Newfield Isn’t Just For Coaches

This post was written by Julie Pate, Esq., a Newfield graduate of the Coaching for Personal & Professional Mastery program and a member of Newfield’s Advisory Board.

When I read the description of the Foundation Course, I had no interest in becoming a coach—I’m a lawyer—but the course summary really spoke to me from a personal development perspective and where I was in my life journey at that point.

When I took the course, I saw that I wasn’t the only person in the room who had just left corporate America and did not aspire to become a coach. Although the Foundation Course is designed as the opening intensive for the Certification Coach Training program, I believe it is an enormous piece of the puzzle for personal and professional development.

The Foundation Course was life-altering for me. After that one week, I was in such a space to learn and grow that I committed to taking the full Certified Coach Training program. Again, I still did not and do not have a desire to become a coach myself.

The development that occurred had to do with looking at yourself as a human being and addressing the things I called “your monsters.” These are the assessments and the stories you’ve written about yourself your whole life. The process allowed us to discover, see and observe these self-interpretations that have been there our whole lives. During the course, you are coached through some of these by the incredibly talented staff at Newfield and this gives you the opportunity to shift and choose how these self-interpretations show up in your life going forward. It is truly life-altering to no longer be haunted by those voices that we all have, that says we’re not enough, or that we’re not lovable, or not worthy, or whatever other assessments we hold.

It was powerful to be in a space of extraordinary care and safety and watch an entire roomful of people share their souls, have them be coached, and then see them get physically lighter from the burden that was being lifted from them.

I look back on that experience and how it impacted my life. It has made me a better human being, a better mother, and a better lawyer.

As a mother, it really addressed what is every parent’s concern: that we are not doing enough, that we’re not good enough at parenting, and that we are somehow harming our child. For me, it was learning how to be in flexibility more with my child, and that has helped me enormously. I’m a very resolute person, very forward-facing and very driven to get things done and that collides with an 8-year-old’s world of control and flexibility. By going through the entire Coach Training program, I’ve been able to allow myself to live in world of flexible boundaries and timelines with my son, and that has been one of the most beautiful experiences I could have gotten from Newfield. I’ve never received that type of learning and training before, and that level of personal development is now such a core piece of who I am.

Newfield also changed how I do things in my professional life. I practice in the employment law world and have spent 18 years helping employers with challenges such as terminating someone’s employment. Termination of employment with someone is no different than a marriage or a divorce. People are very committed to their jobs and have maybe been at the company for a long time, so there is an incredible amount of emotion attached to a job ending.

When I have clients who oversee and manage employees, one of the things I really spend time on with my clients now is helping them understand what showing up for another person is. Whether it is a disciplinary action or a termination of employment, how can you engage in conversation with a higher level of self-awareness? How can you speak and act in a compassionate and loving way, in a way that affords the employee the dignity and respect that a human would like in that often-difficult transition? I am much more aware of how to create that environment and coach an employer through how to do that now after Newfield than I ever was in the 15 years of being a lawyer prior to that.

After completing the Foundation Course and the Certified Coach Training program, I went back to Veronica and said: “I can never repay you for the gift that your organization has given me.”

Want to learn more about our course offerings? Check out our Foundation Course for transformative personal development and the first step towards becoming a Certified Coach.

About the Author: 

Julie Pate is the Founder and President of Employment Compliance Solutions LLC. Her legal knowledge comes from 18 years working as an attorney in Employment and Labor Law, and her business insight was developed over 10 years as the top HR Executive for a private employer with locations across nine states and Mexico. Julie offers professional coaching around variety of common workplace pain points. Business coaching can take the form of conflict resolution for teams, or one-on-one coaching for managers or employees when the personal and professional become enmeshed. Business coaching is a natural next step for managers and employees who are feeling stuck, or just want to get to the next level of performance. Just as it is important to stay legally compliant, it’s equally important to maintain job satisfaction. We help with that, through personalized coaching sessions to overcome obstacles and barriers. Our goal is simple: to improve work performance and job satisfaction. We can uncover whatever is causing you to feel stuck, and help you to resolve it smoothly..