Meeting #1

Time to blog about the actual coaching meetings.  Sadly I'm writing this weeks after the meeting occurred so I'll need to rely on memory a little.  But! one of my favorite things about CS so far is that she's so completely organized and after each meeting sends me an email with a recap of what we talked about and my homework assignment.  She's really great like that.

Our first meeting was spent talking about the coaching process and our commitments, gathering information and reviewing the results of my values sorting.  I expected to do a lot of talking at this meeting since CS had to get to know me in order to figure out what I was looking for.  So I talked a lot.  She and I talked about what I was hoping to get out of the coaching process so that we could be sure to stay on the same page in terms of expectations.  Here's what we came up with (taken from CS notes):

Expected Outcome of Coaching Process

We talked about what you’d like to accomplish over the next 3-4 months of working together and this is what I heard from you:

·       You’d like to be on the road to your next step professionally. You defined this as having clear options defined in terms of the type of position(s) and organizations/companies you’d like to be contacting.

·       You also said you would like an action plan that you are implementing that involves whatever networking you need to do, organizations you might join, knowledge you may need to gain, or other actionable steps you need to take in order to accomplish a better professional situation.

·       You acknowledged that you probably won’t be in a new position by the end of this time, but you should be clear about what options you most want to pursue and have a clear idea of what actions you need to take to get there.

       You would like to have a general idea of what you might do longer term (~5 years).

In preparation I had sorted my values, but hadn't had a chance to rank them yet.  So I also got a couple of homework assignments:

Homework for Next Meeting

1.     Values: You’ve done a nice job grouping your top 10 values into clumps of values that are important to you at this point in your career and eliminating those that are not very important. I’d like you to narrow to the top three value groups you definitely want to focus on for your next professional situation – what’s most important to you and why. We will still consider other values, but it would be beneficial to have a closer focus.

2.     Achievement Stories: Identify stories from your life where you accomplished something or were involved in something that really made you feel good about what you did. Talk about why these were valuable to you. 

One example we discussed briefly is your work with undergraduates in your sorority. What about this work gives you a sense of value and why? What talents or skills are you using and how do you feel when doing this work? 

You can reach back into your childhood, your schooling, volunteer work, professional work. Don’t feel it has to be “significant” in a measurable way – it just needs to be something where your talents, interests, and results were aligned in a meaningful way to you. 

If you have time, think about what themes emerge from this exercise.

       
All in all the first meeting went very well.  I easily became comfortable with CS and enjoyed talking with her.  She seems smart and perceptive and took care to listen to what I was saying.  I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of the process.  Our next meeting is a phone meeting since she will be away on vacation for a few weeks.