A coach's job is to focus, nudge, prod, push, challenge, cheer, support, encourage and motivate people so that they can claim the life they want to live.

If we did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.

Thomas A. Edison

The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as an ongoing partnership that helps clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. Through the process of coaching, clients deepen their learning, improve their performance, and enhance their quality of life.

In each meeting, the client chooses the focus of conversation, while the coach listens and contributes observations and questions. This interaction creates clarity and moves the client into action. Coaching accelerates the clients' progress by providing greater focus, revealing blind spots and creating awareness of choice. People hire a coach when they are starting a new business, making a career transition, re-evaluating their life choices, feel out of balance or simply feeling ready for a personal or professional breakthrough.

Coaching concentrates on getting clients from where they are today to where they want to be tomorrow.

The key concept of personal coaching is the individual attention that the coach gives the client. Together they may focus on long or short-term goals or work to get through a particularly difficult life transition.

Many highly successful people hire a coach with the goal of gaining the extra edge that they need to attain success in a competitive world. They realize that they and their careers are worth the investment that will help them to be their best. As time goes by they often find that not only do their careers thrive with coaching, but their personal lives become better balanced, and they discover a deeper and more satisfying level of fulfilment.

A whopping 98.5% of coaching clients said their investment in a coach was well worth the money, according to an International Coaching Federation survey.

'Coaching is the most potent tool for inducing positive personal change, ensuring better-than-average odds for success and making the change stick for the longer term'

Beyond the business world, people hire a coach if they want support to make change in their lives whether it be creating a healthier balance, increasing fulfillment in life, defining goals and values or just looking out at the horizon. Imagine the possibilities if you regularly stopped to focus on what you wanted in life, created a plan to get it and had the support and encouragement to do it.

Creating an extraordinary life takes intention, focus, disciplined action... and support.