BUSINESS

Global Living - Coaching the Art of Self-Empowerment

By Jennifer Davis

Special to The St. Petersburg Times

Sometimes when you know what you want in life, you still need a little push in the right direction. A life coach might be just the person to gently nudge you toward your goals.

Born out of executive coaching, life coaching is a relatively new method of self-empowerment where a client works together with a coach to make important life changes, such as switching careers, attracting more money and opportunities, and strengthening interpersonal relationships on the job and at home.

“When people ask me what life coaching is, I don’t explain it,” said Margarita Gokun Silver, a U.S.-trained life coach currently based in St. Petersburg.

“I prefer to give an example, like: ‘How would you rate your life right now on a scale of 1 to 10? What would it be like at 10? What’s one small thing that you could do next week to help you get to 10?’ This is the essence of life coaching. Basically, it’s finding your dream, owning it, and going for it.”

Gokun Silver’s own personal journey helped prepare her for her career as a life coach. A native of Moscow, she emigrated to the United States in 1989 with her family in search of opportunity. After graduating from Yale University with a Masters in Public Health, she traveled to Moldova, Ukraine and Uzbekistan as a contractor for United States Agency for International Development (USAID) projects.

“My family really wanted me to become a doctor, but while studying I realized that I wanted to do something international,” she said. “I thought maybe I could combine their desires and mine not by becoming a doctor but through international public health. It was interesting, but I didn’t find it fulfilling.”

It wasn’t until Gokun Silver found herself in Buenos Aires, as a stay-at-home mom and spouse of an American diplomat, that she discovered her true calling. “I had always worked before, and here I was—a woman of leisure. It was a hard adjustment,” she said.

“One day I was having coffee with a friend who was a life coach. She explained it to me and I thought it sounded like something that I’d really enjoy. You have clients that you work with over the phone that can be anywhere in the world. It sounded like a global business that would be easy to maintain, fun to do, and something that would be mine.”

Upon returning to the States with her husband and daughter, Gokun Silver enrolled in life coach training in Washington DC with the Coach’s Training Institute and soon afterwards established her own company, The Global Coach Center (www.GlobalCoachCenter.com).

“The difference between other coaching companies and my company is that I focus on people with a global background,” she said. “People who work and live in different countries are different from people who choose to live in their home country. With coaching you want to develop a niche. My niche is working with expatriates, global nomads and the internationally minded.”

In fact, The Global Coach Center puts out a monthly newsletter called Global Living, which provides tips and information for expats.

Since moving to St. Petersburg in September 2005, Gokun Silver has led several workshops including a five-session seminar in English called “Creating Out Loud: Discover Your Voice,” and a session in Russian for alumni of the Stockholm School of Economics.

“The workshop I did at the Stockholm School of Economics was similar to one I did at Columbia University for graduating students,” she said. “This workshop helps people create careers they really want after they graduate through self-coaching tools they learn at the workshop.”

Gokun Silver works with clients on a one-on-one basis as well as in a group setting. Most individual coaching occurs over the telephone. “Nowadays, the coaching goes on over the phone, because it’s easier for the client than traveling to the coach in person,” she said. “Because we are trained to hear things over the phone that we would otherwise pick up through body language, it works.”

Thanks to the Internet and video conferencing, coaches are also able to conduct workshops or meet with clients in the virtual world via digital link. Gokun Silver led such a workshop on assertiveness for the U.S. Embassy in Botswana last year. Joyce Maneto, a registered nurse with the U.S. Embassy in Gabarone, Botswana found Gokun Silver’s workshop to be very effective. “Following Margarita’s presentation on the topic, all gray areas turned crystal clear,” said Maneto. “Margarita gave a rock-solid start to my career. Her strength is embedded in her dedication to see human beings reach their full potential.”

Gokun Silver is currently planning several workshops in English, including “Make Difficult Decisions Easy”, “Assertiveness or The Art of Making Yourself Heard”, “What’s Next (for expat spouses)”, and “Money Talks.” “Money Talks” is a three-hour session that promises to help participants understand their relationship with money. “This workshop cannot guarantee to make you rich,” she said. “But it can guarantee that your relationship with money will change in such a way that you will attract more money into your life. Wealth is a state of mind.” Gokun Silver also conducts corporate workshops on leadership, team building, and cross-cultural management through coaching.

Although life coaching often touches on a client’s emotional issues, Gokun Silver insists that it differs from psychological treatment or counseling. “There’s one fundamental difference between psychotherapy, psychology, psychiatry and coaching,” she said. “And that is, how the clients see themselves when they walk into the office. When they go to a psychiatrist or a counselor they see themselves as either damaged in some way or in some kind of crisis they want to eliminate. The focus is, thus, on ‘getting back to normal,”

“On the contrary, when clients approach a coach they see themselves already as creative, resourceful, and whole. Imagine what’s possible when you start in the kind of environment that views the client as magnificent from the very beginning.”

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