I have recently taken part in a social media challenge called May Meet the Coach where I have been responding each day to prompts to give information about myself and my business. One prompt was about Values which is an exercise I get my clients to do as part of the career change coaching programme. For me there are some really clear values that I connect with very deeply and form part of the coaching experience. As I wrote my response for the challenge I realised that I wanted to share it as a blog so here it is.
These are my Values:
Learning and personal growth is my top value. I love learning, not only more tangible information but about myself too! This is so important for growth as we need to learn more about ourselves to be able to grow. Learning came up as a top value for me on a course I am currently doing on wellbeing. (See, I signed up to yet another course during lockdown!!)
This leads nicely onto my next value of health and wellbeing, in particular emotional wellbeing. Your health and wellbeing has such as impact on what you are doing and the decisions and choices you make impact this. This is so important to me due to my own experiences of anxiety and the impact it had on my own health and wellbeing. Coaching is great to be able to enable the individual to make the right choices for them.
Authenticity – Being yourself is so important – As Oscar Wilde says “Be Yourself, everyone else is already taken”. This took me years to really understand and to be able to do. Years of people pleasing meant I was being what everyone else wanted me to be but not myself and what was right for me. This is another reason why my name is in my company name as it reflects my own personal journey and growth; I totally understand when my clients feel they are not being their true selves and know the impact that coaching can make to help get out of that.
Empowerment is another one of my values (and such an important part of coaching). Supporting an individual to find their own answer and take the steps right for them is so important. Providing the safe space for them to explore what is going on and simply supporting anyone taking on a new challenge or endeavour. It is also about empowering yourself – seeing that you have got choices, places or people to go to for support and you can become ‘unstuck’ to be able to move forward.
All these lead into the final one I want to mention which is making a difference/ helping others. Both my work role and coaching connect with this greatly. It doesn’t have to be a huge difference as small steps can be built up to longer distances but helping to facilitate a change and supporting others is something I feel strongly about.
What are your values? Does your job/ career connect to your values?
The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this blog are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this blog. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this blog. Claire Bolsover disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this blog.