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Sensitive NLP Coach - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
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FAQS (Frequently asked questions)
Do you provide testimonials?
Do you offer face-to-face sessions?
Can anybody be coached?
What payment methods do you accept?
Do you offer corporate coaching?
Are you psychic or intuitive?
Do you offer a guarantee?
Can I pay by bartering my services?
Why don't you return initial enquiry calls to mobile phones?
Why can't I phone you anonymously with your queries?
Do you provide testimonials?
Many coaches provide glowing testimonials on their websites. However there are ethical problems in doing so and some coaching codes of ethics advise against it. In the UK, various laws and regulations governing data protection, consumer protection, advertising and access to the original documents create problems with the provision of testimonials. It is much easier to provide them in the US where there are fewer restrictions. I am also a hypnotherapist and prevented from offering testimonials under hypnotherapy codes of ethics.Therefore, as much as I would like to provide them, I am unable to provide testimonials on this website or by any other means.
However I appreciate it whenever clients refer me to other people!
I am also working on giving clients other ways in which to present their success stories. If you have a small business, self-employed practice or non-profit web site and my coaching has helped you, get free advertising in the articles page on this website by writing an article for the site that includes a mention of how my coaching has helped you. The article should focus on what you do and what you provide. Add the details of your business or practice, your contact details and web link. That is not a testimonial - it is an article that you allow me to publish on my website. Not good at writing? I will even proofread your article for grammar and spelling!
You can also write about how coaching has helped you in your blog and ask me to link to it.
No - at present I only work through email, phone and Internet chat.
Yes, provided the person is serious about desiring change and committed to taking action, and that he/she has no serious problems (such as mental illness, personality disorders or addictions) that would make coaching inadvisable. Some people with certain illnesses can benefit from coaching with the approval of their doctor, psychotherapist, etc.
You can read more about readiness for coaching in my benefits of coaching page.
I accept PayPal and Google Checkout. I also accept UK internet banking transfers provided your bank provides fast (usually 2-hour) transfers. Most major banks should now do this. If you bank with HSBC or First Direct in the UK you can make an instant transfer to my account.
No - I believe strongly in championing the independence of the individual. Corporate coaches are partly responsible to the coachee and partly to the firm that is paying them, and this can lead to conflict of interest as well as ethical dilemmas. Therefore I prefer not work for companies or organisations, but I can help people who have a coaching contract directly with me to work on the improvements they wish to make, including improvements in performance. Sometimes employers (especially smaller businesses) are prepared to fund coaching sourced by the employee. I don't take payments from employers as my contract will be with you; however you can ask if you can get reimbursed for the expense.
My interests include coaching people who might be experiencing bullying at work or who feel they do not fit in. Clearly, coaching such individuals with a purely performance-oriented approach would be insensitive, wrong, and in some cases harmful. Coaching itself, if made mandatory, can seem to the employee like part of the persecution he or she feels under. Being coached must be a voluntary commitment. The client needs space to explore the issues in total confidence and wholly apart from the pressures and obligations of work. Successful coaching may lead to the client finding ways to improve assertiveness, cope with the work situation and improve productivity, or to leave it and find something more suited to his/her personality. Either outcome is a win/win situation for the employer and the employee.
There is nothing wrong with corporate coaching provided it is done with integrity. The higher the position of the person being coached, the higher the integrity level is likely to be. There are many wonderful corporate coaches and some of them have written brilliant books that inspire me. However, corporate coaching (being paid by companies or organisations for coaching) is not one of my niches.
I am intuitive - some times more so than others. That means I sometimes get ideas or thoughts from nowhere that hit the nail on the head. But being sensible, when I get an intuition I don't know whether it's true or not. And often I can't tell the difference between a moment of intuition and a clever guess. So I don't blurt out my intuitions as truth. I might ask a tentative question prompted by my intuition. If the question leads to some good coaching, then the intuition has served its purpose. That's the best use of intuition in coaching: to know what to ask, so that the client can discover the answer.
