Coaching to create futures

PARKWOOD – The Family Life Centre has a new service to help people look forward and create the future they want.

Centre board member Ridwana Jooma-Cook has headed up the life, leadership and imago relationship coaching team.

“Life coaching is a relationship, a partnership, between the coach and person being coached. The coach facilitates decision-making to help the person create the life they want to live,” said Jooma-Cook.
“It’s different to therapy, in that therapy looks at the past, whereas coaching looks forward. It’s goal-oriented.”

Jooma-Cook said leadership and executive coaching was focused on the business and corporate environments.

“Personal aspects do come into it, but the focus is on meeting specific work goals. It’s like a sports team bringing in a coach to help them achieve their goals,” she said.

While life and leadership coaching is usually done on an individual basis, imago relationship coaching is for married couples who hope to save their marriages.

“The coach and couple will look at how the relationship can be worked on, and how they can get rid of exit strategies. This coaching would happen before the couple have made the final decision to divorce,” said Jooma-Cook.

She explained that coaching was supported by an agreement between the coach and the persons being coached, and that this agreement included a timeframe and confidentiality.

“Coaching can help people in so many different ways,” she said. “I worked with a woman, the mother of an 18-month-old baby, who was going through a divorce. It had destroyed her self-esteem, and she wanted to reclaim her power as a woman.

“Coaching could also help someone who may have to make a decision whether or not to stay in a job when their passion might be to own their own business, or an executive who is struggling to create a balance between work and family commitments.”

A coaching programme at the centre would typically run over three, six or 12 weekly sessions, dependent on the objective. The first session would be administered by the centre, before the individual’s coach takes over.

Once the programme is complete, people often have a monthly maintenance session with their coach.

Jooma-Cook has worked in the non-profit and corporate sectors, in fields such as sustainable development, conflict management, women’s empowerment and transformation, for more than 18 years.

Details: 011-788-4784; admin@familylife.co.za