Frequently Asked Questions

The mission of the ICF Credentialing program is to: Protect and serve consumers of coaching services; Measure and certify competence of individuals; and Inspire pursuit of continuous development.

A coach who has been credentialed by the ICF has completed stringent education and experience requirements and has demonstrated a strong commitment to excellence in coaching.

Certification from the ICF is extremely important when considering which coach to hire. It means the coach:

• Has received professional training from a program specifically designed to teach coaching skills in alignment with the ICF Core Competencies and Code of Ethics
• Has demonstrated a proficient understanding and use of the coaching competencies as outlined by the ICF
• Is accountable to the ethics and standards set forth by the ICF

According to the 2010 ICF Global Consumer Awareness Study, 84 percent of adult consumers who had experienced a coaching relationship reported that it was important for coaches to hold a credential.

Working with an ICF Credentialed coach ensures consumers they aren’t in a partnership with someone merely calling him or herself a coach. When you hire an ICF Credentialed coach, you can be assured your coach comes with highly recognizable, global coaching qualifications. ??Coaches who have been credentialed by the ICF have received coach-specific training, achieved a designated number of experience hours and been coached by a Mentor Coach.

If you are considering hiring a coach, be diligent in asking the coach if they have been specifically trained in coaching skills and currently holds or in the process of acquiring an ICF Credential. Don’t be misled to think someone is a competent coach because he or she has other professional credentials or sets high fees.
 

Coaching is more than a profession – it’s a calling. Ontological Coaching® is a holistic and effective way to help people discover all that is within themselves and open their view to new ideas and possibilities.

Newfield Network’s ontological coaching training program is considered the Harvard of coach training programs, and Newfield is routinely ranked in the top three coach training organizations worldwide.

Ontological Coaching is a method co-developed by Julio Olalla, the founder of Newfield Network. It taps deeply into inner awareness and potential and helps people to develop new ways of seeing life.

Newfield’s approach is truly “ontological” with deep and balanced learning in the domains of language, moods/emotions, and body.

Once you can see an issue in a new way, as a “new observer,” you find new methods of dealing with that issue. It is a “whole-body” coaching method.
 

All over the world most people are still unaware of how useful a life coach is and how it is so different from therapy. People all over the world feel that you have to have issues to see a shrink or that there must be something wrong with you and although life coaching is one of the biggest growth industries in the world right now, many people still think that coaching and therapy or psychology is the same. Though in fact, they are very very different, in fact most coaches have not studied psychology at all and the approach is very different and practical. Not much time or energy is spent on analysis, rather on strategies to move forward in the directions of your goals.

“You go to a psychologist when you have a problem and you want to fix it. But, you don’t need to have a problem in order to want to change your life.”

A coach will talk straight with you yet will always come from a positive standpoint.

Working with a life coach is results and future based. It is immediate and you will be taking action straight away. Your life will become more fun and your actions immediately focused and effective.

Malti as a life coach does not give you answers to your problems, but makes you find the answer yourself. She believes that the answers lie within.

As a coach, she aims to serve, not to fix or to help. She’s an ICF Professional Certified Coach which means that she has had hundreds of hours of training, coached hundreds of people over thousands of hours. She is also an Ontological coach and an NLP Practitioner and a mother.

She’s not a shrink or a psychologist, she won’t prescribe medication or give you advise and tell you what to do, what she will do for you is ask and listen. She will help facilitate change in the way you observe the world, your circumstances and yourself. She will hold your hand for three to four months while you inculcate and instill the behaviours and support you into habitualsing those behaviors so that you have the results you desire.

Unlike therapy and counseling, most professional coaches carry out the weekly 30 – minute – 1 hour sessions by phone and Malti for one supports you with unlimited email and sms connection in between the weekly calls. This is far more than you get from a counselor or therapist who only deal with issues and offer little or no support in between your visits.

There are also myths that coaching is for people who are under-performing, however coaching is for high achievers and people who want to realise greater amounts of their potential. In fact not everyone is coachable and a professional coach will turn you away if she feels that she cannot coach you.

A life coach is not an expert in your given field but will be able to support you be the best in what you want to achieve. Coaches act as a sounding board, cheerleader, someone to hold you accountable to doing what you say you are going to do. A good qualified life coach would help you to increase choices and options in how you get where you want to go. Coaching is a process where the client grows and widens their perspectives. Thinking outside the box and beyond the realms of day to day lives is another benefit of life coaching.

Why has phone coaching become so incredibly popular? How can someone effectively get life coaching by phone? Actually, coaching done by email, messaging, and telephone, is not only the most prevalent form of non-athletic coaching in the world, it is considered by many to be more effective than doing the same thing in person. Why? it’s more efficient – you don’t have take time off from work or travel anywhere or look for parking, and there’s much less of the ultimately wasteful chit-chat that characterizes face-to-face encounters there are fewer distractions to divert either the coach or the client – instead, we’re laser-focused on the substance and delivery of what you say – and don’t say with the global reach of the telephone, you’re more likely to find the best coach for you!

