you accept "what is?"
• The next time your work team is about to set goals, ask, "What's really possible and achievable?"

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If you would like to investigate Courage Coaching sessions with Sandra Ford Walston either on the telephone or email, please email her. Write your specific desire and intent, and she will respond to you as soon as possible.

Please note: Once your questions have been answered, to receive reasonably full benefit of the initial assessment process, a minimum commitment to the process requires at least six sessions. With the commitment, you will receive a coaching agreement to sign.

Sandra applies her qualified expertise to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (an instrument based on the theories of Carl Jung and offers insight into sixteen "personality" preferences based on four scales) and the Enneagram (a typology of nine distinct personalities with different patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting).

"To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves."
— Aldous Huxley

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Be In Sandra's Next Book

If you have a work-related story about how you applied your specific actions of courage, please submit your story (last names of people not necessary) in detail for consideration by going to "Be in Sandra's Next Book." Be sure to weave your story around the "Source Wheel" (found on page 86 in COURAGE) by describing which one of the twelve behaviors of courage you utilized to face and overcome this work situation.

If you know other courageous women who applied courage at work after reading COURAGE: The Heart and spirit of Every Woman/Reclaiming the Forgotten Virtue, please forward this page by hitting the logo "E-mail to a friend!" or Contact Sandra. Thank you for your support to spread the word about women and courage.

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