While there is no one answer that is always correct, in general, my coaching engagements run for an average of six months, which allows clients to observe real change in themselves. But that is not a hard and fast number, since engagements are fit to the challenges and opportunities that the client wants to work on. Sometimes engagements are extended thereafter (or morphed into a less frequent meeting cadence), especially if the client is heading for a big event or milestone and would like the support.
At the other end of the spectrum, generally coaching relationships need a minimum of three months to be effective—but occasionally, ”spot coaching” for just a couple of sessions is appropriate. Please reach out to discuss any questions you might have about duration and time commitment!

Coaching, consulting, mentoring, advice.... these areas of engagement are related but distinct! The way to think about it is how the relationship is led. For consulting arrangements, you are paying for an expert to give you recommendations on the “right” course of action (or indeed are paying that person to actually execute on a project plan or produce a deliverable). This is an ”expert-led” scenario. Similarly, in a mentoring or advice-oriented interaction, you expect a mentor or advice-giver to have applicable experience in a problem or scenario you are facing—and to share their own experiences of having overcome similar problems in their (likely successful) past. Again, more of an ”expert” scenario.
Coaching, however, is designed as a relationship of equals. A coach is not someone who leads you to an objectively ”right” answer with their functional expertise or their vast reserves of experience. Instead, the coach‘s role is to help you cultivate your own self-awareness and motivation, both of which are the incredibly powerful ingredients for lasting and sustainable change in your mental models and behavior patterns. A coach holds you in unconditional positive regard—and asks simple and powerful questions in a relationship of full attention, vulnerability, and curiosity (qualities of listening that we, alas, get very rarely in our lives).

Similarly to the question above—there is a distinction between coaching and other relationships that you may have with experts to help you diagnose and work on your development. Coaching does take a ”whole person” approach and allow you to explore your ideas and motivations in both professional and personal settings, and therapy may do something that seems similar. However, therapists and counselors focus also in an expert-led way on working through longer term issues and past traumas that are impeding your healing and/or healthy living.
Many people have chosen to work with both a therapist and a coach (either simultaneously or at different periods in their life), and these relationships can easily co-exist and provide different benefits.

You are a whole person. And correspondingly, good coaching will take into account that you don’t simply hang up your personal life at the door when you enter work mode, or vice versa. The point of coaching is to increase your capacity—to think, to create, to lead, to connect, and so on. And you and I will be co-creating the areas of focus for our work together, which will encompass all areas of your life as relevant.

Coaching can be applicable to absolutely anyone—and it doesn’t need to be associated with a negative sense of needing to ”fix” oneself. Just as everyone’s writing benefits from a skilled editor partnership or pro athletes continue to benefit from coaching throughout the peak of their practice, everyone can deeply benefit from a coaching relationship.
Coaching helps unlock your own capacity for greater connections, creativity, and engagement with your life, work, and purpose....all with you in the driver‘s seat.