By Rita Weinstein, JTNews Correspondent
The athletes and stars you love to watch have them. So do successful businesspeople. What they have are professional coaches that help them maintain their success in reaching their chosen goals or in formulating new ones. Stuart Kaufman is a professional personal and business coach or, one could also say, a life-change expert. His coaching business, called “Metamorphosis” (from his early years as a biology major at the University of Minnesota), helps people evolve in a conscious, purposeful manner in both their personal and professional lives.
No stranger to life change himself, Kaufman moved to Seattle five years ago so his youngest son could go to Northwest Yeshiva High School. With his recent marriage combining families into seven children, the youngest of whom is 15, his blended family is a regular Brady Bunch. At the time he moved here, Kaufman was employed by PacifiCare as a project manager and was therefore able to get transferred within the company to Mercer Island. After a two-year stint there, he then moved to Group Health Cooperative, again as a project manager. It was during the course of that transition that he began to establish a management coaching practice.
His own evolution began when he went to a seminar on professional coaching. There he discovered he had many of the skills that make for a good coach. He identified in himself the ability to listen at length, paraphrase what the person said and get to the core of the matter in a focused way. He also identified organizational, goal-setting, and his ability to connect with people as his strengths. His biggest discovery was that a lot of what he was already doing as a project manager directly related to the coaching process.
With the seminar under his belt, he went on to his new job at Group Health, but pursued a coaching career on the side. He consciously wove the coaching process into his work as a project manager, and eventually took a proposal for a pilot project to senior management. The proposal was that he begin to coach three managers who were already successful in their jobs. When the pilot project was finished, the three managers evaluated their own results very favorably. The coaching process had enabled them to upgrade skills such as delegation, holding people accountable, conflict management, communication skills, team building, and time management. Kaufman was subsequently given the go-ahead to coach managers throughout the Group Health hospital system.
Along the way, Kaufman enrolled in a course of study at Coach University, in which classes are conducted as conference calls over the phone. He graduated and received accreditation this month, having completed 45 courses. Although certification for professional coaches is not required, certification is available through the International Coaching Federation, coaching’s primary professional association. He is working toward completing that process as well.
Kaufman left Group Health and in August 2002 made the transition to full-time coaching. He began by creating marketing materials, designing programs, and talking to people he knew. The most important thing he had to learn was how to be effective at networking, since building a coaching practice is a one-on-one proposition.
The process, once begun, consists of identifying areas where a person might want to grow, helping the person clearly identify goals, and the gap between where he or she is now and where he or she wants to be in life. He then helps put a work plan together, but both coach and client must do the work.
Coaching is not a well-understood profession, so he begins his meetings with new clients by showing them what it’s about and how professional coaching can relate to them.
He asks them to name a major challenge in their lives, then propose solutions which would change them for the better. He asks how their lives would look if the issue no longer existed. How would things be different? And then he asks what steps they’d be willing to take to find the solution. He helps clients create a full and vivid vision, then compares the vision to where they are today.
The coach helps to identify options. The client prioritizes and creates a plan of his or her own. The coach then provides feedback, support, motivation, and accountability. Kaufman has found that what clients most appreciate is having that source of personal support and accountability to keep them on track.
In identifying what steps a person needs to take to move forward, a coach is different from a therapist in one key aspect: a coach is future-oriented. There is no going back over the past — instead, there’s a conscious move toward a better future. He helps his clients identify their fears and then helps them come up with ways to deal with those fears.
A coach is also different than a consultant who creates a plan, then leaves the scene. The coach is a change agent, a process expert. In a session, Kaufman talks very little. Instead, he asks provocative questions to help clients think differently about their situation. He stimulates them to think about creating options and resolving issues.
While six months to a year is typical, the length of the process depends on how motivated to change people are and on what they are willing to invest. Kaufman doesn’t pull people along. If they’re not ready, he tells them to come back when they are. To benefit in a coaching partnership, a person must be self-motivated. Kaufman’s role is to be a catalyst for moving forward faster. He helps his clients gain the skills, confidence, and vision to move forward.
Kaufman’s own evolution has gone very well. His practice has a good client base, but he says he still has room for more. His own vision is to have a successful practice that allows him to fulfill his passion of helping people to create rewarding and meaningful lives. His is the business of human metamorphosis, helping people to become proactive in their lives rather than to simply react to circumstance.
For more information about personal and business coaching, you can reach Stuart Kaufman at 206-725-1584 or at coach@stuartkaufman.com. His Web site is www.stuartkaufman.com.