From corporate manager to professional coach

From Corporate Management to Coaching

I have been a successful corporate manager and without realising I was somewhat practicing a rudimental form of coaching. One day a person very close to me said to me: “You know what? You could be a great professional coach, with your charm, communication skills, empathy”.

This is why I embarked in a search for the best academic path and came across The Coaching Academy as one of the most advanced, complete and recognised teaching body in the coaching space. I attended the free Introduction to Life Coaching and the rest is history as I secured my Personal Performance (Life) Coaching diploma and about to finalise my Corporate & Executive Coaching diploma.

What I have learnt since I started my studies with The Coaching Academy is practicing on my own soft skills, such as empathy, being non-judgmental and most importantly of all, be able to achieve proficiency in active listening. These aspects are clearly necessary for practicing coaching, but they became a norm in my everyday life and gave me a confidence I had never had before.

Helping Clients Discover Themselves

I love the way my client starts with a specific goal in mind, for example weight loss or a career change, and end up discovering themselves, their strengths, increasing their self-awareness in the process. There is nothing like a “thank you for helping me” to motivate myself as a coach and as an individual.

Clients I have interacted with reported an increase in the level of their self-awareness and energy to deal with the challenges / goal they face. When at the end of a cycle they say to me “thank you for raising my self-esteem!” or “I have learnt a lot in these sessions from you and about me”, I know I have done a good job, for them and for myself as well! An example I can take is when a client of mine, affected by body weight problems for a long time, leveraged the increased self-awareness to address other challenges in her life (related to work and her family) which improved her overall condition and increased her motivation to take care of her health and her weight. Never I have felt so happy in my (short) career as a coach! 

Milestones in My Coach Training Journey

There are two parts I will always keep with me: the Coaching Academy's free Introduction to Life Coaching event, where I made the decision to become a coach, and the day I qualified with them and received my first coaching diploma. In between them, I had the opportunity to learn from the best (Sarah, Pam, etc.) and will sadly miss Kris.

Nothing is so poignant and useful as the Coaching Academy training events, as well as the great qualification of the teachers, and the interaction with fellow coaches is invaluable to grow as a professional coach.  Furthermore, The Coaching Academy provides us with invaluable resources, such as webinars, business frameworks, etc. to help us student to start practicing right away as this is the best way to learn!   One of the biggest challenges I faced at the beginning of my training journey was to be able to remove my ego, my thoughts, my judgements from the coaching equation. I applied conscious effort to do so and very much like when you learn a new language, suddenly, I realised I was completely dedicated, body and soul to my client. And the beauty of it is that she felt it. Since then, it has been a joy to be able to get in that status of proactive listening, both professionally and personally.  

I took what I learnt from The Coaching Academy (and what I continue learning) into my day-by-day life, both with the teams I manage, the leaders I interact with as well as with my family and friends. In addition, I have set up my own practice to focus on corporate coaching. Both at work and in my personal life, I noticed significant changes, such as an improvement of my team’s performances. With re to my own coaching practice, I have started with one-to-one sessions to support career change decisions, talent improvements and I plan to move, by continue studying with The Coaching Academy into the area of Team Performance Improvement.

One of the beauties of learning from The Coaching Academy is the plethora of tools that you come across and learn to put in your practice. Besides the GROW model and all its variations for the corporate world, I am fascinated by the Wheel of Life and the Lencioni Pyramid as they have been delivering the most rewarding results to date (both to my client and to my learning curve).

Building My Corporate Coaching Practice

I am now working to finalise the Corporate Coaching diploma to be able to accelerate the construction of my corporate coaching practice. I focus on this (large) niche as I can count on my network of contacts to get started and going. This is what I would recommend to anyone who is in the process of choosing their niche: besides your passion, focus on your area of expertise and where your network is larger to guarantee a rapid business initial growth. You can always diversify and grow your portfolio when you establish references and credentials at a later stage.

I believe coaching is to our times what psychotherapy was in the 70’s in the US. It is still emerging and will become mainstream to support any aspect of our lives and support human improvement. I would love to be a proactive part of coaching evolution as I believe this profession could improve the well-being of many people.  

Thank you Massimo for sharing your transformational coaching journey and helping to inspire others!