Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

The Keys to Crucial Conversations and Work/Life Balance

Coaches Corner

The goal of coaching is to accelerate a leader’s development.  Coaching speeds learning time, enabling leaders to make significant leaps in learning and behavior change in a matter of months rather than years.

Our goal is to add value to you by addressing the questions you have submitted.  Please comment below so we can include your question on the next episode!

Leadership coach Lori Schofer answers a few great questions from our audience!

• How do you handle a difficult conversation with a business partner?

• What are ways to maintain balance between work, family and faith?

• Feeling out of balance can cause a lot of stress. What do you think the reason behind that feeling is?

Resources

Level Up Now Coaching 

Professional Christian Coaching Institute – A great resource for leaders and coaches

Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman

Crucial Conversations – Kerry Patterson

Click here to get your ebook on Core Values!

Bio

Lori Schofer is a Speaker, Blogger, and Founder of Level UP Now Coaching, a professional coaching business. She spent 20 years in corporate achieving AVP. Lori interrupted her career for 12 years to raise a family. She returned to corporate and then followed God’s leading to start her own coaching business.

Started my career entering the corporate world at supervisory level. I jumped in leading others and was very successful doing that. I began climbing the corporate ladder. Did well – achieved AVP.

I wanted to start a family. I wanted it all – the family and the corporate career. So I tried it for a while and God brought me to the place where I knew I had to make a decision. Together my husband and I decided I would leave my job. It was hard for me to give up something I worked so hard for on one hand and yet it was so rewarding because my heart was with my baby son. And I could not let someone else raise him, no matter what the cost to me. There was a cost – I was the primary bread winner at that point.

The next 12 years I dedicated to raising my family – three beautiful children. God provided for us as only He could. And there were years where we wondered how we would make it through financially. We were raising our family in faith.

Then the kids got older and life began changing again. I felt God leading me back into the corporate world. I started back part-time and then full-time. I had a lot of rebuilding to do. Much had changed in the 12 years I was gone – technology for one. I had a large learning curve to get over. Dealing with adults who were sharp thinkers and carry on intelligent conversations verses speaking simple to the kids all day and reading Dr. Seuss. Balancing life was now much more challenging. Something was always out of balance. I learned greater dependence on Him through it all.

The big obstacle with returning to work was wanting it all again – my career to soar and my children to soar. I was old enough to know the “having it all” was a myth, speaking from a female perspective here of course. There just is not enough time or energy to give to having it all. Thus my great awakening to following Him more began. With it came the release of my career and my children to Him. As scary as that was it was a peaceful place. There’s no better place to be than with God directing my life.

After adjusting to corporate life again God directed me to start my own coaching business. At this point in my life it was a beyond a half-time adjustment and more like a fourth quarter adjustment, which made it seem even crazier. I’ve learned when God directs I follow no matter how crazy the timing seems.

I started Level UP Now Coaching and I coach leaders and those in corporate careers. Coaching was what God made me for and when I coach “I feel His pleasure” to quote Eric Liddell from Chariots of Fire. It’s knowing what He made me for that helps me now with the new challenges of being an entrepreneur.

Public speaking is the area I’ve struggled with as I have started my business. I’ve employed various strategies to help with that. One action I took was to join Toastmasters and that has helped tremendously. I’ve given numerous speeches there and as result have been a speaker at conferences. I’ve grown leaps and bounds in my speaking skills thanks to Toastmasters.

Through my coaching business I’m able to help people take their lives to the next level by affecting their influence, leadership and communication. Developing one’s emotional intelligence is the golden ticket to really taking a person to the next level. We all have a certain level of emotional intelligence and the great thing is we can develop the levels we’re not so strong in. It’s something we can get better at and is so worth taking the time to improve – both from a career level and personal level.