I’ve attended three more training sessions since I wrote last month about how it was going in my efforts to become a life coach for the Ali Forney Center. The training has been enlightening. Much of it has centered around how to connect with the clients and engage them in the right way. It’s really common sense stuff, but it is great to hammer the point home so you think about things like active listening, not making a conversation all about you, and helping the client reach a conclusion without influencing with your own opinions.
We’ve also discussed boundaries. We all have boundaries, of course, and they are different in different situations. How you interact and what you reveal to a co-worker is different than what you reveal to friends, different than what you reveal to new acquaintances, etc. For the training, the coordinators want the coaches to think about where their boundaries are since the clients will ask a million questions, some of which will be quite personal. The point they’ve driven home is that you need to know where the boundaries are before you meet the first time so they are firmly in place.
Next Saturday is the day to meet the clients and put all this training into action. I am looking forward to that.
As such, this is the point where I stop writing about this. Confidentiality is crucial so, except for the occasional post where I might mention I’m still doing the coaching, I simply won’t be able to discuss this topic much.
