Book your discovery meeting
Why start with a discovery meeting?
Presence coaching differs from other forms of coaching in some fundamental ways.
A discovery meeting enables us both to make an informed decision about whether or not to engage with each other in the presence coaching process.
Discovery is free because that is the only way for us both to have equal ‘skin in the game’ (time) and access the information we need in order to choose wisely.
The nature of
presence coaching
Most coaching is focused on how to achieve particular goals, which is frequently quite generalisable into a step by step process. Presence coaching is focused on the questions which precede that: who you are in relation to the world, why you’re here, what impact you wish to have, and when and where you are in your life in relation to those questions. The answers to all of these questions are unique to you.
Most coaching deals with navigating well-understood domains that you have already chosen as relevant for you. Presence coaching seeks to develop a completely personalised navigational toolkit for you to more rapidly determine relevance and make choices in domains which don’t already have paths mapped out, and then if you wish, help you develop competence and confidence in applying it for yourself in your own context.
One thing presence coaching does have in common with other forms of coaching is that it is not therapy. It does, however, dig quite a bit deeper into your personal psychology and situation than is required for most types of coaching (with the possible exception of existential coaching and self-development coaching). This makes boundary awareness even more important than it usually is in coaching. The same applies to trust, honesty and vulnerability. A mutual deed of confidentiality (or NDA) is therefore necessarily part of setting up presence coaching. (Mutual means that we can each share what we learn about ourselves, but nothing private about the other person.)
Choosing a coach
or guide
When choosing a coach in a known domain, you can get a good feel for whether a particular coach is likely to be able to help you based on their client reviews and qualifications from recognised institutions. Because presence coaching is protected by a mutual deed of confidentiality and completely tailored to each client’s internal and external context, it is impossible to meaningfully predict your experience based on another client’s experience. By virtue of the nature of our task, there is no blueprint and there are no qualifications directly relevant to presence coaching — I have built a deep, expansive and complex toolkit out of raw cloth. Discovery helps you choose for yourself based on the best information I can provide — it is always a conversation.
Even if, based on everything you’ve read here, you are sure you want to go through the presence coaching process, Discovery is still critical for you to decide whether I am someone you can work with and trust as a guide. Like you, I am a human being with my own set of habits, character, strengths and failings. No one is everyone’s cup of tea, and I might not be yours. We are generally terrible at describing ourselves accurately but I commit to being myself during Discovery so you can judge compatibility for yourself.
That last point goes both ways. I will only commit to being your guide if I believe I can work with you and help you, without undermining myself in the process. Presence coaching requires me to completely step outside of my own context and into yours for extended periods of time. As you might imagine this is intensely demanding, so I am very selective about the type and number of commitments I make.