However, I have had a few psychic experiences on rare occasions, and am very interested in that sort of thing and have read a lot about it. I don't tell fortunes. I can't give you psychic readings and I can't predict the future, but I would be delighted to coach someone who is psychic or mediumistic, because he/she would know it's OK to talk about it. Coaching can encourage you to use your own intuition better in the service of your goals.
Sometimes even psychics find it difficult to obtain personal guidance for themselves because inner guides tend to give out information in response to specific questions. If you are psychic and in touch with inner guiding figures, a coach can help you by helping you ask them questions you might not think of asking on your own!
You will see certain other coaches using the gimmick of offering money-back guarantees, because they have been taught that it is a good way of getting new clients. That is a marketing technique that is OK if you are selling gadgets, cars or double glazing. In coaching, it works against the fundamental principle that the client is responsible for setting the agenda and for wanting the change.
So, I don't offer a money-back guarantee. For more about this topic, see my article "Should coaching be guaranteed?"
Instead of offering you a guarantee, I offer the following:
A free introductory "discovery" session
Free answers to initial questions by email
The chance to try "coaching particles" - bite-size packages of coaching
A variety of one-off sessions so you can minimise your initial outlay and commitment
Of course, if you pay for a session in advance and it becomes apparent in the first 10 minutes or so that we are on such different wavelengths that there is no point in continuing, I will refund your money. However, the material on this site, the free discovery session, and the facility for you to email me free questions, are all ways of finding out if you'd like me to coach you.
Do you want a coach who immediately gives you a cop-out, or a coach who will put the art of coaching before self-sabotaging gimmicks?
The short answer is - no. In my other businesses I often get offers to supply design work, website work, freelance bookkeeping or other things in return for what I am offering. In principle, that could be a good idea. If you have some spare eggs and your neighbour has some spare vegetables, why not swap? In the world of helping services, though, it is a very bad idea, and it is against various codes of ethics. It is definitely unethical for coaches and counsellors to have any other kind of relationship with clients, including any business relationship not relevant to coaching (selling a client a self-help product is fine as that is related to professional help - many helping professionals sell downloads, books, supplements, courses and other items).
Services providing business support or assistance can require a lot of liaison and fine-tuning to ensure that the customer's requirements are met. Measuring the value of one service against another can be tricky and can bring up issues concerning self-worth. And what happens when one party or the other asks for repeat business? Any problems need to be dealt with without there being another parallel professional relationship that can become contaminated. Keeping coaching or counselling entirely separate from other business ensures that the coach/therapist is able to focus on the needs of the client.
Bartering can also create tax problems and is legally problematic in certain countries.
In my experience, callers using mobiles for initial enquiries are less likely to be reliable and more time is wasted playing "telephone tag" and speaking when reception is bad. Calls to mobiles can be many times more expensive than calls to landlines and that is an expense that I cannot absorb, especially in the current economic climate. Too many callers leaving mobile numbers pretend to be prospective clients when they are really making sales calls. And finally, nobody knows the long-term effects on health of using mobiles for long calls, even with hands-free or Bluetooth. I do not wish to encourage the use of mobiles for long conversations - for the sake of your health.
However, if we have already established contact by landline, email or chat AND you have become a paying client, of course I will be willing to contact you occasionally by mobile for a brief conversation if that is the best way to communicate at that time. In that way I can give you support when you are going about your business or travels.
Why should you need to do that? You know who I am and that I am a professional, so I am entitled to know who you are and what country you are in. That is only fair. If a person starts by being unwilling to give his/her name and location, it does not augur well for the coaching relationship. He/she is also much more likely to be a timewaster.
If you need anonymous emergency counselling, there are agencies (such as the Samaritans) that you can talk to. You should be able to find the numbers of emergency counselling services in your local telephone directory, or from Directory Enquiries. Coaches working by telephone or email generally do not work with people who are suicidal or other emergency cases. The specialist emergency counselling services have people trained to give appropriate help.
I do answer general queries by email - contact me at hspcoach@gmail.com
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