The industry standard is that nearly all coaching is done by phone. So why do some people – always people who have never been coached before, interestingly enough — imagine that coaching should be in person?

This is so because these people do not know what coaching is.

Some people, for example, erroneously imagine that coaching must like the closest model they can think of: therapy. The misunderstanding that coaching must be like therapy is one thing coming from a person who is not a coach, but if you hear a coach telling you that you need to be in person, you should strongly reconsider whether what that person is doing is actually coaching.

The beauty is that the coach could be in the next street or another continent, because it can all be done on the phone.

“Much of [actual coaching] takes place over the phone. Many coaches and their clients have never met face to face. But it may not be the face-time that matters most in managing to get the best out of [clients].”?- Fortune Magazine

Similarly, coaches identify goals, examine patterns, listen for excuses, ask for action, and enforce commitments. That’s because what they do in those conversations doesn’t depend on what’s visible.

In the end, I’d strongly urge you to find a coach with whom you have chemistry and whose style you like and go with your instincts.

The ICF defines coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching honors the client as the expert in his/her life and work and believes that every client is creative, resourceful, and whole. Standing on this foundation, the coach’s responsibility is to:

• Discover, clarify, and align with what the client wants to achieve;
• Encourage client self-discovery;
• Elicit client-generated solutions and strategies; and
• Hold the client responsible and accountable.

Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.

To determine if you could benefit from coaching, start by summarizing what you would expect to accomplish in coaching. When someone has a fairly clear idea of the desired outcome, a coaching partnership can be a useful tool for developing a strategy for how to achieve that outcome with greater ease.

Since coaching is a partnership, also ask yourself if you find it valuable to collaborate, to have another viewpoint and to be asked to consider new perspectives. Also, ask yourself if you are ready to devote the time and the energy to making real changes in your work or life. If the answer to these questions is yes, then coaching may be a beneficial way for you to grow and develop.

Professional coaching is a distinct service which focuses on an individual’s life as it relates to goal setting, outcome creation and personal change management. In an effort to understand what a coach is, it can be helpful to distinguish coaching from other professions that provide personal or organizational support.

Therapy: Coaching can be distinguished from therapy in a number of ways. First, coaching is a profession that supports personal and professional growth and development based on individual-initiated change in pursuit of specific actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. Coaching is forward moving and future focused. Therapy, on the other hand, deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focus is often on resolving difficulties arising from the past which hamper an individual’s emotional functioning in the present, improving overall psychological functioning, and dealing with present life and work circumstances in more emotionally healthy ways. Therapy outcomes often include improved emotional/feeling states. While positive feelings/emotions may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary focus is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one’s work or personal life. The emphasis in a coaching relationship is on action, accountability and follow through.

Consulting: Consultants may be retained by individuals or organizations for the purpose of accessing specialized expertise. While consulting approaches vary widely, there is often an assumption that the consultant diagnoses problems and prescribes and sometimes implements solutions. In general, the assumption with coaching is that individuals or teams are capable of generating their own solutions, with the coach supplying supportive, discovery-based approaches and frameworks.

Mentoring: Mentoring, which can be thought of as guiding from one’s own experience or sharing of experience in a specific area of industry or career development, is sometimes confused with coaching. Although some coaches provide mentoring as part of their coaching, such as in mentor coaching new coaches, coaches are not typically mentors to those they coach.

Training: Training programs are based on the acquisition of certain learning objectives as set out by the trainer or instructor. Though objectives are clarified in the coaching process, they are set by the individual or team being coached with guidance provided by the coach. Training also assumes a linear learning path which coincides with an established curriculum. Coaching is less linear without a set curriculum plan.

Athletic Development: Though sports metaphors are often used, professional coaching is different from the traditional sports coach. The athletic coach is often seen as an expert who guides and directs the behavior of individuals or teams based on his or her greater experience and knowledge. Professional coaches possess these qualities, but it is the experience and knowledge of the individual or team that determines the direction. Additionally, professional coaching, unlike athletic development, does not focus on behaviors that are being executed poorly or incorrectly. Instead, the focus is on identifying opportunity for development based on individual strengths and capabilities.

• 4 sessions including unlimited email/sms support in between the calls: US$570 or Rs30,000 for India based clients. (4 sessions to be completed in 2 months)
• 12 sessions including unlimited email/sms support in between the calls: US$1,620 or Rs80,000 for India based clients if paid in full in advance. (12 sessions to be completed within 5 months)
• 1 year coaching (includes 40 sessions) US$4,600 or Rs2.5L for India based clients payable in 2 instalments.

There are many reasons that an individual or team might choose to work with a coach, including but not limited to the following:

• There is something at stake (a challenge, stretch goal or opportunity), and it is urgent, compelling or exciting or all of the above;
• There is a gap in knowledge, skills, confidence, or resources;
• There is a desire to accelerate results;
• There is a lack of clarity, and there are choices to be made;
• The individual is extremely successful, and success has started to become problematic;
• Work and life are out of balance, and this is creating unwanted consequences; or
• One has not identified his or her core strengths and how best to leverage them.

