Sharon Godlewski
Lake Forest, IL
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Fitness Specialist
Fitness professionals are learning the Intrinsic Coaching® methodology and expanding their ability to work with the whole person. Because Intrinsic Coaching® enables people to think better about choices, fitness professionals are finding it to be a more effective, productive, and satisfying way of working with people.
Enroll as an individual: View the schedule and enroll in an Intrinsic Coach® Development Series for Health and Wellness professionals by going to http://www.intrinsiccoach.com/english/enroll/. New series start almost every week and meet via teleconference for two consecutive hours a week, once a week, for twelve weeks. If you have to miss a session, you can listen to an audio file of your missed session. Upon completion of this Series, you will be able to elicit people's best thinking, including your own, so they and you can accomplish important outcomes. You'll also be able to identify yourself as an Intrinsic Coach®, use the Intrinsic Coach® logo, wear the Intrinsic Coach® pin, have access to the Intrinsic Coach® community, and have a readily available way to develop your coaching in any direction you choose, through www.IntrinsicCoach.com. For a brochure, click here.
Train your staff in Intrinsic Coaching®: We'd be happy to train your entire staff and also talk about creating in house Intrinsic Coach® Development capabilities. To take a first step, contact us for a conversation.
Sharon Godlewski, Manager, Advocate Health, Grainger Corporate Fitness Center, Lake Forest, IL
The biggest benefit I received from Intrinsic Coach® training is being able to ask people what they want and then knowing what to do with their answers. As a fitness professional, I used to assume I could develop the new fitness center members’ exercise prescriptions to meet people’s needs however I wasn’t tailoring the programs as much as I could have to meet their individual goals. Additionally, it’s amazing how people’s initial goals turn out to be strategies to reach another goal, not yet articulated, and how one goal often becomes another when you provide just a few minutes of goal focused conversation. For example, a member recently approached me saying she wanted to lose weight. After a few minutes of coaching, she revealed that her husband buys junk food to help cope with undiagnosed pain, that this impacts both of them, and, after a few minutes of coaching, her goal became finding a new physician for her husband – one who would listen to her husband’s concerns. By engaging in coaching conversations, our members’ investment in their health and their experience of how we partner with them in this is brought to a new level, and it doesn’t take a lot of time at all. In fact, it takes less time than without coaching. I have also applied coaching when conducting annual performance reviews. I have asked, “What do you want?” when trying to develop staff members’ skills instead of informing them of the skills I feel they need. At times, I may still need to emphasize further skill development, but I listen first and then, if needed, make suggestions. Learning to build first on employee’s thinking about their goals for successful work experiences was a big step for me, but, in the end, it has been very helpful. As a result, we now have more neutral, instead of defensive, conversations and employees are coming up with creative solutions to problems. On a side note, realizing that I don't have to provide all the answers to the many questions asked by fitness center members or employees has relieved a lot of pressure. I listen, question, and work with the members to find the action step they believe is appropriate to move them towards their goal.
Erin Cummins, Health Specialist, Coors Brewing Company
One of the main things I learned is that everybody is an individual, and what works for one doesn’t work for another. Like others, I was exhausted after doing exercise prescriptions because the things we thought would work, and we would try to explain over and over and over, were just not hitting a cord with the person we were talking to. So, it is really good now that we ask people to talk about what they want, and they find it themselves. For example, I did a body comp for a guy whose body fat percentage has gone up a lot in the past six months. I asked him, “What is different now from what used to be?” and he came up with three or four different things. He was surprised that he thought of things he hadn’t yet realized -- things I couldn’t have thought of or predicted for him. And so this way is so much better because I could have sat there and told him “do this, do this, do this, do this” but it wouldn’t have hit him like what he thought of it himself. That is the biggest thing for me – that everybody has their own way of doing things. We are trained to tell people what to do, but it just doesn’t work that way. When he showed up, he said, “I give up,” but when we got done talking, he said, “All right, I am going to get back on the treadmill, right now.”
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Intrinsic Coach®
CEUs Offered
- ACE - American Council on Exercise
- ACSM - American College of Sports Medicine
- CCMC - Commission for Case Manager Certification
- CFP® - Certified Financial Planner
- CHES (category 1) - National Commission for Health Education
- CSCS & CPT - National Strength and Conditioning Association
- EAP - Employee Assistance Certification Commission
- HRCI - Human Resources Certification Institute
- NASW - National Association of Social Workers
- RD - Commission on Dietetic Registration, the credentialing agency for the American Dietetic Association
- RN - Arizona Nurses' Association and the American Nurses' Credentialing Center
- The Cooper Institute accepts Intrinsic Coach® development hours for credit.
- College Accreditation - Undergraduate & Graduate. Contact us for details.