coaching

Gaining Focus in Liminal Times

Church Leadership
May 31, 2022•2 min read

Are you feeling dizzy from all the pivoting you have been doing for the past two plus years?  Does it feel like all you are doing is putting one foot in front of the other and just getting through each day?  Does the idea of planning sound like a joke since every day something else changes?

When do you take time out to catch your breath, change the view, and have a different conversation with someone who is outside your day-to-day interactions?  This time to slow down, take a 10,000 feet view, and have a conversation with an advocate who can provide valuable feedback, deep listening and outside perspective is absolutely critical for leaders at least once or twice a month.  This interaction is called coaching and should not be reserved for only when you are going through a rough or foggy patch. Coaching is a basic leadership tool every great leader must have in their tool box.

Coaching provides focus.  Focus is essential to leadership effectiveness and fruitfulness.  Focus is one of the benefits demonstrated in the real power of coaching.  Coaching provides someone, different from the client, living in a different paradigm, with different frames of reference, coming along side to shine a laser focus on the client’s goals, challenges, and desired results.  The coach keeps the client on the client’s desired path and provides encouragement, course correction when needed, map reference when called for, and detours when the client calls for it.

Coaching is a proven leadership tool used by top leaders in all walks of life from churches to nonprofits to the corporate board room to the sports field to produce more fruitful results and bring out the very best in the client.  Common coaching approaches empower a client to create goals, address issues and produce focus and fruitfulness within the context the client sets, closing the gap between where the client is currently and where the client desires to be. 

If you would welcome a partner in your pursuit for a time to focus each month so you can find your footing to be more fruitful and effective and a partner focusing on your strengths, your goals, your desired results, your fruitfulness… then coaching is designed just for you.

What exactly is the return on the investment in coaching?  If you are curious, click here for a free report on how coaching pays dividends on the investment.  I

coachingleadership developmentchurch leadership
Kay’s purpose is to Equip and Empower Leaders of Faith Communities How to Engage in More Effective Ministry. Kay Kotan is the founder of You Unlimited (coaching, consulting and training company) and The Greatest Expedition – a collaboration of more than twenty thought leaders providing resources and insights for a congregational journey to develop new MAPS (ministry action plans) to reach new people in your community.  Kay also launched Multipliers’ Movement – a gathering of kingdom multipliers for sharing, equipping, and encouraging. She is a CoachU and Advanced CoachU Graduate, an accredited coach (PCC: Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF, International Coaching Federation, a Certified Path 1 Coach, and once served on the faculty at Coaching4Clergy. As a passionate lay person, she has a banking background and has been a business owner for more than 25 years. Kotan has served as a church developer for conferences and worked with churches, pastors, conferences, and judicatory leaders across the country for more than a decade. She is most proud to be the wife of Bob for over 30 years and the mother of their adult son, Cameron. Kay is the author of multiple books, workbooks, and resources including Gear Up: Nine Essential Processes for the Optimized Church, Cry From the Pew, Full Schedules, Barren Souls, Being the Church in the Post Pandemic World, and Journey Preparation: Surveying Your Church’s Landscape, as well as the co-author of the books titled: IMPACT!: Reclaiming the Call of Lay Ministry, Small Church Check-Up, Insights on Productivity, Renovate or Die – Ten Ways to Focus Your Church on Mission, Ministry 3.0 and Get Their Name , Ten Prescriptions for a Healthy Church, Necessary Nine – Nine Things Effective Pastors Do Differently, Launching Leaders: Taking Leadership Development to New Heights, Strategy Matters: Your Roadmap to Planning a Strategic Ministry Planning Retreat, Voices of Christmas: A Daily Devotional for Advent and Expanding the Expedition Reach Through Marketplace Multipliers. Mission Possible for the Small Church. Inside Out: Everting Ministry Models for the Postmodern Church, and more. Kotan and her co-author Bradford published their third version of the best-seller, Mission Possible: Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness. Mrs. Kotan spends her time investing in pastors, laity leaders, congregations, and judicatory leaders through equipping, coaching, and creating resources to help them discover and live into their fullest missional potential of effectiveness and fruitfulness to reach people for Jesus Christ. Through her enthusiasm, truth-telling, and passion, she challenges those who encounter her in both their thinking and their doing.

Kay Kotan

Kay’s purpose is to Equip and Empower Leaders of Faith Communities How to Engage in More Effective Ministry. Kay Kotan is the founder of You Unlimited (coaching, consulting and training company) and The Greatest Expedition – a collaboration of more than twenty thought leaders providing resources and insights for a congregational journey to develop new MAPS (ministry action plans) to reach new people in your community.  Kay also launched Multipliers’ Movement – a gathering of kingdom multipliers for sharing, equipping, and encouraging. She is a CoachU and Advanced CoachU Graduate, an accredited coach (PCC: Professional Certified Coach) with the ICF, International Coaching Federation, a Certified Path 1 Coach, and once served on the faculty at Coaching4Clergy. As a passionate lay person, she has a banking background and has been a business owner for more than 25 years. Kotan has served as a church developer for conferences and worked with churches, pastors, conferences, and judicatory leaders across the country for more than a decade. She is most proud to be the wife of Bob for over 30 years and the mother of their adult son, Cameron. Kay is the author of multiple books, workbooks, and resources including Gear Up: Nine Essential Processes for the Optimized Church, Cry From the Pew, Full Schedules, Barren Souls, Being the Church in the Post Pandemic World, and Journey Preparation: Surveying Your Church’s Landscape, as well as the co-author of the books titled: IMPACT!: Reclaiming the Call of Lay Ministry, Small Church Check-Up, Insights on Productivity, Renovate or Die – Ten Ways to Focus Your Church on Mission, Ministry 3.0 and Get Their Name , Ten Prescriptions for a Healthy Church, Necessary Nine – Nine Things Effective Pastors Do Differently, Launching Leaders: Taking Leadership Development to New Heights, Strategy Matters: Your Roadmap to Planning a Strategic Ministry Planning Retreat, Voices of Christmas: A Daily Devotional for Advent and Expanding the Expedition Reach Through Marketplace Multipliers. Mission Possible for the Small Church. Inside Out: Everting Ministry Models for the Postmodern Church, and more. Kotan and her co-author Bradford published their third version of the best-seller, Mission Possible: Simple Structure for Missional Effectiveness. Mrs. Kotan spends her time investing in pastors, laity leaders, congregations, and judicatory leaders through equipping, coaching, and creating resources to help them discover and live into their fullest missional potential of effectiveness and fruitfulness to reach people for Jesus Christ. Through her enthusiasm, truth-telling, and passion, she challenges those who encounter her in both their thinking and their doing.

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