This is an anonymous post from an Elpha member.

What kind of coaches have helped you in your personal growth?

Larhonda79·Sep 21, 2021

I am looking to grow and want to know what are different kinds of coaches that you have found very helpful personally. For example, Career and Leadership coaches are the two kinds that I know of.

annamiller·Sep 21, 2021

Hi @larhonda79, Nice to meet you on here. I'm a career & mindset coach for women in tech. There are coached for anything you can think of, from health to money to sleeping. Whatever you want to work on, there is a coach for it. I personally have worked with business and life coaches myself to grow myself and my business. Most of the coaching is similar thought because good coaching focuses on clearing old patterns of belief and that can be done through talking or embodiment practices (using the body to feel into what's happening). Some coaches combine modalities like talking, tapping and hypnotherapy. It's really about what coach works for you and how you approach life. Hope this gives you some insights!

DianePrince·Sep 21, 2021

I've started, scaled and sold businesses for over 20 years. Bootstrapped my first business to (highest point) $50 ARR and sold to a public company and have exited multiple companies. I also have over a decade of experience studying mindset. So I coach founders. Many of my companies were staffing and recruitment related. I've hired thousands of people, and I used to do career coaching but now I focus on business coaching for entrepreneurs. It seems like many business coaches have never founded their own companies -- I'm always curious about that. TBH it makes no sense to me.

TheGoalGuru·Sep 21, 2021

You're certainly going to attract a lot of coaches with that question! :-)I was inspired to start my practice by my Career Coach, Melody Wilding who I've been working with for 6 years and is just a rock star at helping high-sensitivity folks tap into their emotional super-powers in the workplace. In building my own practice, I've also met some amazing coaches from all walks and topics: Life Coaches, Relationship Coaches, Financial Coaches, Business/StartUp Coaches, Organizational Development Coaches, Empowerment Coaches, Branding Coaches, Design Coaches. If you think it, you can coach it. I've met people doing amazing (and sometimes even fun*!) work in all of these fields and more. Ultimately, I've found we're all pursuing different paths to a really similar end: Helping our clients get clear on what they want and build a path to get to it. There's just so many ways to get there! Especially for the talented, big-hearted people I've found in the field.If you're interested in finding your own coach, start with asking yourself what you'd like focus on, explore, or improve. If it's something acute -- like progressing in your career or improving your relationship -- look for coaches in that specialization. If you find you're working through a general sense of ennui (or languishing, as Adam Grant calls it), maybe look for more of a generalist. The key is to take a couple of different consultations, and really find someone whose style resonates with you. *An example of the fun work I mentioned above, a Life Coach friend of mine started a very fun podcast that mixes concepts of coaching and leadership with lessons from the world of Disney. Including the link below, if that's something that you might enjoy!: https://open.spotify.com/show/3AH41bT9iSQb67wbnpW5Yr?si=uD7m761xTse4rybfvZIq9Q&dl_branch=1

rebeccabeck·Sep 22, 2021

Adding to previous comments, there are differences between a coach and a coach/mentor, and all others that sit in between. A pure coach will encourage you to do your own thinking ( using methodologies, tools, etc that they will be skilled in selecting according to their client) and come up with your own ideal solution, only bringing their own wisdom and experience when they feel the client is really stuck. This works well to bring about long lasting personal transformation and development. It empowers the individual to really understand what works and what doesn't work for them and solutions are more likely to be successfully and robustly embedded. At the other end of the spectrum there is mentor coaching which is a little bit of coaching but a lot more mentoring and training, where the professional is doing a lot more of the talking, sharing their wisdom and ideas based on their own experience. For example, if someone is looking to develop their leadership capabilities, a coach will explore with the client what type of leader they want to be, what's holding them back, what strengths, beliefs and assumptions they may have. A coach/mentor will bring their own expert knowledge into the conversation a lot more

Shantelle158·Sep 22, 2021

Public speaking coach!! Reach out to @JordynB / Speakwell ([email protected]). It will change your life and career trajectory.

Alexa167·Sep 22, 2021

I'm currently using a career coach to help me through (what felt like) a major inflection point in my life and career. While I'm still not certain what the future holds, my coach helped me unpack some of my limiting beliefs and gave me confidence that the attributes I viewed as downsides were in fact the things that made me interesting / strong as a candidate / employee. Personally I found that more useful than therapy for my career-specific anxieties, since my therapist wasn't particularly well-versed in my field, and it also helped me get at some deeper non-professional problems that stemmed from the same place as my various professional anxieties.