The Phone Coach
Organizational guidance is just a call away
She always thought coaches shouted, blew whistles and made their teams do push-ups. That is, until she saw an organizational coaching workshop during a National Association of Professional Organizers convention in 1996.
She watched two coaches carry out a 30-minute mock session on stage to illustrate how to help a client with better time management. “I left that workshop with my eyes wide open,” says the woman, who joined NAPO in 1995. At the time, she was making her living doing strictly residential organizing.
But soon after the workshop, she retooled her career objectives and shifted her focus to over-the-phone coaching and consulting. She began taking courses and, by 1999, had received her professional coach certification. For the most part, her decision to leave the hands-on organizing behind stemmed from a feeling that her clients might see more lasting results through coaching. “When you’re dealing with changing behavior, it takes time,” she says, adding that her home organizing clients often returned to their disorganized behavior. “Sure, clients would learn some systems and some processes, but knowing them and doing them are two different things.”
With coaching, she asks clients to commit to a minimum of three months. As a telephone coach specializing in paper and electronic management, she is able to bring better order to clients' lives — without ever leaving the office. “I can connect to the client’s computer. I can see what’s on their computer,” she said. “It’s like I’m sitting next to them, except I can’t see their papers.”
In some ways, not being there actually works to everyone’s advantage because the client tends to “think out loud.” This notion helps the organizer find ways to make the client accountable for the tasks that needs to be carried out. Through multiple conversations, she and the client determine the roadblocks standing in the way of organization and how to remove them. Together, they decide how much time is needed to address the issue, and the client schedules the appropriate time on the calendar. “The client is the expert in their life, not me,” she says. “I am being directive, I am giving advice. I help them clarify, reflect, and make commitments to themselves.”
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