Managing Your Schedule — Susan’s Coaching Story - MindShift Zone (ex UpSkillCoach)

Table of Contents

Most beneficial feature?

‘For me, the most beneficial feature was the scheduling. So being able to specifically go through the days of the week, schedule at the times, and also add in some breaks. I really liked the way that was set up because it also, as well as setting it up for Upskill Coach, it also gave a space to look at how I want to coach and how many sessions I feel I can do in a week. How many sessions I feel I can do in a day and what days, I don’t want to be coaching at all. Having breaks I want in between each kind of each session. So that was really good, I think it had been very thoughtfully put together. And so yeah, I think that for me that was my favourite feature. Because it went beyond just being useful for you. Upskill Coach helped me just as a coach as well’.

Benefits from Upskill Coach?

‘So I would say again, the first thing for me is the scheduling. That for me was the most helpful. And I feel the second thing was probably the tags that you have, where you have fields or tags to connect with a coach. For me, it was business and psychology and it was really nice to be, to isolate just a couple of days times to make clear the main elements of my coaching. Because you can type away in a bio, but it’s really nice to be able to pinpoint for people just to be able to see specific words. So I liked that. And then the third one I would say just the set up of the bios. It just to really put thought for me into it. If I was presented in a format like this, how would I do it? Because I have my website, I have LinkedIn, but it’s nice to give yourself another framing for how you might think about presenting yourself. So looking at the experience and also looking at the bit about me. I think on the page, I’ve actually flipped how I’ve done it, but I find that helpful to be able to look in a different way of presenting myself’.

15-minute discovery calls

‘I think that’s really important. And for me, that stuff is something I flagged. because I feel you don’t know until you have a chat with someone whether you’re going to the right fit for them. But also whether they’re going to be the right fit for you. So I think having that 15 minutes is really important. It doesn’t, it’s not a deal-breaker necessarily but it gives both parties a little bit of time to understand where the other person is coming from. And it also gives both parties an option to say” Oh I’ve had a bit of a conversation is this style for me or is it not”. And I think for the coach as well it gives the coach an opportunity to have a little bit of an idea of what the person is looking to cover. Because if you go straight into an hour session, I have done that in the past. For both parties, it’s often not that helpful because potentially it’s not necessarily a fit and then you’re in it for a whole hour. So I feel that for me having the discovery call even as mandatory, I think is really important because for both parties it gives that little bit of reflection time without going into a whole session’.

Worried about coaching online?

‘No definitely not. That was probably because I knew who was behind it. So for me, that’s quite important. Say I’m going to put myself on something I want to know the values and the people. It’s the kind of who is behind it and how they work that’s quite important as opposed to the “What”. So it’s like coaching, it’s a coaching website. You could have any number of coaching websites and I wouldn’t necessarily be happy to go on any coaching website like I want to know kind of how it’s run and who’s behind it. And it was also a new start so I was going to see it grow from the very start which was important to me again I would be able to see how you worked and then I could also make a decision whether it was definitely for me’.

Would you recommend Upskill Coach to other coaches?

‘Yeah I definitely would. I feel, firstly, it’s a supportive experience so when you’re engaging with the team, they’re very supportive, they reply, they respond, and it’s friendly and personable without being overly formal. So I think that’s quite nice from a kind of experiential perspective. It’s enjoyable. And then I would say secondly on the other hand as well as being personable and friendly it’s also professional. So they are considering all the important elements for coaching say such as the discovery call, the scheduling and the breaks, advice that the professional side of coaching, all these bits and pieces have also been ticked off. So yes for those two reasons I definitely would’.

What did you like the most?

‘I would say probably the most helpful was during the testing. So when I initially went on the website there was a couple of bits and pieces that weren’t completely clear. I think one of them was like uploading a photo or something like that, so I think that for me it was the most helpful to be able to put my query in an email and to have it responded to really quickly and responded step by step as to how I would need to fix this. So I think when you’re testing anything with technology, it’s so important that when someone sends an email they’re not getting an automated response where they, where they have to kind of trail through it themselves- that you’re actually having someone come back and give you the feedback and ask you any more questions. So I think the responses with regards to the testing were really good. That was my I see the best it’s but the most distinct experience I would say with Upskill Coach’.