“Awareness in BEING initiates New Results in DOING.” - Robin Fernandez

Professional coaching engages coaches as a partner in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires clients to maximize their personal and professional potential. Conversation, observation, learning, questions, and practices are used to facilitate extraordinary results in personal and/or business lives, achieving greater clarity, fresh perspectives, achievement of goals, and realization of desired changes. The coaching relationship is founded upon mutual trust and respect. The coach honors the client as being creative, resourceful, and capable. Please see History of Professional Coaching below for more information about its origins. 

Ontology may be defined as the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of being®. As a trained ontological coach, Robin works with clients/teams in learning new distinctions and developing the ability to observe themselves in language, the body, and moods/emotions. Self-observation allows for the emergence of new ways of being, thereby developing the capacity to take new actions and generate powerful, transformational results. For more information about ontological coaching, please Contact Robin.

The optimal coaching client is someone who makes a commitment to creating important and desired changes in his/her life through dedication and new practices. If you want something different in your life, you have to practice something different; otherwise, you will get more of the same. The coaching process requires readiness to take responsibility for your own learning, growth, and personal development to allow new possibilities and attain personal and/or professional goals. 

A consultant is hired to present solutions to problems. Coaching assumes the clients are capable of generating their own solutions. Therapy centers on helping people with emotional difficulties, events of the past, and better functioning to increase well-being and healing. Coaching acknowledges the past, and focuses on the client as being whole, healthy, and fully capable of deriving their own solutions in the present while creating a desired new future.  In adherence to the ICF code of Ethics, Robin will recommend therapeutic professional assistance to a client if she assesses such support would better serve the client or if he/she is not ready for coaching. Clients may engage in therapy and coaching during the same time period if such is within the client’s capability for success. 

Coaching sessions may be via telephone, video conference, or in-person. Before and during sessions, coaching questions are used to help clients develop self-awareness, hone their goals and desires, and establish agreed upon actions and practices. In between sessions, clients check in briefly with the coach regarding the status and results of their actions and practices. In subsequent coaching sessions, clients share their experience of new learning, observations, actions taken (and not taken), and results in relation to their goals. Robin utilizes questions, observation, declarations, visualization, somatic practices (working with the body), and creativity to draw out her clients’ best self, clarity of purpose, innate wisdom, and most desired outcomes. Please note that Robin may incorporate training (teaching new concepts) and consulting (advising clients on resources, etc.) along with the coaching process and will distinguish such information/suggestions as her voice, to clarify from the client’s. 

Coaching is an important transformational investment into your life. Look honestly at your finances before entering into a coaching relationship. For professional coaching – executive, leadership, career, communications, etc. – ask your employer. Paying for coaching for their employees is becoming a widespread and crucial professional development organizational benefit. The best results are achieved with a minimum of three to six months commitment to the process and practices. Coaching relationships often continue for two or more years depending on the client’s/organization’s goals, desires, and dedication to the process. Coaching fees can range from $150 a session/$600+ monthly for individual coaching to $2,500+ a month for executive coaching. Robin will create a package/program that meets the needs of the individual/organization.

Since the profession of coaching does not currently have or require licensing, anyone may call him/herself a coach and practice under that designation. The International Coaching Federation advises engaging in professional coaching with an ICF professional certified/credentialed coach to ensure the high standards, accredited training, and ethics of the profession. Robin Fernandez is a Newfield Certified Coach (NCC) with Newfield Network in Boulder, CO, having completed their ICF-Accredited Coach Training Program with over 120-hours in ontological coaching and learning distinctions. With the completion of this program, passing examinations, mentor hours/recommendations by master coaches, plus over 500 hours of professional coaching experience, Robin achieved the status of Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the ICF. She continues to develop her coaching expertise through required continuing education credits to maintain her credentialing, and currently has over 1000 hours of coaching expertise. As a credentialed member of the ICF, Robin pledges to uphold the ICF Code of Ethics. Please visit the ICF website for more information about the organization and its high standards. Please visit the Newfield Network website for more information about their coach training program.

The concept of life coaching came out of sports coaching, acting coaching, music coaching, etc. and the benefits of having the support of a coach as a director/teacher/mentor to help them achieve their full potential. This style of coaching has a large component of “consulting” in the relationship in that the coach engages in “telling the client what to do.” Thus, life coaching is very different in its standards, practices, and application from sports and related styles of coaching. There are many different focuses of professional coaching – such as executive, leadership, career, relationship, health, spiritual, transition, etc. – and yet all of them may be considered “life.”

The beginning of professional coaching as we know it today is attributed to Thomas Leonard, an American financial planner, who noticed that his clients wanted more from him than just information/advice in investments and protecting/building their assets. He observed that his clients wanted help in planning, organizing, and achieving their goals in life. 

Mr. Leonard’s career shifted from financial planning to full-time life coaching, (that he called life planning), developing and sharing his methodology. His teachings evolved from his book, The Portable Coach, to establishing the first formal coach training program and Coach University (Coach U) in 1992. In 1995, Mr. Leonard founded the International Coach Federation (ICF) to create a professional coaching community, initially directed toward North America but now has members in over 136 countries.