Group Coaching

May 14, 2025 Noon - July 30, 2025

Laid-Off to Pay-Off Group Coaching

Welcome to Joyful Life Institute, Inc., where you can accomplish your goals and discover your joy for life! This page explains the policies and practices of this coaching service. Read it carefully and feel free to ask questions.

PURPOSE OF COACHING

The purpose of coaching is to develop and implement strategies to help you reach your personal and professional goals. The goal of coaching is to help you act, enhance your performance, and attain personal satisfaction…joy.

Coaching may address a wide variety of goals such as personal projects, purpose, life balance, job performance and satisfaction, business development, home life, and relationship enhancement.

WHAT IS COACHING?

The staff of Joyful Life Institute Inc. is trained to help coachees learn new skills and make significant behavior changes. Skills around communication, problem-solving, and goal achievement are offered. This is done through a process called “coaching.” In coaching, a coachee comes to us for help in making decisions and implementing them in order to achieve targeted goals.

In addition to being a coach, your coach is also a licensed therapist in the state of Texas with training and experience in diagnosing and treating emotional and psychological problems. Although there are some similarities between coaching and psychotherapy, your coach will NOT conduct psychotherapy with coaching coachees. These are different activities, and it is important to understand the difference between them.

COACHING VS. PSYCHOTHERAPY

Although both coaching and psychotherapy use knowledge of human behavior, motivation, behavioral change, and the interactions between coach and coachee are similar, there are major differences in the goals, focus, and level of professional responsibility.

The job of your coach is to help you to take information and skills that you already have and help you to 1) identify the changes you would like to make, 2) develop a personal “action plan,” 3) clarify how you will implement your action plan and make personal behavior changes, and 4) assist you in developing strategies to maintain the changes you have made. Your coach will support, encourage, teach, and re-focus you so that you can move toward your goals. You can expect your coach to be honest, direct, ask straightforward questions, and use techniques that challenge you to help you move forward.

You, as a coaching coachee, will set the agenda for your coaching. Your success will depend on your willingness to define and attempt new approaches. You are expected to evaluate your progress. If coaching is not working as you wish, you should immediately inform your coach so that you can both take steps to correct this. Like any effort to change, coaching can involve feelings of distress and frustration with the process. Coaching does not offer a guarantee of success.

Psychotherapy, on the other hand, is a health care service. Its primary focus is to identify, diagnose, and treat nervous and mental disorders. The goals include: 1) alleviating symptoms, 2) understanding the underlying personality dynamics that create the symptoms, 3) changing the dysfunctional behaviors or interactions that can be precipitated by or resulting from the disorder, and 4) helping coachees cope with their psychological problems. It is usually reimbursable through health insurance policies. Coaching is not.

Psychotherapy coachees are often emotionally vulnerable. This vulnerability is increased by the expectation that they will discuss very intimate personal information and will expose feelings about themselves, about which they are understandably sensitive. The past life experiences of psychotherapy patients have often made trust difficult to achieve. These factors give psychotherapists greatly disproportionate power that creates a fiduciary responsibility to protect the safety of their coachees. On the other hand, the coaching relationship is designed to avoid this power differential.

Because of these differences, the roles of coach and psychotherapist are often in potential conflict; therefore, it is ethically inappropriate, under most circumstances, to play both roles with a coachee.

Your coach cannot be your therapist. This means if it is recognized that you have a problem that would benefit from psychotherapy, you will be referred or directed to the appropriate resources. In some situations, I may insist that you enter psychotherapy and that he or she have access to your psychotherapist, as a condition of your coach continuing as your coach.

It is also important to understand that coaching is a professional relationship. While it may feel, at times, like a close personal relationship, it cannot extend beyond the coaching relationship, during and after our work together. Considerable experience shows that when boundaries blur, the hard-won benefits gained from the coaching relationship are endangered.

COACHING PROCESS

Your coaching topics and goals will be decided jointly by you and your coach. As a result of the coaching meeting, you should get clarity about your priorities in life. Your priorities should help you to clarify and organize the steps you will need to take to attain your goals. At the end of each meeting, you will have identified the concrete steps you want to take to attain your goal. It is expected that you will take action on these goals between meetings. In future sessions, we will review your progress and accomplishments and set new goals for you to attain. It is your pace of completing each task and your level of motivation that will dictate how quickly you accomplish your objectives.

CONFIDENTIALITY

Your coach protects the confidentiality of his or her coachees’ communications. Although your coach will not be practicing therapy with you, your coach will also keep confidential what you discuss.

Your coach will only release information about our work to others with your written permission or if your coach is required to do so by law. For example: 1) If you are in danger of hurting yourself or someone else (suicide, homicide, suspected child or elder abuse, or abuse of someone who is dependent on your care), standard confidentiality is waived. In these situations, your coach has a duty to report to the appropriate authorities.  2) When the coach is legally obligated to reveal information. For example, the coach may be compelled to testify, and his or her records may be subpoenaed. You will need a lawyer to stop this. These situations rarely occur in coaching relationships, but if such a situation does occur and (if your coach is able and it is appropriate) he or she will make every effort to discuss it with you before taking any action. For this reason, you are asked to keep a current address on file so that you can be informed of such legal action.

Although you have taken precautions, you cannot guarantee your confidentiality if you choose to use my email address or cellular phone. As you are probably aware, your communication can be intercepted. Your pre-arranged calls will be made to a cellular phone. Please weigh your risk when you use either of these methods of communication. Your signing this document and using these means of communication confirms that you will assume any risk associated with this. I will provide you with secure text and secure email apps that we will use.

For those who have contracted to do group coaching, including teleconference groups, you agree to maintain the confidentiality of all information communicated to you by other coaching coachees and by your coach. We also understand that progress is often enhanced when coachees discuss their coaching relationship with trusted colleagues and friends. You can have these discussions, but you are expected to be very careful not to share any information that would allow others in the group to be identified. One way to decide how and what to discuss is to think about how you would feel if someone else in the group were to discuss the issue in question.

SCHEDULING COACHING

Coaching sessions are generally 45 minutes in duration. Coaching meetings are typically done via telehealth. Coaching is scheduled at a time that is mutually convenient for the coach and coachee. The day and time of the next call will be scheduled at the closeof each coaching session.

COACHING CALL PROCUDURE

The coach will call the coachee at the pre-arranged time and the videoconferencing platform. The coach is responsible for the phone/data charges or fee (if applicable) for the call.

CANCELLATION AND RESCHEDULING:

When you schedule an appointment with your coach, you are purchasing a block of time where my sole focus will be on you and your needs. Please give me 24 hours' notice if you will not be able to attend your scheduled meeting. This will enable your coach to schedule someone else into that block of time who is in need of the same kind of attention. There is a full-fee charge for missed appointments. However, extreme emergencies will be considered.

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