Coaching Individuals
Dr Jean Challiner of Aspirations Consulting Ltd was approached by an experienced teacher who had been invited to apply for the Deputy Head role at the school where she taught. She was anxious about applying for the role as although she knew she had the skills to do an excellent job, she was concerned that if she was not appointed, it would have a detrimental effect on her personal self-confidence.
Jean worked with the client over several short sessions leading up to the planned interview date including:
- helping her identify what her goals were
- helping her identify her strengths
- using NLP techniques to build confidence
- interview preparation
- preparing for the outcome of the interview and the positives she would take from it whatever the decision
The outcome of the interview was that the client offered the Deputy’s role and she worked at the school, very successfully, as Deputy Head for a number of years up to her retirement.
Jean similarly worked with another teacher at the same school who has lost her confidence and motivation as a special needs teacher due to a challenging relationship with another member of staff. She was considering leaving the profession and by all accounts that would have been a great loss not just for the school but also for the children as she was hailed as an exceptional special needs teacher.
Jean worked with the client to
- identify the key issues
- identify her immediate and longer term goals
- identify the perceived barriers to her continuing success
- identify her strengths
- tap into her inner passion for the role, what she had achieved and could still achieve
- identify her options to overcome the problem using her very significant strengths
The client quickly saw that she could reframe the problem and doing so enabled her to take a positive approach to addressing it.
As a colleague of hers said “she got back the being the client that we know”. The client continued to work at the school for several more years before retiring.