About Coaching

Solution-Focused Coaching is a practice of assisting clients to determine and achieve personal goals. A coach will use a variety of methods, tailored to the client, to move through the process of setting and reaching goals. Coaching is not targeted at psychological illness, and coaches are not therapists (although therapists may be coaches).

What is Coaching?

The term ‘coach’ or ‘mentor’ is used to describe all types of coaching/mentoring that may be taking place, both inside and outside the work environment. COMENSA recognises that there are many types of coaching/mentoring taking place and these will need to be defined as more detailed standards are produced.
Coaching is about creating change that helps enhances performance and learning. Coaches emphasise new competencies, learning and goal attainment. In fact, a coach is a personal navigator for the journey of life, focusing on what the clients want. Everything in coaching hinges on listening with the client’s agenda in mind.
COMENSA defines coaching as “a professional, collaborative and outcomes-driven method of learning that seeks to develop an individual and raise self-awareness so that he or she might achieve specific goals and perform at a more effective level”.
Coaching has been shown to help leaders develop a clearer understanding of their roles and responsibilities. When leaders are more confident about what they need to do, they are better able to motivate employees and mobilise them for action. ***

The process of Coaching is an on-going powerful partnership that supports those people who want to achieve a fulfilling life of purpose and meaning.

Our clients work with us in a partnership of growth. We utilise specific Solution-Focused tools and amongst others Transactional Analysis techniques. The process is enabling the client to do their own internal work as they deem necessary. Clients can expect to move forward with clarity, focus and passion. This is made possible within an environment that is safe, trusting, and confidential.
Coaching can powerfully help you change your life.

Many clients find that the greatest impact of coaching is that they are able to get to where they want to be much faster and more easily than they would on their own.

This is due to the support and framework that SF coaches provide. Partnership with a coach will provide you with accelerated progress, support to move forward with focus, intention, and action.
Are you ready for your life to be different? Are willing to make a commitment?
Creating a tomorrow of lasting purpose, fulfilment and passion starts with you… Are you interested in discovering where life’s momentum can take you? Your life awaits you – TODAY!

Vision isn’t enough unless combined with venture.
It is not enough to stare up the steps unless you also step up the stairs. – Vance Havner

What is mentoring?

COMENSA defines mentoring as “a partnership in which a mentee is assisted in making significant advances in knowledge, perspective and vision in order to develop their full potential; the mentor’s wisdom is utilised by the mentee to facilitate and enhance new learning and insight.” The mentor’s focus is the development of the learner, and about passing on personalised, domain-specific knowledge. Mentors help to set the agenda, their primary aim to develop an individual or small group to learn more comprehensively from their day-to-day working experience.

Mentoring, for example of recently-promoted managers within an organisation, can create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable and acknowledged. Mentoring can increase communication across organisational lines, prepare for a more diverse management team, improve staff retention, and support the organisation’s beliefs and values. Mentors can convey knowledge of organisational routines and the managerial system; help to identify opportunities for training; and teach learners how to navigate the organisation’s “political” system. Mentors convey knowledge about organisational values and traditions.

*** SOURCE: COMENSA,

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM COACHING

In all our work, be it COACHING, TRAINING OR SUPERVISION, we make extensive use of Solution-Focused Practices. These have been developed from the work begun by the late Steve de Shazer and the late Insoo Kim Berg and their colleagues in Milwaukee in the 1980s.

Solution-Focused Practices are based on identifying strengths and resources, and start from the premise that the client is the expert in their own life and situation. My role, whether counsellor, trainer, life coach or supervisor, is to help you focus on what is going well, recognise what changes you wish to make, and describe the differences those changes would mean to you in terms of living the life you want.

In counselling we would spend time clarifying what life would look like without the “problem” currently causing you difficulties. We would explore how your behaviour and that of people close to you might change if those difficulties were resolved, and we would explore in detail the improvements you wish to see. Having come up with a description of your “preferred future”, we would then focus on the changes which make that future possible.

In training we would identify what you and/or your team or even your whole department needs to get out of, first, the session secondly the process to make it useful. We will be focusing on the differences that you wish to see, e.g. in your understanding of a particular issue, or the way that you all work together.

This would set the tone for the training sessions, which may be information based (for example, in understanding conflict resolution) or technique based, demonstrating solution focused approaches to use in your field of work.

Similarly in life coaching, whether your main reason for seeking help is professional or personal, we would establish a very clear picture of what it is that you want to achieve, and we would explore the various ways in which you would know you had achieved it.

In supervision, (also organisational consultation) my support may take the form of individual or group support (SF CAFÉ). This may be on a long or medium term basis for people who have had training in solution focused ways of working and wish to remain solution focused in their day to day work. OR it may even be briefer interventions to help build up the morale, efficiency or understanding of a team or department experiencing difficulties.

We offer supervision, counselling, and life coaching in a variety of locations in Pretoria. Elta also works across the RSA, delivering training on a range of issues to individuals and organisations.

To discuss how we might be able to help, and the fees we charge, please contact us on 012 460-5686, or via email.