Coaching has grown significantly for many reasons. Generally the world has changed a lot, and coaching is a useful tool to deal with many of those changes. For example, coaching is a great tool for today’s challenging job market. There is more job transition, more self-employment and small business.

Individuals who have experienced the excellent results of coaching are talking to more people about coaching. In short, coaching helps people focus on what matters most to them in life: business and personal. People today are more open to the idea of being in charge of their own lives. Coaching helps people do just that; so the industry continues to grow.

The Coaching Process-Coaching typically begins with a personal interview (either face-to-face or by teleconference call) to assess the individual's current opportunities and challenges, define the scope of the relationship, identify priorities for action, and establish specific desired outcomes. Subsequent coaching sessions may be conducted in person or over the telephone, with each session lasting a previously established length of time. Between scheduled coaching sessions, the individual may be asked to complete specific actions that support the achievement of one's personally prioritized goals. The coach may provide additional resources in the form of relevant articles, checklists, assessments, or models, to support the individual's thinking and actions. The duration of the coaching relationship varies depending on the individual's personal needs and preferences.

The length of a coaching partnership varies depending on the individual’s or team’s needs and preferences. For certain types of focused coaching, 3 to 6 months of working with a coach may work. For other types of coaching, people may find it beneficial to work with a coach for a longer period. Factors that may impact the length of time include: the types of goals, the ways individuals or teams like to work, the frequency of coaching meetings, and financial resources available to support coaching.

Malti usually works with individuals over a period of 3 to 6 months. Some come back to her after a break with new goals and desires.

Overall, be prepared to design the coaching partnership with the coach. For example, think of a strong partnership that you currently have in your work or life. Look at how you built that relationship and what is important to you about partnership. You will want to build those same things into a coaching relationship. Here are a few other tips:

• Have a personal interview with one or more coaches to determine "what feels right" in terms of the chemistry. Coaches are accustomed to being interviewed, and there is generally no charge for an introductory conversation of this type.
• Look for stylistic similarities and differences between the coach and you and how these might support your growth as an individual or the growth of your team.
• Discuss your goals for coaching within the context of the coach's specialty or the coach's preferred way of working with a individual or team ?Talk with the coach about what to do if you ever feel things are not going well; make some agreements up front on how to handle questions or problems.
• Remember that coaching is a partnership, so be assertive about talking with the coach about anything that is of concern at any time.

The role of the coach is to provide objective assessment and observations that foster the individual's or team members' enhanced self-awareness and awareness of others, practice astute listening in order to garner a full understanding of the individual's or team's circumstances, be a sounding board in support of possibility thinking and thoughtful planning and decision making, champion opportunities and potential, encourage stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations, foster the shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives, challenge blind spots in order to illuminate new possibilities, and support the creation of alternative scenarios. Finally, the coach maintains professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession's code of ethics.

The role of the individual or team is to create the coaching agenda based on personally meaningful coaching goals, utilize assessment and observations to enhance self-awareness and awareness of others, envision personal and/or organizational success, assume full responsibility for personal decisions and actions, utilize the coaching process to promote possibility thinking and fresh perspectives, take courageous action in alignment with personal goals and aspirations, engage big picture thinking and problem solving skills, and utilize the tools, concepts, models and principles provided by the coach to engage effective forward actions.

To be successful, coaching asks certain things of the individual, all of which begin with intention. Additionally, clients should:

• Focus-on one's self, the tough questions, the hard truths–and one's success.
• Observe-the behaviors and communications of others.
• Listening-to one's intuition, assumptions, judgments, and to the way one sounds when one speaks.x
• Self discipline-to challenge existing attitudes, beliefs and behaviors and to develop new ones which serve one's goals in a superior way.
• Style-leveraging personal strengths and overcoming limitations in order to develop a winning style.
• Decisive actions-however uncomfortable, and in spite of personal insecurities, in order to reach for the extraordinary.
• Compassion-for one's self as he or she experiments with new behaviors, experiences setbacks-and for others as they do the same.
• Humor-committing to not take one's self so seriously, using humor to lighten and brighten any situation.
• Personal control-maintaining composure in the face of disappointment and unmet expectations, avoiding emotional reactivity.
• Courage-to reach for more than before, to shift out of being fear based in to being in abundance as a core strategy for success, to engage in continual self examination, to overcome internal and external obstacles.

Working with a coach requires both a personal commitment of time and energy as well as a financial commitment. Fees charged vary by specialty and by the level of experience of the coach. Individuals should consider both the desired benefits as well as the anticipated length of time to be spent in coaching. Since the coaching relationship is predicated on clear communication, any financial concerns or questions should be voiced in initial conversations before the agreement is made.

Malti's 2013 coaching fee is US$250 for a single session or US$ 1200 for 6 session if paid in advance and US$2000 for 12 sessions if paid for in advance.

No – not really because many people are still very private about revealing that they worked with a coach. Some also would rather people not know that they had some help along the way in making their lives work so fabulously!

Some of Malti’s clients do come from referrals, but most of them find her directly through Google and Social Media searches, they are people who have read her book or attended any of her speaking sessions or Workshopss.