Posted on February 9, 2010 by Stephan Wiedner

Smack! One day you wake up and the next thing you know, you’re at the hospital holding your partner’s hand. They’ve just suffered a brain attack.

I recently had the pleasure of talking to one of Vancouver’s coach leaders and trailblazers, Terrill Welch. Despite her success and influence, she has partially closed the doors of her coaching business and moved onto the next phase of her life. Five months ago, her husband suffered a debilitating stroke and this is her coaching journey leading up to and beyond this tragic event.

Noomii: How did you get into coaching?

Terrill:The first part of my career was focused on working with women and children and women’s issues, including working with women who had experienced violence in relationships. In the later part of my career, I worked for the provincial government in a variety of roles and positions. Throughout my employment, I didn’t stay put for long. I moved from position to position always with progressively more responsibility. Leadership was often very much central to those responsibilities.

With changes in BC’s political leadership in 2001, I left government and used the opportunity to acquire more training. I enrolled for the executive coach training program at Royal Roads University and launched my coaching business. Right from the start, I knew I would focus on my area of knowledge and interest, leadership for women.

My biggest hurdle at the time was learning how to build a business. I had never imagined I would be an entrepreneur. It had never been one of my goals. So in addition to the executive coach training, I took training in starting a small business.

I took my solid experience in leadership, my educational and training background in Sociology , Women Studies and now executive coaching and parlayed them into a coaching business. For 6.5 years I worked with women leaders all across North America and I also wrote a book titled Leading Raspberry Jam Visions: Women’s Way (2005). In the last year of my business, I operated by donation only and I contributed 50% of my revenue to charity. It allowed me to work with great integrity. It also made my services available to anybody who needed them. It worked for me, the women I worked with, and the charities I supported.

Noomii: Did you know right away that you wanted to work with women leaders.

Terrill: Yes it’s interesting. When I first started coaching, everyone told me I was crazy. My fellow coaches and everyone thought working with women leaders was too narrow a focus. Early on, when you searched the web for “executive coaching for women leaders” my website always came up in the top 10. Now coaching specifically for women leaders is a legitimate branch of coaching.

Noomii: How do you help women?

Terrill: Women in senior positions need someone that believes in them but also someone who can be frank and challenges them at the same time. Leaders can feel isolated and they want someone that they can trust and someone with whom they can open up and be vulnerable. My approach was no different than any other coaching process. But on top of the coaching, I offered an understanding of gender issues both from the perspective of research and from practice. I could relate.

For example, one of my clients, a leader in her organization, first came to me because she thought she’d have to leave her company. She had young children and she thought she was going to have to choose between her work and spending more time with her children. Through our coaching, I helped her get clear on her values and align them with the business goals of her organization. She decided to keep her job, and negotiate for an unprecedented reduced work week. She was the first person in a leadership position in her organization to gain such a benefit.

Noomii: How has your coaching journey influenced the way you handle your current situation?

Terrill: When you work with women leaders and review the research, you know that the balance between home and work is extremely important to women. I was no different than many of the women I worked with. I had some choices to make when David suffered his stroke. It was surprisingly easy to decide to close my business. When David first came home from the hospital he needed constant care and attention. I needed to be with him or we had to hire someone to come in to be with him. I wanted to be with him and I knew he would recover best with my daily support. Thankfully, we didn’t need the revenue from my business. I made my decision knowing that it was possible and the best decision for us.

Noomii: It sounds like you wouldn’t have done anything differently had you not been coaching?

Terrill: I don’t know if that is true. With a background in gender issues, which has strong feminist roots, being financially self-sufficient is important. And for years, I had operated my business as a way of sustaining and claiming my own financial independence. Without my years of coaching and learning to seek deep value alignment, I don’t know if my ego would have allowed me to rely on one source of income – that being David’s pension.

Throughout the transition David and I are making, coaching provides me with the exact tools that I need to help my partner heal. Through coaching I have learned to stay present and be available for people wherever they are in a particular moment. With David, I had to be there for him in that same way and this has a definite positive impact on his ability to heal.

It was dire at the beginning. Only 50% of individuals that suffer his type of bleeding stroke survive the first 48 hours and of those that do survive only about 20% recover to the point where they can perform their regular daily activities. After 5 months, David has met both of these milestones learning to swallow, walk, talk, read, write and use the telephone and computer again.

We can’t understate the absolute power of being present for someone and being there for them. Sadly, there is so little of that in life.

Noomii: What would your partner say has shifted in you throughout your coaching journey?

Terrill: Wow, I don’t know. Certainly when he had his stroke, it became really clear what was important – our relationship. It was crystal clear. Decisions were easy. I knew exactly what it was I needed to do.

David was a part of my business all along. He was my editor. In Terrill Welch – A Woman behind Women, he was the man behind the woman behind women. People associated with me knew that. He didn’t change the content of what I wrote but he corrected things that I missed. He teased me toward the end of my coaching business saying that I didn’t need him anymore. I had gotten better and better at doing my own editing.

That said, I am still writing a blog and David is not yet able to do my editing for me. So I’ve had to stand on my own two feet, letting the writing sit and going back and making the corrections on my own.

Coming back to the original question then, he would say my self-confidence has improved. I am more comfortable being me without being the “me” that is my work.

Noomii: Is coaching something you do or is it a mindset?

Terrill: Yes and yes. I don’t think they are separate. Coaching is a set of tools that is based on a world view and a way of living life. In order to coach to your full potential you need to be practicing your world view, engaging in it. Your clients will be on parallel journeys. The details will be different but the steps along the path will be similar.

Noomii: Where do you see your future with coaching?

Terrill: It’s funny you ask that. I have taken down my website but people seem to continue to come to me. And yet with the changes in my life I hesitate to say what I will be doing in a year. Each day is a gift. I am going to live today as fully as possible. I have set some short-term goals but what I’ll be doing 5 to 10 years, I have no idea and it doesn’t seem to be important.

Clients say “I don’t want you to get rusty” and we laugh because I love my coaching work and that is not likely to happen. My coaching business may come back in another form but it’s not going to happen right now. It just didn’t seem practical to try and keep the coaching business going at this time. If I need to pick it up again, I’ll likely pick it up in a different way.

Coaching will always be with me. It’s integral. It’s a part of my world view – business or no business.

Most recently, I have been writing a blog called Creative Potager which profiles my photography, painting and writing. The work that I do there is very much influenced by coaching. As part of each post I ask a question of readers and I write with a coaching mindset. It also has a role to play in engaging people. The long-term lesson is that you apply your coaching to anything you do.

Are you inspired to get coaching? Noomii provides a growing list of leadership coaches as well as coaches in the Vancouver area. We have the right coach for you. Feel free to call us any time for a personal recommendation – toll free 1-800-278-1057.